That’s a common misconception fueled by the state’s right-to-work law, which means workers don’t have to join the union that represents their workplace. And before they started organizing, some of her colleagues even believed it was illegal to join a union in Texas. “That is going to inevitably cause safety issues, because even experienced nurses with good intuition might miss something if they have to run to answer the next call.”Īscension Seton’s management did not want to see their nurses unionize, she added. “Whenever staffing is not adequate, nurses do not have the time to advocate for their patients in the way that they were taught,” Gildersleeve explained. Ultimately, the hospital’s unwillingness to hire and retain enough people to responsibly handle patient load galvanized the nurses to organize. “We had been seeing a decline in our staffing ratios and the number of experienced nurses that we were able to retain long before COVID ever started. “The pandemic exacerbated issues,” Gildersleeve said. That trend worsened when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, resulting in a wave of retirements among older nurses and other nurses leaving for better-paying work as travel nurses. She said around the same time, staff-to-patient ratios began dropping, and each nurse had to take on a heavier workload. Union representatives hope their victory at Ascension Seton will inspire more Texas nurses to organize. Īccording to Gildersleeve, working conditions at Ascension Seton have deteriorated ever since 2017, when Seton Healthcare Family became Ascension Seton Medical Center as part of a national rebranding by Ascension Health, one of the largest nonprofit hospital operators in the country. Although some of the challenges these nurses hope to overcome are unique to the healthcare field, their victory is a watershed moment for workers in industries across Texas. Three years of poorly managed pandemic working conditions, on top of existing staffing issues, became the last straw for Gildersleeve and hundreds of her colleagues at the hospital. “We have been talking about this for a long time.” “I’m so excited to be a part of something that’s so historic,” Gildersleeve said. Approximately 800 nurses will be covered by the union, which is now entering contract negotiations with hospital management. Last week, nurses at Ascension Seton Medical Center voted overwhelmingly to join National Nurses United, the largest nurses’ union in the United States. Kellen Gildersleeve, a labor and delivery nurse in Austin, has just helped birth one of the Texas labor movement’s biggest victories in recent memory.
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