National Nurses United

10 N A T I O N A L N U R S E W W W . N A T I O N A L N U R S E S U N I T E D . O R G J U LY | A U G U S T | S E P T E M B E R 2 0 2 1 NEWS BRIEFS ILLINOIS R egistered nurses at Commu- nity First Medical Center in Chicago held a one-day unfair labor practice strike on July 26. National Nurses Organizing Committee nurses filed unfair labor practice charges against the hospital, saying that manage- ment has failed to engage in good faith bargaining with the union. "Nurses at Community First have pro- vided care to patients throughout the pandemic under difficult conditions that were avoidable, because the hospital failed to address staffing, equipment, and supply issues," said Kathy Haff, an emergency room registered nurse at Community First Med- ical Center. "Now we see the hospital is failing us and the public at the bargaining table and is bargaining in bad faith." Nurses said chronic short staffing is putting patient safety at risk. Lack of staffing leads to delays in care, which causes unnecessary suffer- ing for patients and can lead to an increase in falls, and other issues. Lack of staffing also leads to nurses caring for patients without the clinical training that is appropriate (for instance, when an intensive care patient remains in the emer- gency room because there are not sufficient nurses to staff beds in the ICU.) Furthermore, nurses charge that Com- munity First management has provided fraudulent information on its staffing to the state. Under the Illinois Hospital Licensing Act, minimum staffing for a telemetry unit is one nurse for four to five patients, but nurses say it is not unusual for telemetry nurses to have to care for seven to eight patients at a time. Yet reporting under the Hospital Report Card Act, Community First claimed radically inflated staffing ratios that indicated that they were staffing one nurse to two patients in the telemetry unit. Nurses say recruitment and retention is a chronic problem at Community First as the conditions are so poor due to the lack of staff, the management's refusal to fix broken equipment such as IV pumps, and the lack of supplies, including saline flushes and appropriate personal protective equipment. Records show that since February 2020, Community First has seen a 51 percent turn - over in nursing staff. For nurses with fewer than 20 years of employment at Community First, turnover during that same period is 78 percent. Haff notes that nurses at Community First make about 40 percent less than the market rate, and that they have gone with- out raises for nine years. Three nurses died from Covid-19 and at least 60 other nurses at Community First Medical Center have tested positive for the virus since the start of the pandemic. Nurses say the deaths and illnesses are linked to the management's failure to provide optimal per- sonal protective equipment, failure to follow Occupational Safety and Health Administra- tion-mandated rules, a lack of supplies, and inadequate staffing, all which are chronic problems which persist at the hospital. The strike comes after nurses initiated an OSHA investigation in April for what they believe are numerous safety and employment violations at Community First Medical Cen- ter. Nurses have also called on the Illinois Department of Public Health, the Illinois Department of Labor, and the Illinois attor- ney general's office to launch investigations. Community First Medical Center is a pri- vately owned hospital that was purchased in 2015 by Ed Green and another investor. The nurses at the hospital voted to join NNOC in 2019. —Rachel Berger Chicago nurses strike

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