Nurses at UP Health Marquette could seek union permission to go on strike within the next few days.
The relationship between nurses and management has been testy since Duke Lifepoint purchased the hospital in 2012. Lifepoint was subsequently purchased by asset management firm Apollo Global Management. A contract impasse caused a brief strike in 2017.
Current negotiations have been going on for five months. Two sessions were scheduled for this past weekend. We’ve received no word on how they went.
Christina Hanson from the hospital’s RN Staff Council told our colleagues at MyUPNow that they were expecting the staffing shortages that occurred five years ago during the pandemic to have been alleviated by now...
I think a lot of health care systems saw what we could do then, and have just kind of consistently had us do more with less. We want the safe number of patients for each nurse in each department.
If nurses do vote to strike, that doesn’t mean there will be a strike. It would give them the option, if negotiations continue to drag.
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