A letter from fellow NCH nurses

Dear Fellow NCH Nurse,

We are the Organizing Committee of the Nationwide Nurses Union. We are your fellow nurses and nurse practitioners actively working to make Children’s the best place to work for all of us by forming a strong union. 

Just by starting this process of forming our union, we secured a $1.50 raise, additional PTO, increased maternity leave, and an announced plan to lower healthcare costs. None of this would have happened had we not started organizing our union.

NCH management will deny we were given these things because of our organizing efforts—but it’s no coincidence. They offer small improvements to buy us off and keep us from unionizing. They’re counting on us accepting these changes as good enough. Here are just a few reasons why they aren’t good enough:

• Our APRN sisters and brothers received no raise. 
• Our Outpatient sisters and brothers continue to have PTO automatically deducted on days when their clinics are closed and they aren’t given the option to work. 
• Our pay continues to lag behind our peers at other hospitals. 
• Our turnover is high and our ratios continue to be out of balance. 
• Our holiday pay has been reduced from double time pay to time and a half in recent years. 

NCH can do all of this because we aren’t united as a union. A union would give us the strength to bargain together with the hospital to make things better. 

We’ve tried to unionize before, but we’ve never been this close. We need to keep spreading the word to RNs and APRNs across the hospital. We need more of us involved to push this forward. 

NCH management will no doubt throw all they can at us to try and break this union. The only way to ensure we can combat those efforts is to be as strong and
united as possible. 

Please get involved. Please join us at an organizing committee meeting to help us build this union. We need you. We need all of us.

In Solidarity,