Dear nursing colleague,

My name is Bethany. I have worked as a staff nurse at Nationwide Children’s Hospital for almost five years. I am part of the organizing committee to unionize the nurses and nurse practitioners, and I want to extend that invitation to you. I feel privileged to work at NCH and to care for children and their families. I am so beyond proud to be part of this team and of the excellent care we provide. We deserve excellent benefits to support ourselves and our families and that will only be accomplished if we join together as a union.

A union gives us the collective voice to bargain for our benefits, and to maintain those benefits long term. Right now we are at the mercy of our administration making changes to our benefits, compensation and PTO accrual. What happened to the short term disability bank, to double time pay on holidays? Did the PTO rate increase make up for that change? If you work in a clinic, do you have enough PTO in your bank to cover Labor Day? Our NP colleagues do not get holiday pay, and they have no caseload limits. Do you feel like your staffing ratios allow for you to provide the best care to your patients? If you are sick and need to take leave, you are paid at 70%, but do you only have to pay 70% of your bills? Is twelve weeks enough time to heal from delivery and bond with a new family member? If your partner also works at NCH, splitting those twelve weeks is enough, right? We do not have to accept these conditions, and we deserve the protections of a union. Nationwide Children’s Hospital has the currency in funds and influence to set a new standard of employee benefits. Together, we have the power to hold them to it.

My support of unionization has always been on principle, but I didn’t truly appreciate its value until my own family needed help. In my final semester of nursing school, my dad was hospitalized for five months after surviving a brain aneurysm. My mom is a public school teacher, and her district’s union facilitated the donation of PTO so she could attend to my dad while he recovered and prepare their home to be accessible for his sudden disability. If my mom lost her income or if I was needed at home full time to attend to him while she worked, I would not have been able to finish school. Her union made that possible for me, and every union has the power to make a meaningful impact for members and their families.

We have accomplished so much already with our unionization effort. The administration has tried to appease us with marginal increases in pay rate, bonuses, more PTO, reductions in health insurance premiums, but none of this is promised to last without a contract negotiated and ratified by us! I ask you to join in our effort, or at the very least seek answers beyond what has been told to you by the hospital administration. It is your right to organize without fear of retaliation.

In solidarity,

Bethany Luck

BSN, RN-CPN