University of Chicago Medicine and thousands of its nurses have reached a new contract agreement, averting a planned strike.
Nurses had been set to walk off the job for a one-day strike Thursday. But their union, National Nurses Organizing Committee/National Nurses United, and the health system reached a tentative agreement, the union announced Monday. The union represents 2,800 nurses at UChicago Medicine.
The union said nurses are scheduled to vote on the agreement March 12 and March 13.
“Our decision to call a strike forced management to address a number of our outstanding demands at the bargaining table,” said Stephanie Gamboa, a nurse in the dermatology clinic and a bargaining team member, in a news release. “We’re looking forward to ratifying our new contract, which will improve working conditions for nurses and health care for our patients.”
UChicago Medicine did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.
The union and health system had been in negotiations over a new contract since October of last year. Among sticking points, the union had wanted the health system to agree not to assign patients to charge nurses, who are nurses in charge of a floor. And they had wanted a clinically trained professional to work in a staffing office to have input on staffing decisions.
The nurses last went on strike in 2019, when 2,200 of them walked off the job for one day. They were locked out for an additional four days because the hospital contracted with temporary nurses for five days. Had the nurses gone on strike again this week, they would have again been locked out for an additional four days.
During the 2019 strike, the health system moved dozens of babies and children who were in intensive care units at the University of Chicago Medical Center to other hospitals. The hospital also limited patient transfers from other hospitals, temporarily closed some units, rescheduled some elective procedures and went on bypass, meaning it asked ambulances to take new patients to other hospitals