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A group of about thirty Corewell Health nurses chanted, “Who are we? Teamsters!” as they marched Friday from the union’s headquarters on Trumbull Avenue in Detroit, where former Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa once negotiated labor contracts before his disappearance in 1975, toward the National Labor Relations Board on Michigan Avenue.
There, they delivered three bankers’ boxes full of cards signed by thousands of registered nurses from all eight metro Detroit hospitals and the Southfield Service Center.
The maps, they say, show substantial support for bringing together approximately 9,600 registered nurses working full-time, part-time and on a contingency or flexible basis, including charge nurses, at hospitals in Dearborn, Farmington Hills, Grosse Pointe, Royal Oak, Taylor, Trenton, Troy and Wayne.
By joining together as Nurses for Nurses, a committee of the Michigan Teamsters Joint Council No. 43, they said, they could negotiate and have more say when it comes to nurse-patient ratios, job losses, wages and benefits.
“It’s the largest Teamsters organization of the last 50 years,” said Kevin Moore, president of the Michigan Teamsters, who met with the nurses Friday morning in Hoffa’s famed war room.
“Have our Corewell nurses take this home. … I am extremely proud of all of you.”
If the effort is successful, the group will be among the largest registered nurses unions in the state, said Teamsters Joint Council organizer Dave Hughes.
“This is historic,” he said.
It’s been a long time coming, says Sarah Johnson, 39, who now works as a radiation oncology nurse at Corewell Health William Beaumont University Hospital in Royal Oak.
Johnson said her job was eliminated after Beaumont Health and Spectrum Health merged in 2022 to form Corewell, the state’s largest health care system.
“Until last year I was one of the critical care lecturers at Royal Oak Beaumont,” she said. “They started making a lot of cuts because of the merger, and my job was eliminated. … A few months after I was laid off, I found another job. So now I work in radiation oncology at Royal Oak Beaumont.”
Her support for unionization came from that experience.
“I was ready,” she said, saying patient care has been affected by nursing job losses. “My eyes were open and I just ran with it ever since.”
Amanda Layne, 36, of Trenton, a registered nurse at Corewell Health Wayne Hospital, said she wants to strengthen wages, benefits and job protections not only for herself, but for future generations of nurses.
“I want a guaranteed pension for our future nurses,” she said. “I would like to have a safe patient-staff relationship. I feel like we are lying to patients when it comes to what they expect from care and what we can provide because they are shortchanging us so much.”
Layne started as a nurse in 2022 and entered the field because she was inspired by the care nurses gave her son when he was born.
“I’m the first in my family to get a college degree,” she said. “I wanted to show my kids that no matter what comes your way, if you want something, you can get it, so becoming a nurse was a big challenge.
“And when I actually started my nursing career and saw that we were not being supported, and we were giving more and more to patients with fewer resources, it was so disappointing.”
Earlier Friday morning, the nurses, many of whom wore T-shirts that read “Nurses Inspire Nurses to Organize,” also gathered at Corewell’s Southfield headquarters to deliver a petition to be recognized by the company .
Debra Miracle, a registered nurse at Corewell Health Farmington Hills Hospital, presented a manila envelope containing the petition to Kelli Sadler, senior vice president and chief nursing officer of Corewell Health in southeastern Michigan.
Miracle said that when she started her career as a nurse, her workplace was a small community hospital known as Botsford General, where managers “appreciated us. You knew they cared about us.” That became somewhat less clear, she said, when Botsford was absorbed by Beaumont Health during the first round of consolidation in 2014. And when Beaumont merged with Spectrum, that sentiment was completely lost.
“We are nothing to Corewell,” she said.
If the nurses’ signature is accepted by the NLRB, an election will be called to determine whether a majority of registered nurses at Corewell want to form a union. If a majority supports unionization, the NLRB would certify it and Corewell would be required to engage in collective bargaining.
In an emailed statement, Corewell Health told the Free Press:
“We are proud of our nurses and respect the work they do. We have reviewed the union’s petition and believe it is legally invalid, as are the Teamsters’ previous filings.”
The statement does not elaborate on legality.
“We respect the rights of our team members to explore unionization. However, we believe that our ability to provide high-quality care to our patients and create a positive environment can best be achieved through a direct working relationship with our nurses.”
Barbara Douglas, 63, of Troy, who has been a nurse for 20 years and now works in the operating room at Corewell Health Beaumont Troy Hospital, said forming a union will not only improve working conditions for future generations of nurses, but also quality will improve. of healthcare for people in metro Detroit.
“Ever since I became a nurse, I have always believed that it will be nurses who will change the way health care is in this country, and this is our small step to change that in this area,” Douglas said.
More: Corewell nurses gather as they look to organize with the Teamsters union
Lisa Vergos Pastue, 58, of Warren, who worked at the Royal Oak hospital for 20 years and helped launch the organizing effort about a year ago, agreed.
“We need this. Our communities need this,” said Pastue, who retired in March. “We want to care for our communities the way we should, and we deserve to be compensated for the work we do and the dedication we have.
“Nurses at Corewell Health are going to stand up and say enough is enough. We want to have a seat at the table, and we’re not going to… take anything less.”
She hopes the organizing efforts of Corewell nurses will light a fire among nurses everywhere.
“They’re going to see all this and say, ‘You know what? We can do this too.’ And maybe unions are the only way we can fight these big companies that are on the right track, just like the car companies did long ago.”
Contact Kristen Shamus: [email protected]. Subscribe to the Free Press.
