Union leadership was told by administration that workers at Saint Francis will not be receiving the raise because it is not in their union contract. The truth is that there is language in the contract that explicitly states that management can give incentives to staff at any time. Saint Francis Hospital is the only Ascension facility in the Milwaukee area that is represented by a union.

“This is straightforward discrimination against our union. Nothing in our contract prevents them from giving us this bonus, so they’re making a deliberate choice not to,” stated Nadezhda Young, chief steward and emergency room technician.

This led to union leadership uniting all rank and file to grieve the issue and attend the labor management meeting which was supposed to be held August 14 at 9:30 a.m. However, administration canceled this meeting 20 minutes before it was set to go on. With a line of members out the door waiting to attend the meeting, rank-and-file union representatives led the membership to the administrator’s office.

Management alerted security prior to the cancellation and had them surveil the membership as they stormed to his office. He claims to have canceled the meeting because he had “more important things to do.” With a group of workers surrounding him shaking their heads in disbelief, Chief Steward Nadezhda Young and Nurse’s Chapter President Tracey Schwerdtfeger handed him the stack of 144 grievances representing over half the staff of the hospital.

Union leadership is now awaiting on how they will advance the struggle with their membership, depending on how hospital administration responds. The workers at Saint Francis hospital will not tolerate union busting and will use their right to concerted activity to get their demands met.

Mikaela Wojciechowski, vice president of the Registered Nurses Chapter, expressed the importance of the union membership taking a stand for their bonus. “Where there is unity, there is progress. You can’t score a goal without the help of a team. If you want a victory, we all need to come together, support each other, and most importantly, fight together. This fight is not only for our staff members, but for our community as a whole.”

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Milwaukee, WI – More than 60 workers and union members from Ascension St. Francis Hospital (SFH), together with community supporters, gathered outside Milwaukee’s city hall on the evening of December 20. The event was called for by the Wisconsin Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals (WFNHP) Local 5000, the union which represents nurses and technical and service employees at the hospital. The purpose for the rally was to raise awareness around the services being cut at the hospital, specifically management’s decision to close down the labor and delivery department.

This closure isn’t only significant because of the jobs being lost, but because it is the only unit of its kind on Milwaukee’s South Side, home to many working Chicano/Mexicano families. The next nearest labor and delivery department is at least five miles away. A significant number of families who are served by SFH speak English as a second language (or don’t speak English at all) and don’t have cars, meaning they’ll be forced to attempt to navigate public transit, or get an Uber or Lyft, in the event of an emergency related to a pregnancy. With harsh winter weather right around the corner, having to travel all the way across the city versus having a facility in the community will undoubtedly adversely affect these families.

“Shame on you, Ascension,” said Connie Smith, president of WFNHP 5000 and also the president of the tech and service bargaining unit at SFH. “Bring back our services. Save our labor and delivery department. Save St. Francis.”

Alan Chavoya of the Milwaukee Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression provided Spanish translation of the speeches. The rally received coverage from a handful of local media outlets and received support from a slew of local community organizations.

Tracey Schwerdtfeger, president of the nurses bargaining unit at SFH, read a prepared statement written by a worker from the labor and delivery department. “This is not a new problem. This is not an unavoidable emergency that no one saw coming. This is not related to COVID. This is not related to travel nurses. This is about profits over patients.”

The comments had to be read rather than delivered by the worker themselves because the severance package being offered by Ascension would likely be put in jeopardy otherwise. A handful of the workers and providers had been at SFH for more than a decade.

Schwerdtfeger continued her reading of the statement: “Ascension has once again made their poor planning our community’s emergency. It’s a similar story to St Joe’s just a few years ago. A hospital integral to the community, delivering care to an underserved population – the very populations that allow Ascension to claim their non-profit status. Giving them the tax breaks they so desperately want, but without allocating necessary resources to deliver the quality of care that every patient deserves. Those tax breaks allow Ascension corporate leaders to clear six, seven, eight-figure salaries, while claiming they don’t have the money to safely staff and run a hospital.”

After the comments, attendees got heated up with a spirited march around City Hall. Marchers held signs that read “Happy holidays from Ascension,” “When we fight, we win” and “Patients over profit,” and chanted things like “What will moms and babies do? Ascension, Ascension, shame on you” and “When workers and families are under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight back!”

The rally came after three days of call-in actions to demand the closure be reversed. These actions targeted hospital administrator Jonathon Matuszewski and Chief Nursing Officer Jill Berg, both of whom had a hand in the decision to close the department. A third call-in targeted Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson, demanding that the city take action to prevent the termination of this vital service on the South Side. Additional actions are being planned to maintain the pressure on hospital administration to reopen the unit.

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Milwaukee, WI – On the afternoon of July 18, 18 workers at St. Francis Hospital represented by the Wisconsin Federation of Nurses and Healthcare Professionals (WFNHP) Local 5000 followed the top hospital administrator to his office to demand that the technical and service staff receive their long-awaited contractual raise.

Three months after ratification, there has still been no sight of a wage increase for the technical and service staff at Saint Francis. Nursing staff received their raise within the time agreed upon, yet there has been an unacceptable hold up for all other bargaining members at the hospital. This comes after management's other recent splitting activities, when they divided the two units at the beginning of contract negotiations and forced through staggered contract expirations for nurses and the tech/service workers.

Union leadership received no real explanation from management on the holdup on the raises, assuring the angry workers that they are “working as hard and fast as possible” on implementing the increases. Rather than waiting and seeing, union leadership called upon all members to show up to the labor-management meeting and get their answers there. Nurses, techs and service staff came together to demand that techs and service get paid immediately!

After finding out last minute that the meeting was virtual, the group came together and marched into the nursing administration office to demand the meeting be had then and there. Regardless of the top administrator’s “open door policy”, he had nothing good to say, refused to listen, and proceeded to have his secretary call security on the assembled workers.

“It’s very predictable that despite everything they say about wanting to hear from their staff, when their staff actually speak up they call security,” said Nadezhda Young Binter, a behavioral health CNA and chief steward at Saint Francis.

This didn’t stop the group from making their voices heard. Everyone proceeded to take over a conference room and hop on the labor-management call. After the labor relations director’s weak attempt to show sympathy and prevent the workers from expressing themselves, the workers bulldozed over her empty remarks and made their demands heard.

“You can’t say you understand our frustrations until you work the floor and live off my wage. It’s unacceptable it’s taking you so long. We need our money now!” said Kellie Lutz during the call. Lutz is also a CNA and the secretary of the Saint Francis WFNHP chapter. Many workers expressed similar frustrations and demonstrated their power against administration.

Union leadership is working on next steps to advance the struggle and win workers their raises. This action comes on the heels of a successful effort to earn workers throughout the hospital their bonus pay, which many had been denied for nearly two months. Without the union to advocate for the workers and fight for their rights, there’s no telling how long the company would seek to withhold the pay of workers at Saint Francis.

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