About two months ago, union nurses at St. Vincent Hospital did something they hadn’t done in a while: celebrated.
They had just ratified a new labor contract with the hospital that included as much as a 28% wage increase and limited the number of patients assigned to them at once. Dozens of nurses gathered outside in the cold to thank each other for not giving up during the nearly 10-month strike — the longest nurses strike in Massachusetts history.
But as they celebrated, another contingent of the hospital’s nurses was moving to decertify the Massachusetts Nurses Association as the union at St. Vincent. The effort has triggered a high-stakes vote among all nurses over the last three weeks that will determine the union’s future at the hospital. Voting ends Friday, and the National Labor Relations Board will begin counting ballots Monday.
If a majority of nurses support the decertification attempt, the nurses will lose union representation and the new contract will be null and void.
“They could lose everything,” said David Schildmeier, a spokesman for the nurses’ union. “So we don’t see how once nurses inside the building understand the ramifications of this, how any way it could be successful.”
‘These nurses abandoned them’
The nurses trying to decertify the union include those who never went on strike and more than 100 others hired last year to fill in for nurses on the picket line. None of these nurses participated in the January vote to ratify the new contract. The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, which opposes unions and tries to oust them from workplaces across the country, has been assisting them with the decertification campaign.
C. Richard Avola, the nurse who filed the decertification petition with the National Labor Relations Board, said he generally supports unions. In fact, he and other nurses will try to start their own union if their campaign succeeds. He said his opposition to the Massachusetts Nurses Association stems from the nearly 10-month strike.
Although the union won higher wages and expanded benefits for all nurses at the hospital, Avola said it was inappropriate to lead a strike for that long during a pandemic. He noted St. Vincent cut back operations during the strike because the hospital didn’t always have enough available nurses.
“Life is not always about a pay increase,” Avola said. “Our community during a pandemic depended on the nurses of St. Vincent Hospital, and these nurses abandoned them.”
Avola went on to call the union divisive and a poor negotiator. If it “did its job better,” he said, the nurses would have reached an agreement with the hospital sooner.
Schildmeier pushed back against that criticism, arguing the hospital dragged out contract negotiations and the union nurses’ top goal was to improve the care their patients received.
“In doing so, they received tremendous support from all sectors of the community as the community understood that the nurses were always advocating with their health and safety in mind," Schildmeier said.
A ‘weird’ time for a decertification campaign
More than 700 St. Vincent nurses went on strike in March 2021 after the union and the hospital’s for-profit owner, Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare, had already spent about 18 months trying to renegotiate a new labor agreement. Nurses complained that unmanageable staffing shortages forced them to care for at least five patients at once during every shift, preventing them from providing adequate care. But Tenet, valued at around $5.5 billion, refused to agree to the union's demands.
During the strike, much of the Worcester community rallied around the nurses: the city’s interfaith organization held multiple candle-light vigils with them; conductors on Providence and Worcester Railroad trains blew horns as they passed the hospital; and Mayor Joseph Petty called on hospital leadership to negotiate an equitable end to the strike.
Meanwhile, St. Vincent Hospital accused the union nurses of bullying non-striking employees, and cited the strike as a reason to scale back in-patient services.
The dispute continued until Dec. 17, when U.S. Labor Secretary and former Boston Mayor Mary Walsh intervened and St. Vincent agreed to the nurses’ demands. Around the same time, Avola filed a petition with about 250 signatures to the NLRB. Then, on Jan. 3, the striking nurses voted to ratify the contract — and by a huge margin, with 98% of votes cast in favor. The contrasting events surprised both the union and independent labor experts.
“[It’s] so weird because you have a union that overwhelmingly won a strike, from the sense of the vote ratification,” said Steve Striffler, the director of the Labor Resource Center at UMass Boston. “[Historically], you just don't see after that an attempt to decertify the union.”
Striffler said decertification votes usually target unions that aren’t functioning or representing their members’ interests well. The Massachusetts Nurses Association, by contrast, has held strong and successfully fought for its members, he said.
St. Vincent’s CEO supports decertification
It’s unclear whether the union or the nurses leading the decertification effort have an edge as nurses vote to keep or oust the union. Both sides have been trying to encourage nurses to vote in their favor.
After the strike, many union nurses didn’t return to St. Vincent, opting instead to retire or work at other hospitals. The nurses trying to boot the union said that gives them an advantage.
Regardless of the results, independent labor experts said the decertification campaign could be illegitimate, arguing that the hospital may have orchestrated the campaign. The experts acknowledge there is no evidence supporting that theory, but note that St. Vincent has a history of trying to sabotage the nurses’ union.
At one point during the strike, for example, the hospital agreed to the union’s demands for better staffing ratios and higher wages, but then spent months refusing to guarantee the striking nurses would get their jobs back.
“That’s unheard of. Like that’s the essence of an agreement — that you’re gonna return to the same jobs that you had,” Striffler said. "I mean, that just says that they wanted to bust the union."
Eve Weinbaum, a professor at the Labor Center at UMass Amherst, added that the hospital had an incentive to spark the decertification campaign in order to oust the union and invalidate the new labor agreement.
“I think this is Tenet trying to figure out anything they can do to undo what the nurses just won, and to show who’s boss,” she said.
Avola, the nurse leading the decertification effort, denied that the hospital is involved in the campaign. St. Vincent declined to comment. However, hospital leadership's actions have indicated support for the effort.
St. Vincent originally tried to stay impartial during the desertification campaign, saying it respects “the legal right of our nurses to choose whether or not they wish to be represented by the union.” But hospital CEO Carolyn Jackson recently upended that when she sent an email to nurses, calling for them to oust the union and vowing not to cut new wages and benefits negotiated by the union.
“I would love the opportunity to show what Saint Vincent Hospital can be like without the MNA present,” she said in the message GBH News obtained. “Please vote NO.”
