UCHealth Workers To Form Union, Citing COVID-19 ‘Crisis Within A Crisis’

By Chase Woodruff, the Colorado Newsline

December 15, 2020

A group of nurses and other health care workers at UCHealth announced Tuesday that they are forming a union aimed at addressing longstanding concerns about staffing, workplace safety and inadequate patient care across Colorado’s largest hospital system.

UCHealth Workers United says it will organize staff members across all job titles and locations in the UCHealth system, which employs more than 24,000 people at seven major hospitals and dozens of clinics across the state. UCHWU is organizing under Communications Workers of America Local 7799.

In a press release, the group said that its members, including many UCHealth nurses, have long feared that low staffing levels and high turnover rates were putting the quality of patient care within the hospital system at risk. The coronavirus pandemic has only strained Colorado hospital capacity further and exacerbated those concerns, a situation that the group described as a “crisis within a crisis.”

Members of UCHWU wish to remain anonymous out of fear of retribution from their employer, a CWA representative said.

“We are not unionizing because of the pandemic,” a UCHealth nurse said in a statement. “The pandemic has exposed the need for a union.”

“Staffing is always a problem,” said another UCHealth employee. “The decisions that have set us up to be understaffed were made before the pandemic to maximize profit and operating margins. It is not the best way to run a healthcare system.”

As employees of a “quasi-public” entity — the University of Colorado Hospital Authority, established by an act of the state Legislature in 1991 — UCHealth workers lack certain organizing rights. Under Colorado law, UHCWU won’t be able to force hospital management to recognize the union or negotiate a formal collective bargaining agreement.

The unionizing effort announced Tuesday is the second such drive in Colorado this year, amid a nationwide wave of labor organizing at hospitals and other health-care providers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Workers at Denver Health, another quasi-public agency, launched a similar organizing effort under CWA Local 7799 in May, and have focused on petition drives and public outreach rather than a formal bargaining process. Denver Health Workers United’s efforts have drawn support from local elected officials, while the group’s members have accused hospital administrators of union-busting.

A spokesperson said that UCHealth is gathering information and would have a response to UCHWU’s announcement later on Tuesday.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

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