Ascension St. Joseph's Hospital, Joliet Nurses Still At Impasse

JOLIET, IL — Ascension St. Joseph Hospital officials said they have reached an impasse with union nurses who rejected the hospital’s best and final offer for a new contract last week as negotiations broke down late Friday without meaningful progress toward a new deal.

However, the Illinois Nurses Association vehemently disagrees with that assertion and says it is considering unfair labor practice claims against the hospital after the union said the hospital forced nurses to work outside their areas of expertise on Christmas Eve.

The hospital said in a statement after the session on Friday that it is assessing the necessary steps to implement its latest offer, which nearly 80 percent of nurses voted to turn down last week. The offer included raises to a certain percentage of nurses represented, but the INA maintains the deal puts them at risk and ultimately puts patients at the hospital in danger.

The hospital, meanwhile, said that it is willing to meet with union officials further to discuss its latest offer. A union representative told Patch on Tuesday that the hospital offered a negotiating session on Jan. 5, which the union has accepted.

“Meeting the needs of our community and our patients is our highest priority,” hospital officials said in a statement released through a spokesperson on Friday. “Those needs require us to recruit, hire, and retain more nurses, which means we need to move beyond this impasse and implement a new contract and competitive wage structure."

However, on Tuesday, union representative John Fitzgerald told Patch that two days after rejecting a "comprehensive" counter-proposal from nurses that represented a savings of millions of dollars from its previous formal offer, the hospital began implementing parts of its offer made last weekend during required holiday shifts, in which nurses were asked to work outside their normal service areas.

In addition, the union claims it saw postings calling for "strike-breaking agency nurses" to staff holiday shifts and claiming that the union planned to go on strike on Saturday. Fitzgerald said during negotiations on Friday, the union asked hospital administrators when they planned to implement their proposal, and they refused to commit. The union also claims the hospital forced nurses to begin working outside their service areas during Christmas Eve shifts.

Fitzgerald said there is a restriction against doing so on holidays, but that Ascension officials demanded the right to be able to re-assign nurses to other areas, citing staffing shortages. The requirement, Fitzgerald said Tuesday, is another sign that officials cannot properly run their own hospital.

"If they don't know how to run a hospital, they shouldn't run a hospital in Will County," Fitzgerald told Patch on Tuesday.

The two parties have been in contract negotiations since May. The main issues on the table are wages and the ever-expanding demands on staff nurses. Since the contract expired over the summer, nurses have gone out on two Unfair Labor Practice strikes, sounding the alarm about what they claim is dangerous understaffing and the company’s failure to bargain in good faith.

Fitzgerald told Patch after last week’s vote that the overwhelming rejection of the hospital’s best and final offer clearly signaled the nurses expected a better offer from the hospital.

“We came to the table with basically all of our proposals ready, and Ascension’s lawyers spent months coming to bargaining sessions with nothing prepared,” nurse and executive board member Patricia Meade said in a statement issued by the union after last week’s vote. “Now they are claiming that they ‘can’t move anymore’ and don’t even want to hear our counter-proposal.”

Fitzgerald said that nurses are now considering filing a formal claim against the hospital with state labor officials. They claim that the hospital stole thousands of hours of vacation time from union members over the past month. Union officials also claim the hospital "stole" between $80,000 and $100,000 in extra, incentivized shift pay from nurses that they had been approved to work before the hospital refused to pay for those shifts.

Fitzgerald said that was the case on Friday when he said the hospital "sat on the union's counter-proposal for three hours" before claiming the two sides are at an impasse. Nurses said in statements issued by the union last week that the hospital is asking for nurses to carry out duties not in their job description, and characterized working conditions as "unfair and unsafe."

According to the hospital, the rejected offer included increasing entry-level wages by 19 percent in the first year of the contract. The bump in pay, the hospital said, ensures market-competitive levels of pay and aids with the recruitment of nurses. The offer would offer raises in the second and third year of the proposed deal.

The offer also included increasing middle-tier wages by nearly 17 percent in the first year of the contract, as well as raises in the second and third years of the three-year deal. Nurses with more than 30 years of experience would see an increase of their market wage by 2 percent in the first year of the proposed contract to align with other Ascension Illinois hospitals.

The nurses — as well as those with between 20 and 29 years of experience — would also see raises in the second and third year of the contract as well as be eligible for lump sum bonuses, a hospital spokesperson said.

With the two sides seemingly far away in terms of a possible new contract, the union is hoping local politicians will encourage hospital officials to come back with something that could work for both itself and the nurses.

"We hope they will put pressure on Ascension to get a fair deal, a collectively bargained deal – not this 'my way or the highway business,'" Fitzgerald told Patch on Tuesday. "It's clear they don't know how to run a hospital so trying to force bad deals down the throats of our nurses will just further degrade St. Joe's Hospital and further degrade the healthcare that the people of Joliet and greater Joliet are unable to get at that hospital. And it's a shame."