Dozens of nurses on Monday formed a picket line outside SSM Health St. Louis University Hospital on South Grand Boulevard to call for better staffing, guaranteed breaks and more comprehensive sick leave policies.
The workers represented by the National Nurses United union earlier this month voted for the strike — nearly three months after their contract expired in mid-June. The nurses say they voted to strike for 24 hours after SSM did not address their concerns about retention and workplace violence due to short staffing.
While the nurseshave held informational pickets in the past, Monday's is the first strike the local chapter has called since workers organized more than a decade ago.
“Frankly [patients] deserve better than what we've been forced to give them,” said Jessica Tulk, a nurse who works with stroke and heart attack patients. “As far as care goes, we are being asked to be subpar nurses when we know we’re not! We should be able to spend more time on our patient's bedside, we should be able to find more resources that we know we need to be able to take care of them.”
Nurses are often not able to take breaks to use the bathroom, drink water or eat their lunch, Tulk said.
Nurses held signs that said “United for our patients” as cars passing on the busy street honked in support. Safe staffing ratios, or having nurses look after fewer patients each so they can devote more time to each person, is one of the nurses’ top bargaining goals.
On a surgical floor, one nurse should be responsible for five patients at the most, said Jay Weaver, a nurse who has worked at SLU Hospital for 31 years. In other, more intensive units, that ratio could be one nurse for one or two patients.
“But we've had situations where nurses are taking six, seven patient assignments,“ she said. “And ICU nurses are taking three patient assignments. And that's just unacceptable.”
In a statement, SSM Health criticized National Nurses United and its affiliated group the National Nurses Organizing Committee for sowing division among hospital workers.
The union “is well-known across the country for its highly divisive and politically motivated strategies — particularly during contract negotiations,” SSM officials said. “NNOC calls more strikes than any other union representing health care workers — and routinely pickets, issues negative press releases, and attempts to publicly disparage the patient care provided at hospitals where they represent nurses. These tactics are wholly counterproductive to our efforts to continue attracting and retaining nurses to our world-class academic medical center.”
Union member Sarah DeWilde said the nurses had been meeting with hospital management approximately once a week since May, but she said SSM leaders have not been willing to address pay, staffing and safety standards and other major bargaining goals.
Hospital leaders said they’re committed to reaching an agreement.
The union gave advance notice for the strike so the hospital could make arrangements for staffing. Any gaps were filled with workers from independent agencies.
“We have comprehensive plans in place to ensure there is no disruption in care or service for the people and community we are called to serve,” officials said in the statement.
The St. Louis Board of Aldermen earlier this monthpassed a resolutionsupporting the nurses. Several members, including President Megan Green, attended the picket on Monday.
Hospitals in Missouri have struggled with maintaining staffing levels since at least the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. According to a report released by the Missouri Hospital Association earlier this year, in 2022, 17% of staff nursing positions in the state’s hospitals were vacant. Staff nurses make up the largest share of the state’s hospital workers.
ER nurse Michael James Block said there are enough nurses. But many who are hired at the hospital quit their jobs, he said.
“It's not a matter of finding the nurses,” he said. “It's a matter of creating working conditions where they feel safe, where they feel cared for and where they feel valued, so that they will stay here and continue to work in these jobs.”
