Nurses picket at Ascension Joliet hospital, now 5 months without a new contract

Joliet — “They save money, we save lives!”

That was the rallying call of a dozen nurses and supporters who stood outside Ascension Saint Joseph -Joliet Hospital Wednesday afternoon in an “informational picket” protesting what the union is calling wage theft by the hospital.

The Illinois Nurses Association contract at Ascension Saint Joseph expired in July and the union and Ascension have been trying to negotiate a new contract since May.

The nurses are demanding higher pay, which they believe would alleviate the staff shortage the hospital has been operating under. The union maintains the number of staff nurses have declined by more than 300 over the past five years at the hospital.

Union members say these staffing numbers could endanger patients due to employee burnout and nurses being shifted to departments they are not familiar with.

Ascension spokesman Timothy Nelson issued a statement ahead of the picket saying the hospital “continues to bargain in good faith with Illinois Nurses Association to reach agreement on a new contract for our registered nurses, and looks forward to implementing our new proposed wage structure once an agreement has been reached.”

Nurses claim though that the hospital has not done enough to negotiate.

“All that’s saying is that there will be a new contract eventually, it doesn’t mean anything,” said INA Staff Specialist Alec Ramsay-Smith, who was on the picket line Wednesday. “They haven’t made any promises for pay increases.”

According to Ramsay-Smith, the last full offer made by Ascension was in July — followed by an informal offer Nov. 7, which only altered one aspect of the July proposal — regarding a new pay scale, which impacts nurses with more than 20 years of service, or about 25 percent of the Ascension Saint Joseph union members.

INA Negotiating Committee member and registered nurse Beth Corsetti also said the committee has continually requested weekly negotiating meetings with Ascension but has not received them.

The last meeting between INA and Ascension took place on Nov. 17 and the next meeting is scheduled for Dec. 8.

“They’ve not come to us with anything,” said Corsetti. “We’ve said again and again they can come to us any time, any where to make a deal but they haven’t. If they have ‘a new wage structure’ they want to bring us that would be wonderful.”

In addition to the ongoing contract negotiations, the nurses made accusations of wage theft against Ascension this week, which inspired the picket.

According to Corsetti, nurses at Ascension Saint Joseph have been working “incentive shifts” to help cover the extreme labor shortage. These shifts are in addition to their regular hours and over time and are “incentivized” with $30 per hour in addition to the nurse’s regular pay.

Many nurses worked these shifts ahead of the union’s two-day strike the week of Thanksgiving. However, when paychecks arrived on Dec. 1, these nurses discovered they had not been paid for the time they worked beyond their regular hourly pay, according to Corsetti.

Nelson responded to the accusations of wage theft, stating “Illinois Nurses Association represented nurses receive incentive pay and holiday pay pursuant to the terms of their collective bargaining agreement. If a nurse did not receive incentive pay or holiday pay, it was because they did not meet the eligibility requirements during the Thanksgiving holiday week.”

Picketers, including Corsetti and Ramsay-Smith, said many of the nurses who did not receive pay met the qualifications for the incentive bonuses.

When asked for further elaboration on the “eligibility requirements” nurses did not meet, Nelson issued the same statement again on Wednesday.

The picketers received support from many passing drivers and some patients leaving the hospital, including one who said he would not have crossed the line to come in had he known.

The nurses and the hospital both emphasized that the picket was not a strike and would in no way impact patient care.