Nurses Working to Unionize at Miami Valley Hospital
Nurses at Miami Valley Hospital are working on organizing to form a union, and organizers say they have been coming up against tough pushback from the hospital.
“We had a really rough winter, especially with Influenza A in the area, and our staffing ratios have been terrible,” said Emily Wu, one of the nurses leading the organizing efforts.
Staffing ratios refer to the number of patients a nurse is responsible for caring for. Nursing advocates across the state have repeatedly tried to get laws passed mandating certain nurse-to-patient ratios for different hospital settings, but few lawmakers have ever backed them.
“We had been taking inappropriate assignments, and the flu just kind of exacerbated it to the point where I was hearing coworkers say, over and over, ‘This feels like COVID all over again,’” Wu said.
Coupled with concerns over patient safety given hospital staff being strained by patient loads, Wu and others began to organize in order to try to find a solution, she said.
“We’ve had a lot of support from the people that we’ve directly talked to,” Wu said. “Our biggest hurdle has been reaching people, though. The hospital administration has kind of really come down hard on us, trying to stop us from unionizing.”