by Erik Gunn, Wisconsin Examiner
May 29, 2025
Nurses at Meriter hospital in Madison and the hospital’s management team are returning to the bargaining table Thursday, the third day of a five-day strike over a new labor agreement covering nearly 1,000 union-represented nurses.
The nurses, represented by Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Wisconsin, went on strike Tuesday after their last negotiating session with UnityPoint Health-Meriter on May 19 ended without an agreement.
As nurses rallied and picketed in front of the hospital Wednesday, the issue of staffing requirements was at the forefront of arguments offered by both the nurses and the hospital’s management.
“Let me be very clear, it is not unreasonable to want safe staffing guaranteed in our contracts,” said Carly Dickmann, a Meriter obstetrics, labor and delivery nurse.
“It is not unreasonable to want to feel safe at work and to have a voice in the procedures that impact us and our patients,” Dickmann continued. “It is not unreasonable to want fair compensation for our labor. It’s long past time for management to take us seriously. It’s time that Meriter listen to nurses and come to the table ready to make real, tangible changes to improve the hospital we love so dearly.”
A management position paper distributed Wednesday by the hospital’s communications department asserted that the hospital and the union both “agree that staffing levels are a critical component to safe patient care.”
The paper stated that the hospital’s approach to staffing assignments needed “to remain flexible” so it could move personnel in response to “patient needs and census changes.” It said the hospital would review “the staffing matrix” in four units the union identified as having problems, and that nurses and support staff in the affected units would be included in the process.
At the union’s picket line rally on Tuesday, bargaining team member Amber Anderson said the management proposal fell short.
“Meriter management refuses to put staffing solutions in our contract,” Anderson said, calling the management proposal “a vague promise to review staffing with no timelines, no accountability and no enforceable standards. That is not enough.”
The union has also focused on security and on wages. Union proposals have sought increases particularly for nurses with the longest tenure, as well as metal detectors in certain areas.
The management paper said average wages would go up by $4.67 an hour over the life of the agreement under the hospital’s proposal, and that Meriter had plans to install weapons screening equipment in its emergency department this summer.
At Wednesday’s picket line rally, striking nurses heard messages of support from Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley and U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Black Earth).
Pocan recalled his visit to Meriter for three clogged arteries seven and a half years ago.
“And I got time to spend in the ICU and other rooms here at Meritor, and I received excellent health care,” Pocan said. “Not because of the comfort of the bed or the colors of the wall, not because of the profitability of the hospital, but because of the staff and the nurses at Meriter.”
Johnson came to Madison because he sees issues in the strike as important “not just for nurses in Madison, but really for nurses all across the state of Wisconsin,” he said in an interview. “When you stand with labor, it’s not just a sometime thing, it’s an all the time thing.”
Strikers also got support from union activists organizing at other area health care employers.
“The people who own the health care industry are running a race to the bottom, where executives try to lower quality of care, increase ratios as much as they possibly can get away with,” said Colin Gillis, who has been active in the effort begun more than five years ago to win union representation for nurses at the University of Wisconsin Hospitals and Clinics in Madison.
“And when they do it here, at the hospital next door, they look at their nurses and they say, ‘Hey, they take six patients at night, so can you,” Gillis said. “Well, you and your nurses are here to say, ‘Heck, No!’”
Dr. Ira Segal, who has been among the employees at Group Health Cooperative in Madison organizing a union, said his coworkers see the Meriter nurses as allies.
“Together, we will persevere and we will shape a future where workers and patients come before profit, and where every voice is heard,” Segal said.
GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.
Wisconsin Examiner is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Wisconsin Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Ruth Conniff for questions: info@wisconsinexaminer.com.
Add comment