Vigil Participants to Resurrection: ‘Respect Workers’ Rights’

Laura Buenrostro, a registered nurse, is one of many workers seeking to form a union at Our Lady of the Resurrection Medical Center.

Robert Malgieri of AFSCME Council 31 reports on Resurrection Health Care workers’ ongoing fight to form a union.

For 36 hours non-stop, Resurrection Health Care workers and their supporters kept a spirited vigil outside the giant health care system’s headquarters to press Resurrection to end its aggressive anti-union campaign and follow new guidelines for fair union organizing in Catholic hospitals. 

Vigil participants came in waves beginning at 6 a.m. on Friday morning, Sept. 25, and continuing until 6 p.m. on Saturday evening, all the while holding candles, singing songs, joining in prayers led by area clergy and marching in processions.

For more than six years, employees at Resurrection Health Care hospitals have been working to form a union with AFSCME so they can have a voice at work and improve patient care. Resurrection management has responded with a fierce and expensive “union avoidance” campaign, which has included firing union supporters, disciplining workers for union activity and fostering a climate of fear and mistrust.

The years-long struggle of these vital health care workers to get a voice on the job and bargain for a better life is a clear sign we need the Employee Free Choice Act. We need to give workers, not their bosses, the choice about how to form a union.

Recently, the labor movement, leaders in Catholic health care and the U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops worked together to develop guidelines that would protect the rights of workers at Catholic hospitals to form unions if they so choose. But Resurrection Health Care has not committed to follow these guidelines. 

Kelly Beringer, a registered nurse at Resurrection’s West Suburban Medical Center, said Resurrection workers—and their patients—deserve better:

We need a union because we want to have a voice on the job and we want to improve the quality of care the hospitals provide. But because of Resurrection management’s actions, many workers are afraid to say anything in support of a union. Using these new guidelines, we are calling on Resurrection to work with us to develop a fair process for us to be able to reach our own decision regarding union representation.

Resurrection Health Care is the largest Catholic health care system in Illinois, with eight hospitals and revenues of $1.5 billion a year.

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