CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) — At the Illinois Nurses Association headquarters in the West Loop, picket signs from previous rally’s were being stripped and readied with new signs for a three-day strike scheduled to begin Tuesday.
“We heard a layoff rumor on Nov. 9 and asked them about it,” said Margo Gislain, a lead organizer with the Illinois Nurses Association. “In response, they said, ‘We have no plans for layoffs, and not even 10 days later they gave us a layoff proposal.”
Gislain said the layoff proposal was supposed to be implemented on Jan. 3, but on Dec. 30, 61 people were illegally laid off.
“So, last Friday, everyone got prematurely locked out of their emails, phones, etcetera, and their automatic reply said, ‘I’m no longer with Howard Brown Health,’” Gislain said.
Gislain added that one therapist was in the middle of a therapy session with a patient when “her call got unexpectedly disconnected.” At that point, the therapist had lost access to all Howard Brown Health resources and had no way to contact the patient and explain what happened.
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Howard Brown Health released the following statement on the planned strike:
“We support our employees in the union and their right to express their opinion. For our patients, we are continuing services.”
The strike is expected to include 440 unionized health care workers and will affect all 14 Howard Brown Health-operated sites in the area, but Gislain said the strike will definitely stop after three days.
“And that’s because this is a health care unit,” Gislain said. “We wanted to make it clear that management can’t just make people accept things and force this down their throats, that they were not going to take this lying down.”
The major sticking points on the picket line are what Gislain called regressive tactics on the part of Howard Brown at the bargaining table, for which the union has filed 19 unfair labor practice charges.
“Essentially, they proposed layoffs to us and did not bargain in good faith and then unilaterally and illegally implemented them,” Gislain said.
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