Mary Kate shared her story as part of MECEP’s State of Working Maine 2024 report. Click here to read the full report.
Mary Kate is a registered nurse working on an interventional cardiology floor of a Southern Maine hospital. After receiving her nursing degree in 2019, she began her career just as the state’s first COVID-19 cases appeared. She helped organize nurses at her hospital to unionize in 2021, and they are now in the second year of their first union contract.
“I think everybody needs a union. When you’re in a corporate environment that’s constantly asking you to do more with less, and to maximize revenue and minimize costs, there’s just no room for any individual professional power and agency. When we’re dealing with people’s lives, especially sick and delicate people, it’s dangerous if we don’t have the resources to care for them safely. It’s not just bad for nurses, and it’s not just bad for patients. Ultimately, it’s bad for the company as well.
Organizing isn’t easy, and employers make it hard on purpose. In the months before our nurses voted to decide about forming a union, the hospital spent tons of resources trying to prevent us from unionizing. They inundated the hospital with union busters, fliers, and meetings, spreading fear, anxiety, and confusion. It was so stressful. But we continued to have real conversations with our colleagues about the issues that mattered to them at work and how, if we have a union, we can improve them and change them and make them better.
We won our election in May of 2021. It was so exciting. We formed a bargaining team and started negotiating our contract. We met with the hospital every week for months. But when we still didn’t have a finished contract after a year, the Right To Work Foundation got some anti-union nurses to try to decertify our union. So, we had to have a whole new election, even more high stakes than the first one. We had almost a whole great contract finished. If we didn’t win, all of that would go away. We won the first election with 54% of the vote, but we won the second election with 74%!
Our nurses won substantial pay increases, a union pay grid, and better pay differentials. Before this contract, nurses had been making staggeringly different amounts of money. Our contract pulled up the people who were being underpaid. I now make $12 more per hour than I did four years ago. That’s 100% because of a union. Our contract guarantees a full 10 weeks of orientation for new grads, and new rules that ensure fair discipline. We also now have a Professional Practice Council that reviews incidents of unsafe patient or working conditions that nurses report. Management is required to meet with this council and address the unsafe conditions.
We’re now two years into our first contract, and I can really see a change in the culture at the hospital. Speaking up for safe patient care is a part of our regularly scheduled programming. When we advocate for things to be changed, they change them. We train management to provide safe working conditions for nurses. And safe working conditions for nurses are safe conditions for patients.
My employers might not have wanted a union, but they are benefitting from it. Nurses are happier here. Strong union contracts are what attract and retain workers, not these gimmicky sign-on bonuses. Not a day goes by at work when we don’t hear a patient say, ‘Thank you so much for the excellent care.’ They may not know that’s a product of having a union, but I know that it is.”
