It is the largest successful union election in recent memory: 10,000 nurses will be joining the Teamsters. They work for hospital conglomerate Corewell Health at eight hospitals and one outpatient facility, all in southeast Michigan.
“We’re so excited we can hardly stand it,” said Katherine Wallace, a nurse at the hospital in Troy, who has been a core part of the campaign since October 2023.
The union won the November election with 63 percent, with more than 85 percent voting. The union committee is Nurses for Nurses, part of Teamsters Joint Council 43.
The campaign was a response to staff cuts, unsafe practices, and worsening benefits, nurses said, after local hospitals were bought out by a conglomerate, now known as Corewell.
“They did a lot of department mergers and cut a lot of staff, and that work has all been put on nurses,” said Becky Smola, a 10-year nurse in Dearborn. “It was becoming unsafe for us as nurses, and it’s not fair for the patients too because it’s not safe for them.”
Hospital mergers and consolidations have been rampant in the U.S. over the last 30 years, with community hospitals absorbed into larger networks, sold, and then resold. Over 68 percent of hospitals are now part of networks, up from 53 percent in 2005.
“I’ve been through five corporations at the hospital, and Corewell is the worst,” said nurse Natalie Lunsford, who has been at the Wayne campus since 1987. “I know what they have taken away from us. I have a small pension, but the new nurses won’t get that. I know the benefits, the holidays they’ve taken away from us.
“They’re just going to keep taking from us, and enough was enough.”
Corewell also forced a new insurance plan on the workers, doubling the out-of-pocket maximum and increasing prescription costs. As is increasingly the case with health care conglomerates, Corewell is the primary owner of the new insurance provider. “It was like double-dipping for them,” said........