Unionized nurses at University Medical Center announced Monday (April 21) that they will hold a one-day strike on May 1, timed to coincide with international labor holiday May Day and a busy Jazz Fest weekend. Nurses have been negotiating their contract with LCMC Health, the private nonprofit that manages the public hospital, for over a year.
The nurses have been advocating for higher wages, better retention rates and more worker safety measures since they started negotiations last March. Hailey Dupré, an endoscopy nurse and bargaining team member, told Verite News there has been some major progress on disciplinary policy. Dupré said the nurses and the hospital have reached a tentative agreement on a policy that would require the hospital to have just cause before implementing disciplinary action.
“We don’t actually get to utilize that until we have a contract in place,” Dupré said. “So while it still feels huge, we need to solidify our contract to actually be able to utilize that huge win.”
But bargaining for wage policy changes has been slow, the union claims. Dupré said the nurses submitted a wage policy proposal in July 2024, and didn’t receive a counterproposal from the hospital until this March. The nurses have been asking for a transparent wage scale based on experience.
Dupré said community support for the nurses motivates her to keep going. She attended a rally Tuesday morning (April 22) organized by Step Up Louisiana, a worker and racial justice advocacy group, outside of UMC on Canal Street to highlight the working conditions for nurses at the hospital.
The rally was supposed to coincide with a bargaining meeting between union leaders and LCMC administration, but the meeting was abruptly cancelled by LCMC, according to a hospital-wide email obtained by Verite News. In the email, the LCMC Health Labor Relations Team wrote that it cancelled the bargaining sessions to focus on preparing for the strike.
A spokesperson for UMC told Verite News in a statement that the hospital will be fully operational during the strike. “We are committed to the collective bargaining process and working towards a fair contract,” the statement reads.
But instead of sitting at the bargaining table Tuesday morning, Dupré and other bargaining team nurses were at the rally outside UMC.
“It’s generally just insulting that we’re not even going to get a chance to speak to them,” Dupré said.
Members of Step Up Louisiana and the nurses union have been working together to encourage LCMC to publicly support a workers’ bill of rights. Last November, New Orleans residents voted to add such language, which calls for fair wages and benefits for workers, to the city’s charter.
Samara Smith, an economic justice organizer at Step Up Louisiana, said there is no way for the city to require private employers to offer increased pay or benefits. Instead, Step Up is encouraging businesses to sign on the workers’ bill of rights and pledge to improve conditions for their employees.
“Having an entity like UMC be able to sign on to the workers’ bill of rights really sets a precedent for other institutions in the city to see that this is a priority for workers and for other employees,” Smith said. “That way, other employees in other industries can feel, ‘If the nurses can do it, then why can’t I?’”