These New Orleans nurses voted to unionize—but say they can’t get a contract without a strike

On October 25, Tonjanika Webster joined a line of nurses on Canal Street, outside of New Orleans’s University Medical Center. Some, like Webster, wore scrubs. Others, red for their union, National Nurses United. A giant banner reading “UMC Proud” unfurled over the hospital’s facade, while Beyoncé and Taylor Swift echoed out of giant speakers, punctuated by approving honks from drivers. The air was jubilant, like a party, but it was a picket line. It was also Louisiana’s first-ever strike of private-sector nurses.

Unlike in high-profile strikes such as that of the United Auto Workers in 2023, however, the nurses sought more than improvements to their jobs. They wanted a first contract negotiated by their union—the very document that establishes ground rules for improving their jobs. In the process, they joined a nationwide surge in short, precontract strikes following a spate of union organizing. (Disclosure: National Nurses United is a funder of Capital & Main.)

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When UMC nurses won their fight to unionize last December, battling a lack of supplies and staffing even as hospital revenue soared, “I expected the negotiations wouldn’t be swift, but not that they would take this long,” said Webster. The victory put them among the ranks of well over 100,000 workers who have unionized in the last few years amid a significant rise in organizing. Yet experts report it’s normal for workers to successfully unionize but struggle to secure a contract without a lengthy second battle.

From 2004 to May 2024, getting a first contract took unions an average of one year and three months—459 days—according to data analyzed by Robert Combs of Bloomberg Law. For all the attention garnered by the fledgling unions at Starbucks, Trader Joe’s, REI, The New York Times, and Amazon, none of them has yet signed contracts that can improve wages and working conditions. According to Bloomberg Law’s data, healthcare workers typically face the longest first-contract battles, nearly 18 months, or 528 days.

Those delays reflect labor laws that cannot compel employers to bargain a contract, said Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of labor education research at the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations. “The [National Labor Relations Board] can force a company to hold an election, but they have no legal power to force it to come to the bargaining table—other than a piece of paper saying, ‘Bargain in good faith,’ and then they still ignore it,” she said.

Those delays can weaken union efforts, said Margaret Poydock, a senior researcher at the Economic Policy Institute. “With turnover, it diminishes worker solidarity over time,” said Poydock. Federal labor law allows unionized workers without a contract to vote to decertify an election after one year.

Pro-labor legislators have attempted to address the issue in recent years. In 2019, the Protecting the Right to Organize Act was first introduced before Congress. The legislation would set deadlines for beginning and ending negotiations. (President-elect Donald Trump’s Labor secretary nominee, Oregon Representative Lori Chavez-DeRemer, was one of three Republicans who cosponsored the bill in 2023-24.) Introduced three times, the bill passed the House twice, but never passed the Senate.

With more unions but no consequences for companies that stall on contracts, strikes in the period between union recognition and contract agreement have become increasingly common. Unions at Trader Joe’s, REI, Amazon, and Starbucks have all staged short strikes similar to the one at University Medical Center. Bloomberg Law’s in-house database of strikes and Cornell University’s Labor Action Tracker both have recorded dramatic increases in first contract strikes, reaching new highs in 2023.

The New Orleans nurses didn’t set out looking to strike. Negotiations began in March, but nurses say hospital representatives were condescending and combative from the beginning. “It seems like [University Medical Center’s counsel] almost wants us to be frustrated so that we don’t want to keep going,” said Dana Judkins, a trauma ICU nurse on the negotiating committee.

University Medical Center declined to respond to most questions for this article, citing the ongoing negotiations.

Nurses say that hospital representatives have arrived late to negotiations and canceled a September 18 negotiation session with less than a day’s notice. University Medical Center released a statement that “it was necessary to reschedule” negotiations due to Hurricane Francine, which had hit the city a week earlier as a Category 2 storm.

Nurses were also dismayed when UMC refused their request to lift fees for hospital parking, totaling about $400 annually. According to nurses, the hospital offered them a 2% raise, and some bargaining units up to 2.5%—less than a dollar per hour for many nurses, according to Heidi Tujague, an ER nurse on the bargaining team. It is also far below the 8% average raise nurses receive with first contracts.

“We’re not asking for the moon and the stars,” said Tujague, who has 18 years of nursing experience.

Nurses also noted that University Medical Center’s parent group, LCMC Health, announced upgrades to its benefits package for nurses at its other New Orleans hospitals, noting on flyers that benefit changes for unionized workers had to be made through—and would be delayed until completion of—union negotiations. The benefits package, combined with the resources LCMC has spent on scabs at UMC, “feels like a big middle finger,” said Webster.

Meanwhile, without a contract, the problems that pushed nurses to unionize in the first place have continued. Union members say wages are still too low and staff-to-patient ratios still too high. Nurse Mike Robertshaw said he feels he has to “check my conscience at the door” because of understaffing at the hospital—which has been penalized by Medicare for high rates of readmissions and hospital-acquired conditions. The hospital has also not addressed nurses’ requests for clear policies to prevent workplace violence, which nurses say is increased by patients frustrated by insufficient staffing and care.

By September, nurses were ready to escalate. After holding two informational pickets outside of the hospital, workers voted in favor of holding a one-day strike. “[We decided], let’s show them that we really do have the numbers and the people in support,” said Tujague.

In response, the hospital locked the striking nurses out of work for the weekend. University Medical Center administrators estimated that the three-day contract for scab nurses cost up to $6 million.

Since the strike, Webster says she has noticed renewed enthusiasm for the union among her colleagues. “I didn’t realize quite how many people were still excited about making moves to get what we needed to get done,” she said. Webster added that a lot of her colleagues who were afraid to go on strike before the action said they were glad that they did. “It’s encouraging us to fight harder,” she said. “We hold a lot of value in our hospitals. We are worth what we’re asking for.”

—By Jesse Baum, Capital & Main

This piece was originally published by Capital & Main, which reports from California on economic, political, and social issues.