‘We are going to beat Ascension’: Hundreds of Wichita nurses hold one-day strike

Ascension Via Christi St. Joseph nurses, many wearing ponchos, cheered as registered nurse Carol Samsel told coworkers they would beat the healthcare giant.

“We are going to beat Ascension,” she said Tuesday morning as the rain came down. “They think we aren’t, but we are.”

Hundreds of nurses at St. Joseph and St. Francis held a one-day protest in front of their respective hospitals. The newly unionized nurses are in the middle of negotiating their first contract. Nurses say Ascension, so far, has been unwilling to meet any of their demands, which they say include changes to improve retention and patient and staff safety.

One immediate concern is whether nurses will be allowed to work at 7 a.m. Wednesday. Ascension says they won’t be able to to but nurses plan to show up anyways.

The day after nurses announced the one-day strike in mid-June, Ascension said they wouldn’t be able to work for four days. Ascension said it is “contractually required” to hire replacement registered nurses for at least four days. Ascension hasn’t said who it contracted with or provided a copy of the contract.

Nurses have called that a scare tactic.

“They let us in or they don’t and the community sees,” said St. Joseph registered nurse Marvin Ruckle, who plans to go in support even though he doesn’t work that shift.

Ruckle, who is part of the bargaining team along with Samsel, said keeping the nurses out longer goes against Ascension’s goals of patient safety. Besides already knowing their patients, Ruckle says they, and not the contracted nurses, know emergency protocols in case a disaster happens.

In a statement Tuesday, Ascension repeated that nurses will not be able to return to work until July 1.

“This decision is guided by our commitment to safe, high-quality, compassionate care for our patients, and our fidelity to the virtue of justice and the appropriate stewardship of resources,” Ascension said in a statement. “Notwithstanding this disheartening strike, we will continue to negotiate in good faith to come to a mutually beneficial agreement on an initial contract that respects the human dignity and rights of all. We look forward to returning the focus to resolving issues at the bargaining table and reaching agreement on a fair and reasonable collective bargaining agreement for our registered nurses.”

Employees and representatives from other unions came to support the nurses.

Shelly Rader, a registered nurse at St. Francis and member of the bargaining team, thanked UA Local 441 Plumbers & Pipefitters members and officials as they grabbed signs and then joined in on the chants and march on the sidewalk.

“Who’s got the power,” one person said through a megaphone.

“We’ve got the power,” the workers said back.

Jimmy Cook went straight from protesting outside of his workplace at Spirit AeroSystems to supporting his girlfriend and her coworkers at St. Francis.

“They are in the same kind of predicament we are in,” he said, adding that for them he wanted a safer environment and better pay.

Community reaction to strike

Motorists who went by honked their horns as they drove by. A medical official driving an ambulance pulled up to the light and waved. Protesters encouraged the driver to honk the horn. The driver initially shook their head no before briefly tapping the emergency sirens.

Rader said the horn honking lets them know that the community supports them. She and representatives at St. Joseph both said they were happy with the turnout.

Standing near the light, one woman in scrubs said to other nurses that she wouldn’t continue to work there if the safety concerns weren’t addressed.

Angela Cammarn, a registered nurse in St. Francis Hospital’s cardiac critical care unit, said safety is one of her top concerns. Cammarn, who wore a red hat with “RN” emblazoned on it, held a sign that said “378++ violent attacks in 2022 we need better protections!”

The Kansas Reflector reported in April that Ascension hospitals in Wichita had 378 “episodes of violence” against staff between January 2022 to November 2022.

Other signs nurses carried included mentions of safety concerns, the hospital putting profits over patients care and derision of executive greed. One sign said the CEO of a nonprofit shouldn’t make $13 million. Nonprofit ProPublica has reported that Ascension CEO Joseph R. Impicciche makes almost $13 million a year based on tax forms.

Signs also said that pizza parties and cookies won’t fix the problem. One nurse, who asked not to be named, said that was an incentive Ascension often used instead of pay, but even that hasn’t happened lately.

Another sign mentioned how nurses in the pediatric unit shouldn’t have to buy crayons for the children.

Katie Best, a pediatric nurse, said nurses and community donations stock the unit with children’s toys. Best said she likes to buy bulk light spinners when they are on sale. She uses them to distract children when she starts an IV.

Ascension did not address a question about staff paying for children’s toys.

Rader also said the staffing levels have left a dangerous ratio of patients to nurses. She said people are left waiting for a bed when there isn’t enough staff to treat them.

Protest at St. Joseph campus

Just as the rain started to pour down, St. Joseph nurses who showed up to protest gathered to hear from their workers on the bargaining team and from officials from other unions.

Ruckle told nurses they were fighting to make sure their smaller hospital didn’t equate to them getting any less than what the nurses at St. Francis nurses hope to get in their contract.

Sheet Metal Workers’ Local 29 organizer Marcus Curran told the nurses “it takes a lot of courage and a lot of brass” to stand up.

He said they support them; officials from other unions said the same thing.

After the speeches, one union representative told Samsel he thought this was a long time coming.

St. Joseph nurses voted in March, a few months after St. Francis voted, in favor of joining the National Nurses Organizing Commission, an affiliate of the National Nurses United, the country’s largest registered nurses union.

St. Joseph has about 300 nurses; St. Francis about 650. Nurses at Ascension Seton Medical Center in Austin, Texas, which has around 900 nurses, were also holding a one-day strike on Tuesday.

The strike comes amid a nationwide shortage of nurses.

Ascension is a Catholic, not-for-profit health care system and one of the largest in the country, with roughly 139,000 employees and hospitals in about 19 states.

It had more than $1.7 billion in cash on hand at the end of its last financial year, which ended June 30, 2022.

In December, a New York Times investigation into Ascension found the staffing shortages at its hospitals were caused by years of cutting staff in order to increase profits.