SOUTHFIELD, Mich. (PAI)—Bad health care coverage for 10,000 nurses—what one said in a union video was among the worst coverage in the U.S.—will be a key issue, along with pay, for nurses at the Southfield, Mich.-based nine-hospital Corewell health care system.

The nurses rallied on June 21 in a strong show of support for their bargaining team. It opened talks with Corewell bosses on June 25 on a first contract.

The nurses are members of new Teamsters Local 2024, which will now try to organize other health care workers in southeastern Michigan. The Corewell system nurses voted 4,958-2,957 (63%-37%) last November to unionize, overcoming a nasty $1.7 million union-busting campaign by bosses.

That includes, after the election, denying raises, a bonus and matching funds for retirement accounts to unionized nurses, but not to other workers.

Keynote speakers at the rally were Teamsters Secretary-Treasurer Fred Zuckerman and two contenders for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination next year: Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and Genesee County Sheriff Christopher Swanson.

Rank-and-file nurses had tales to tell about health care, or lack of it, as they head into bargaining.

“My daughter has a condition. She was prescribed medication by a specialist, and they denied it,” one nurse says in a video on the Teamsters website. “Any little ache or pain, you have to push it aside. It’s terrifying,” a second female nurse adds. “We’re the ones on the front lines taking care of patients,” a male nurse says. “And we have the worst health care benefits…probably nationally.

“We care for patients and we don’t have anyone that cares for us.”

Case manager Alison Lorentz  told the crowd “The people at the top, they all make millions of dollars while we’re all down here trying to just be able to pay our bills.” The salary of Corewell CEO Tina Freese Decker in 2023 was $5.36 million according to a ProPublica list of pay for “non-profit” CEOs.

“The trend in healthcare is getting more corporate and as that happens care is becoming more profit-based than health-care based,” Lorentz said.

“We are being attacked by our own employer,” said Corewell Health East nurse Alyson Zajack,

referring to denial of the raises, bonuses and pension matches. “But these attacks only pour fuel on the fire within us as pissed off, fed up, and overworked nurses.”

“I’ve been a nurse for 29 years, and this is the most unsafe work environment I’ve ever worked in,” Corewell Taylor nurse Willow Bronson told the Detroit News. “We need more security, not just the skeleton staff we have around Michigan.”

That lack of protection includes too few nurses for too many patients, especially in stressful intensive care units and emergency rooms.

Unions representing hospital RNs and licensed practical nurses, including the National Nurses United, the Teachers/AFT, the Service Employees and AFSCME, have been on a years-long crusade for safe staffing ratio laws.. They’ve succeeded in several states, including California and New York, but hospital bosses, using the excuse of insurer pressure to cut costs, often refuse to follow the laws.

Hospitals, bosses and insurers, nurses declare, are more committed to profits than patients—and thus force cuts in safe-staffing and refuse to pay for needed medicines and care.

Zuckerman told the crowd, which filled a plaza and parking lot in front of the Corewell hospital in Southfield, that the union would use its large strike fund to aid the nurses if bosses refuse to sign an acceptable contract by Corewell’s December deadline.

The deadline is important because December marks a year since the National Labor Relations Board certified the union to represent the Corewell nurses. After a year, according to NLRB rulings, the “contract bar”—a ban on decertification petitions from dissidents, often prompted by bosses—ends.

“It’s no secret that management at Corewell has been disrespecting you and your co-workers for a long time. And now that you’ve become Teamsters, they are all too eager to continue that disrespect,” Zuckerman said. “Well, I’ve got one thing to say to Corewell: Buckle up–because you’re in for the fight of your life.”

“As we go through these fights together, remember the power of the people will always be greater than that of the people in power,” Michigan Secretary of State Benson concluded.