Nurses at Howard Brown Health have voted to allow their bargaining team to call a strike amid contract talks and concerns about staffing and pay, according to their union.
The Illinois Nurses Association represents 32 registered nurses at Howard Brown, which specializes in caring for patients who are LGBTQ+ and people living with HIV, at centers across Chicago. The nurses voted unanimously to authorize their bargaining team to call a strike any time after Labor Day.
If the nurses choose to call a strike, they will have to give Howard Brown 10 days notice.
The union alleges that Howard Brown has failed to propose cost-of-living adjustments that keep up with inflation, and that the organization is understaffed.
The nurses say Howard Brown must make nursing jobs more attractive to applicants to resolve staffing issues. Nurse Maya Crawford, who works at the 63rd Street clinic, said in a news release that for a year, she covered the work of three nurses “picking up shifts, managing meds, charting, scheduling and endless tasks — when I should be focusing on patients, not paperwork.”
Howard Brown, however, said in a statement that it has “offered wage increases that outpace inflation and reflect a meaningful investment in our nurses, as well as health insurance that mirrors what our other union employees receive.”
If the nurses strike, Howard Brown has a staffing plan in place to ensure it can continue to offer all of its services, according to the statement. Health care institutions often use temporary nurses provided by agencies when their own nurses strike.
Howard Brown said in the statement that its latest proposal is favorable to the nurses’ union and competitive “without threatening the long-term sustainability of our organization.” Howard Brown is facing a number of pressures, including rising operating costs, changes to federal funding and reductions in Medicaid reimbursement, according to the statement.
The nurses’ union has been negotiating a new contract since May, and its last contract expired Aug. 10, according to the union.
This is not the first time Howard Brown has faced conflict with its workers.
In November, Howard Brown agreed to pay $1.3 million to workers who the National Labor Relations Board said were illegally laid off. The settlement resolved a complaint alleging the health center had illegally laid off more than 50 workers without bargaining with their union. Also, hundreds of other Howard Brown workers who are not nurses but are represented by the Illinois Nurses Association went on strike twice in 2023 before reaching a contract agreement last year.
Those previous struggles with workers came amid financial struggles for the organization. Last year, Howard Brown announced that it planned to close two of its Chicago clinics, citing an expected $6.6 million budget shortfall, the departure of the clinics’ sole providers, and the end of the clinics’ leases.
Howard Brown is a federally qualified health center, meaning it gets federal funding to care for low-income patients. Earlier this year, Howard Brown Health named as its new CEO Dr. Travis Gayles, who was formerly the chief health officer for a school-based telehealth provider.
