Nurses from the Northern Light Acadia Hospital mental health facility in Bangor have filed to unionize with the American Federation of Teachers to address safe staffing, patient safety and other workplace issues.
Acadia Nurses United would represent 111 staff nurses and advanced practice nurses at the psychiatric hospital, which provides inpatient and outpatient mental and behavioral health services for children, teens and adults. The nurses plan to negotiate for the highest quality of care for patients and the community.
The National Labor Relations Board will schedule an election in the coming weeks, when the nurses vote to have their union officially recognized.
Acadia Nurses United has expressed frustration with upper management for its “failure to address safe staffing, recruitment and retention, as well as its lack of communication and responsiveness to employee concerns.”
“Having worked at Acadia for 22 years, I’ve decided that forming a union is the best way to improve the worsening situation here,” said Cathy Fraser, a registered nurse at Acadia Hospital. “Voices of long-term, experienced employees should be listened to and valued.”
As part of their mission statement the group said, “Our union wishes to be recognized as a common voice for our professional discipline … . Together, we will empower one another to fulfill the extent of our licenses within each of our disciplines’ scope of practice. We will contribute to decisions that affect our wages, benefits, and working conditions, as well as decisions that will lead to attracting and retaining experienced professional staff.”
“People have been leaving in droves. It used to be really good to work here, but lately it’s been horrendous, mainly due to management change overs,” said Amanda Sotirelis, a family nurse practitioner at Acadia Hospital. “Patients are suffering because they’re not receiving the attention they should be getting. But instead of fixing systemic staffing problems, management just keeps putting Band-aids on the problem and throwing more money at the problem in the wrong ways.”
The American Federation of Teachers is one of the largest health care unions in the country, with over 1.7 million members nationwide.
