More than 100 nurses at a psychiatric hospital in Bangor announced Wednesday they were unionizing with the country’s second-largest educators’ union.
Some 111 registered nurses and nurse practitioners at Northern Light Acadia Hospital announced they had unionized as Acadia Nurses United with the American Federation of Teachers and on Friday filed for an election with the National Labor Relations Board.
The American Federation of Teachers, which boasts 1.7 million members across the U.S., also represents 200,000 nurses and other health care professionals as AFT Healthcare.
The Acadia nurses’ union effort comes a month after Maine State Nurses Association, the union representing 2,000 nurses at Maine Medical Center in Portland, secured its first contract after 13 months of bargaining.
Members of Acadia Nurses United said they sought union recognition to negotiate for better care for their patients and to address hospital executives’ “failures to address safe staffing, recruitment and retention,” as well as a lack of communication and responsiveness to employees’ concerns.
“Together, we will empower one another to fulfill the extent of our licenses within each of our disciplines’ scope of practice,” the union’s mission statement read.
“We aim to take an active and affirmative role in developing policies and procedures that affect our patients, community, and all Acadia Hospital employees. We are determined to be treated with dignity and respect in an atmosphere that is based on fairness, collaboration, equality, and transparency.”
“We prefer a direct relationship with our employees and care teams, and will follow the appropriate process for an election,” hospital spokesperson Bob Potts said.
An election hearing is set for Nov. 10, according to the federal labor board.