1199SEIU members in Florida face extra challenges when it comes to bargaining strong contracts. Unlike workers in union shops in other states, workers in Florida must overcome greater obstacles to join and maintain strong unions, due to anti-worker legislation known as “Right to Work” laws. Recruiting the numbers needed to build a strong fighting force to negotiate fair wages and benefits is that much harder as a result.

And that’s also why the workers who overwhelmingly agreed to a new contract with UHealth Tower in Miami earlier this year were so justifiably proud of their victory. The agreement included ratification bonuses, significant annual wage increases, a Jobs Committee, expanded promotional opportunities, and shift differentials that range from an additional $1.50 to $8.50 per hour. The facility, formerly the University of Miami Hospital, was the only hospital in the state of Florida to agree to a ratification bonus. Feeling the benefits of working together collectively, nearly 80 new members signed up during two days of ratification.

1. Virginia Kondas, an Advance Practice Registered Nurse, agrees. “I have personal experience of trying to negotiate individually,” she says. “It doesn’t work for me. We know there’s strength in numbers. We know the Union works. We know that those states that have higher union [density], their staff-patient ratios are much better. We also know that the quality of the care that they are going to give is better because the union supports that.”

2. Shirley St Hilaire, an RN Case Manager at the hospital for the past 10 years, also emphasizes the value of collective bargaining. “I am very happy to be part of 1199SEIU,” she says. “Without the help of my fellow members here, I could not have gotten to a potential salary where I should be—where I deserve to be—doing this job for 10 years. I’m very satisfied by what being in the Union was able to do for me.”

3. Geanny Cortes is a Senior Clinic Assistant in the Radiology department who has worked at the hospital for 28 years. He is also another long-term Delegate. His job is to position patients for MRI and CT scans.

“This year we got a great contract because we had more members fighting together than ever before at the hospital,” he says. “The more people we have involved, the better.”

4. For some members, like Guillermo Lopez, this is their first Union job. “I’ve been an RN for seven years, but I just started here one year ago,” he says. “I was an ICU traveling nurse in Miami, Los Angeles, Seattle, Texas and New York. I spent eight weeks at Mt Sinai during the Covid outbreak.”

Working in the Cardiothoracic Surgery ward at UHealth Tower is very specialized. “We have to be alert for dysrhythmias,” Lopez explains. “After open-heart surgery, you can’t do CPR because the sternum has been broken. Instead, you have to reopen the chest and do heart massage.

“I work with one of the best open-heart surgeons in the world here. People come all the way from South America and Europe.”

As a member of the 1199 bargaining committee, Lopez gets asked lots of questions by his co-workers.

“I’m very happy I’m able to be a resource for the other employees,” he says.

“We’ve done great things together. We’ve raised our salaries and we’re getting what we deserve. Not just for me, but the others on the team. Like CNAs and Patient Transporters, who have seen a raise of up to $8 an hour. A lot of the CNA salaries went up by 30 percent. Negotiating as a team is much easier than doing it as a single person, which I have done before. This feels much more empowering.”

5. “It’s very important for me to be in a union because numbers equal power, says Elizabeth Jazon. A member of the hospital’s bargaining committee for the last 14 years, she can say with authority: “This was our best year yet, because we pushed hard while maintaining our composure.” Advocating for the members is not an easy task, Jazon further emphasizes.

“Both sides realized that the head doesn’t move without the neck—and we are the neck,” adds Jazon. “The hospital wants to be the first in terms of research and patient satisfaction and outcomes. They can’t do that without us!

Most people that are not in the union here, it is because of ignorance. If they would get involved, they would know what’s going on.”

6. This time around, there were more people that were vocal and got involved in the bargaining process, according to Vicki Small, an 1199 Pharmacy Technician. “We’re used to getting two or three percent. But this time, we got [a minimum] five percent across the board. We realized that you have to make it happen together. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and one person can’t do it alone. Everybody together for the same cause will make it happen.”

7. Following the pandemic, members were facing higher inflation and feeling the effects of short staffing more than ever, according to Cynthia Saget, an 1199 RN Case Manager at UHealth Tower for the past seven years. “In the last contract we got three-, two- and two-percent [raises] over three years and we were not happy,” she says. Saget rejoined the bargaining committee to work towards something better.

“This year we had a mindset that we would show management where we were at,” she says, “Healthcare workers give so much of themselves. Even during COVID, we showed up.”

In Saget’s previous job—where she worked for more than 25 years— she says it was “whatever [management] wanted to do, whenever they wanted to do it.

“Just like we see in other facilities that don’t have a union,” Saget continues, “management can say they are not giving a raise this year. And what can you do about it? You can’t negotiate. With a union, you start negotiations aiming high. Management goes low, and we meet somewhere in the middle.”

Saget, who now works in oncology admissions, navigates patients’ stay in the hospital until they are medically stable enough to be downgraded. When they are ready to leave, she helps them to transition to acute rehab, a skilled nursing facility or back home with a home health aide.

“[Negotiating contracts] is not only about money,” she says. “It is also about nurse patient ratios and the kind of support we get from management.”