ANN ARBOR, Mich. (WXYZ) — Saturday, nurses with Michigan Medicine took their fight to protect patients outside the hospital. Walking around the building demanding U of M hire more nurses.
“The staffing is at an abysmal level,” says Marina Marzec.
Marzec is a nurse at U of M hospital and a union rep. She says nurses are simply exhausted.
Marzec says what started as mandatory overtime and staffing shortages from COVID-19 are now the norm two years later, and it effects everyone.
“We can see it in the data when you don’t have enough nurses there is going to be some pitfalls and unfortunately that’s going to mean our nurses burned out and our patients sacrificed,” says Marzec.
Marzec did not say how many nurses need to be hired to get back to normal, but they could have a hard time getting more R-N's and LPN’s on board.
According to research done by Walden University, nursing shortages could continue into 2030.
In response to the protest, David Miller, the president of University of Michigan Health sent a statement saying “Our vacancy rate of 5% is lower than the national average of 17%, and our pay is higher than the national average.”
The university is also promising to safely eliminate mandatory overtime in the next 24 months and pay increases for most nurses totally 20 percent over the next four years.
Some of the highlights of the negotiation from the U of M include:
o Raising the average salary for nurses in the bargaining unit to $121,541 per year by year four
o Providing a 5% raise for nurses every year for four years, representing a 20% base pay increase
o Introducing a new salary step program for nurse practitioners with an average 20% increase over four years
o Safely eliminating mandatory overtime within the next 24 months or sooner
The nurses at the University of Michigan have been working without a contract since the end of June, but both union reps and the University say they are working around the clock to come to an agreement.
