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Mapping Care Project: The History of Black Nurses in Chicago

Quote about rates of nurse unionization

"Roughly 20% of US nurses are unionized, compared to approximately 12% of the general working population."1

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Black Nurses & Unions What comes to mind when you think about unions?

In the United States, the public image of labor unions often focuses on male-dominated fields, like construction, auto manufacturing, or truck driving. Yet today majority-women fields like education and healthcare are more unionized than any other part of the American workforce.

In addition, despite the rampant racism that Black people have historically faced from labor unions, unions are even more important for Black workers in their fight for economic justice:

According to a 2016 study, Black workers are more likely to be unionized than workers of any other race or ethnicity, and unionized Black workers earn higher pay and have access to better benefits than non-unionized Black workers.2

Black nurses have long used unions to organize for better working conditions for themselves and a higher quality of care for their patients.3 However, as a result of their intersecting identities, Black nurses have also faced obstacles in union organizing. For much of the history of the labor movement in the United States, men did not take women workers seriously,4 and white-run unions were unwilling to include Black workers in their membership.5 This structural racism and sexism also affects the writing of history: labor historians have often neglected women’s roles in unions and Black women even more so.6

Gendered expectations have served as additional obstacles for Black nurses organizing for better working conditions. Like teachers, social workers, and other occupations that have historically been considered “women’s work,” Black nurses have grappled with the expectation that they should sacrifice their needs to serve others. The 1947 Taft-Hartley Act excluded many nurses from the right to unionize, showing the extent to which politicians did not think nurses were the kind of workers who needed to organize to improve their working conditions, though Congress later changed this law.

As part of the Civil Rights, Black Power, and feminist movements of the 1960’s-1970’s, many nurses advocated for better pay and against racial job inequities in nursing, as well as against the often-sexist or racist hierarchies in hospitals. 7 The 1970’s were also a time of increased worker protests and strikes, and nurses were a part of this movement.

Today, nurses continue to use unions to organize and demand better working conditions for themselves and for other healthcare staff, like nursing assistants and medical technicians, who are often workers of color. Nurses, like social workers and teachers, work in close contact with vulnerable and often marginalized communities. Unionized nurses and healthcare workers thus also act as a crucial voice in demanding that healthcare institutions meet community needs and provide high-quality care. Black nurses have often used union organizing to demand that hospital prioritize their low-income patients of color over hospital profits.8

This section will discuss historical examples of Black nurses’ labor organizing in Chicago. See our COVID-19 page for more recent examples.

Cook County Hospital Strike, 1976

In November 1976, around 1,000 nurses at Cook County Hospital and Oak Forest Hospital went on strike. The nurses, all members of the Illinois Nurses Association (INA), walked out of work in response to stalled contract negotiations. This multi-racial group of workers, including Black, Filipino, and white nurses, wanted their contract to address their working conditions and patients’ quality of care.

Black nurses held a prominent role. Cook County’s nursing school was one of the first in the area to admit Black students, and in 1976, the hospital employed many Black nurses and hospital staff. Margaret Morris, a Black nurse, served as president of the Cook County-Oak Forest Nurses Association, the local chapter of the INA.

The strike came after years of worker organizing at the hospitals, including a short 1972 nurses’ strike and a 1975 doctors’ strike. This union activity emerged in response to ongoing cutbacks of services at the two hospitals, both public institutions that served primarily low-income patients of color. Most patients at Cook County were from the Black and Latino communities of the South and Westside.9 Hospital staff, including the striking nurses, were worried about how the 1970’s trend towards privatization and cutting public services would affect their patients, as Cook County staff faced layoffs and service cuts.10

Betty Jean Shamley, a Black nurse and strike leader, explained in a newspaper interview that Cook County was a unique hospital because it served patients regardless of their ability to pay: “Our attitude is, ‘You’re sick, you’re here, we’re gonna take care of you.’”11 Clearly, the striking workers felt that the institution did not share the same commitment to their patients of color as their nurses did.

In terms of specific demands, the nurses wanted hospital management to stop rotating nurses without their input, often assigning nurses without specialized training to complicated units like the ICU or the trauma ward. Moreover, the nurses also saw a clear connection between hospital management’s practices and their low-income patient population. In a newspaper interview one nurse noted: “No other hospital rotates their nurses. They’re afraid of killing rich patients.”12

The nurses were also striking against hospital management’s desire to cut their sick pay. Similar to other workers, the nurses felt that they deserved paid sick days and should not be expected to sacrifice their well-being for their jobs. Again, they made the connection between their labor conditions and the impact on patients. Mary Stovall, a 39-year-old Black nurse, noted that nurses were constantly exposed to disease as part of their work. “To say that you don't need a day off is ridiculous,” she noted.

“We have a responsibility to the patients. And a big part of that is not going around spreading germs or coming to work when you're sick. You have to be able to exercise sound judgment and I don't think a sick nurse can do that.”13

Despite pressure from hospital management and from the government, the nurses were determined to fight. After a few days of striking, a Circuit Court judge threatened the INA with a $10,000 per day fine if the strike continued, causing the INA to withdraw its support. Yet hundreds of nurses voted to continue refusing to work, in the face of threatened fines and jail time.14
The nurses’ public battle with the hospital received extensive support.

Doctors who were members of the House Staff Association of Cook County Hospital (mostly white men who had gone on strike the previous year) engaged in a public march to the office of hospital director Dr. James G. Haughton to call for him to meet the nurses’ demands. Letters from readers to the Chicago Tribune expressed sympathy for the striking nurses, noting that they carried out dangerous and difficult work for low pay.15

The strike ended after 38 days, with the majority of nurses voting to ratify a new contract, in which they achieved some of their demands.16

Nurses’, particularly Black nurses’, involvement in organizing labor actions in response to cutbacks in public healthcare in Chicago has continued through the present-day and is reflected in their responses to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Black nurses and nursing assistants use healthcare unions as a vehicle for organizing themselves and their coworkers. Women of color utilized unions to bring attention to the fact that they fill most low-paid nursing and healthcare positions, especially in places like Chicago.

While labor unions have struggled since the 1970’s in the United States, membership in unions has actually increased in recent years, with nurses “organizing at a particularly high rate.”17 Some see nurses as a model for union organizing across different industries, as well as a model for how unions can use their power to fight societal injustices, like for-profit healthcare and health inequalities.

Black nurses and nursing staff will no doubt continue to play an important role in these efforts in Chicago and around the country to advance labor and healthcare justice.

This page references:

Lingel, Clark-Parsons, and Branciforte, 1150