Nurses at Saint Mary of Nazareth Hospital in Chicago walked off the job Thursday morning for a 24-hour unfair labor practice strike, protesting what they say is an illegal campaign by Prime Healthcare management to fire union organizers and intimidate the remaining workforce. Picketing began at 7 a.m. at 2233 W Division Street on Chicago's Northwest Side. A 9 a.m. rally drew hundreds of supporters and drew attention from local media and city council members who represent the Wicker Park and Ukrainian Village neighborhoods the hospital serves.
The action was organized by the National Nurses Organizing Committee/National Nurses United (NNOC/NNU). Nurses at the hospital filed for a union election with the National Labor Relations Board on May 20, 2026, and held a public rally on May 27. In the weeks following the organizing announcement, six experienced RNs were terminated. Nurses and the union describe the pattern as textbook retaliation.
Six Nurses Fired, ULP Charge Filed With NLRB
NNOC/NNU filed an Unfair Labor Practice charge with the NLRB alleging the terminations constituted illegal retaliation for protected union organizing activity under Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act. Nurses said the six fired RNs were among the most vocal patient advocates on their units, and that their terminations sent an unambiguous message to the remaining workforce.
"These were nurses who had been advocating for their patients and coworkers, and Prime fired them for it," one nurse organizer told NNU representatives at the pre-strike rally. "This strike is a direct response to illegal conduct. We're asking them to stop breaking the law."
Prime Healthcare, which owns the facility and operates 45 hospitals across 14 states, had not responded publicly to the specific ULP allegations as of the start of the strike. The company has faced prior NLRB disputes at other facilities in its national network.
Staffing and Safety Conditions Drive Organizing
Nurses cite chronic understaffing as the primary driver of the organizing campaign. Saint Mary of Nazareth serves a predominantly low-income, immigrant community on Chicago's Northwest Side and functions as a safety-net provider for the area. Nurses say staffing ratios have worsened since Prime's acquisition, and behavioral health volume has increased significantly without proportional staffing increases to match acuity.
Illinois law requires hospitals to develop staffing plans with clinical nurse input and publicly post unit-level staffing data monthly. Nurses allege the posted data at Saint Mary's does not accurately reflect actual staffed ratios during peak census periods — a charge the hospital disputes. The Illinois Nurse Staffing by Patient Acuity Act (Public Act 93-0434) provides the framework for these disclosures and gives nurses standing to raise concerns about compliance.
Why a One-Day ULP Strike — Not an Indefinite Walkout
NNOC/NNU structured this as a 24-hour ULP strike rather than an indefinite strike. This is the legally protected mechanism for nurses to protest specific employer unfair labor practices without triggering the hospital's right to permanently replace strikers. Under NLRA precedent established in Mastro Plastics Corp. v. NLRB (1956) and subsequent Board decisions, ULP strikers are entitled to reinstatement upon unconditional offer to return, even if the employer hired replacement workers during the strike.
The strike window closed Friday morning at 6:45 a.m., at which point all striking nurses were entitled to return to work. Prime Healthcare is legally required under NLRA provisions to reinstate all ULP strikers to their original positions.
The union election filing remains pending with the NLRB. If the election proceeds and nurses vote to unionize, the hospital would be required to bargain in good faith over wages, benefits, and working conditions — including staffing-related mandatory subjects under the Act.
Prime Healthcare's Track Record on Labor
Prime Healthcare Services, headquartered in Ontario, California, has been the subject of multiple NLRB proceedings at facilities across its network. The for-profit chain has expanded aggressively since 2001, primarily through acquisitions of financially distressed hospitals in urban and suburban markets. Labor advocates have documented organizing difficulties at multiple Prime facilities nationally.
This makes the Saint Mary of Nazareth campaign one of several concurrent NNU organizing drives at Prime-owned facilities across the country, and gives NNU's legal team institutional knowledge of Prime's labor response patterns going into this election cycle.
I've watched management respond to organizing attempts the same way every time: find the most visible organizers, make examples of them, and hope the rest of the staff gets the message. The ULP strike is an underutilized tool in nursing labor law. A 24-hour legally protected walkout creates a public NLRB record without the full resource commitment of an indefinite strike — and the employer can't permanently replace ULP strikers. For nurses at any facility in an organizing campaign: document everything. Dates, names, what was said, who was in the room. An NLRB charge is only as strong as its paper trail.