On April 10, every registered nurse at CommonSpirit Longmont United Hospital (LUH) voted to ratify a new three-year contract. It is the first acute care private-sector contract for RNs in Colorado. The contract includes protections for patients and nurses, including scheduled monthly meetings to discuss solutions for patient care issues.
“This victory means that we can advocate for our patients and ourselves to improve patient care,” Diane Stuppler, a labor and delivery RN at LUH, told the Longmont Leader. “It means we will have safer staffing so we can give our patients the care they deserve. LUH is a much better place for patients with this contract. Retention and recruitment of nurses will improve.”
National Nurses United includes more than 225,000 members across the country, including VA Eastern Colorado Health Care system hospitals in Denver and Aurora. The nurses won their vote to unionize in 2022. The union press release states that they had to fight management for years to get to the bargaining table in 2024 before finalizing the first contract last week. Stuppler said that community support helped bring this contract to fruition…