Fox Chase nurses vote to unionize, inspired by Temple’s contract. ‘We can have those things, too!’

Nurses working at Fox Chase Cancer Center have voted to unionize, becoming the latest group of workers to form a collective-bargaining unit in recent months at the Northeast Philadelphia specialty hospital.

Nearly 80% of the roughly 350 registered nurses who work at the Cottman Avenue center participated in Tuesday’s election, which was administered by the National Labor Relations Board.

Sixty-two percent voted in favor of unionization, according to the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals, which will represent the nurses.

“In the past, Fox Chase nurses tried to unionize, and it kind of fell apart” said Christina Suermann, an operating room nurse at Fox Chase, who helped organize the unionization drive. “We felt that it was our time.”

» READ MORE: Fox Chase Cancer Center techs vote to unionize. The center’s nurses could be next.

Earlier this month, 125 techs at Fox Chase voted to unionize, including X-ray techs and therapists, surgical techs, and licensed practical nurses.

In January, a union of 35 certified registered nurse anesthetists working both at Fox Chase and at the nearby Temple University Hospital-Jeanes Campus ratified their first contract.

Fox Chase has been part of the Temple University Health System since 2012. It is one of two Philadelphia institutions designated a comprehensive cancer center by the National Cancer Institute for its excellence in laboratory, clinical, behavioral, and population-based cancer research.

In recent weeks, the hospital’s upper management tried to dissuade nurses from voting to unionize, nurses said. They hosted meetings and sent emails saying they would be worse off under a union.

Hospital spokesperson Jeremy Moore, in an emailed statement, acknowledged the registered nurses’ vote.

“We respect their decision and look forward to a fruitful negotiation,” Moore said.

Nurses and techs began talk of organizing last summer, identifying similar concerns across workers in different Fox Chase units.

“Temple is like a big corporation, and we felt like we kind of got lost in the system,” Heather Davis, an interventional radiology nurse at Fox Chase, told The Inquirer this month. “We had frustrations and concerns, and we felt that they were falling on deaf ears.”

A top priority for both techs and nurses: increased staffing levels, a point of contention among health care unions and hospitals across the region.

High demand for health-care staffers during a workforce shortage has motivated workers to unionize and has provided leverage to already unionized workers trying to negotiate better contracts.

This includes nurses at Einstein Medical Center, which is part of Jefferson Health. They reached a tentative agreement on a new contract this week, nearly two months after their previous contract expired.

» READ MORE: Nurses at Einstein Medical Center on the verge of having a new contract

Resident physicians at the University of Pennsylvania Health System made history in May when they became the first group of training doctors — referred to in the industry as house staff — in Pennsylvania to form a union. Their bargaining unit also became the largest new union in Philadelphia since the 1970s.

In November, the nurses and techs at Temple University Hospital approved a three-year contract that included bargaining wins such as standards to ensure higher staffing and more security at hospital entrances.

That inspired the Fox Chase effort.

”Seeing Temple main’s contract come out recently was a really push,” Suermann said. “We can have those things, too!”