UnityPoint Nurses Fight for You and Me
in a broken health care system driven by profits not patients...
Unity Point nurses, Teamsters, and supporters marched from the Iowa Capitol to Iowa Methodist Hospital on Monday to draw attention to their efforts to unionize (my fellow Iowa Writers Collaborative member and friend Jason Walsmith and I covered the Unity Point nurses a few days before the December unionization vote here).
Natalie Krebs with Iowa Public Radio has the story:
Nurses voted in early December, but they’re still waiting on the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to review the validity of ballots that were challenged by Teamsters Local 90. The initial vote was 871 to 666 in favor of forming the union, but it doesn’t include the 251 ballots that are under review…
Dozens of nurses marched from the Iowa Capitol to UnityPoint’s Methodist Hospital. They claim UnityPoint executives are intentionally delaying finalizing the results of the election by filing objections with the NLRB…
Nurses said ongoing workplace concerns with pay and staffing are driving the need for a union.
UnityPoint filed an objection over concerns about how the election was run.
Amie Rivers with the Iowa Starting Line reports that UnityPoint spent $2.14 million in union-busting efforts in 2025. Doug Burns with The Iowa Mercury reports that nurses and union organizers estimate that over $6 million may have been spent fighting unionization.
Below is the audio of the brief interview I did with the Hennings, followed by a lightly edited transcript. As an old radio guy, I always appreciate it if you can listen to the audio to get a sense of the moment.
ME: So, why are you here today?
Amy: We are both critical care nurses at UnityPoint, and we have been organizing to create a union and got the Teamsters involved back in 2024. We organized for about a year and voted after the government delay back in December of 2025. The nurses won the vote by over a margin of over 200. The vote was approximately 871 yes votes and 666 no votes. Despite the over 200 margin, UnityPoint is continuing to employ delay tactics that are classic anti-union busting tactics, including they filed objections against the NLRB themselves. So as a government agency, they have to go through those objections in the process of those, but it is now June, and we’ve been waiting and waiting.
And we want to get to the bargaining table to get what we deserve, and our patients deserve, especially for patient safety.
Deb: We’re just demanding that UnityPoint recognize us. Nurses deserve better from our employer. Our patients deserve better in relation to that through better staffing. Us being able to give more time, pay more attention to each patient, make sure they’re safe.
And our personal safety is on the line too. We have very violent patients, and we supposedly have a zero-tolerance policy at UnityPoint, but our employer really doesn’t help us enforce that. Nurses are injured in the line of duty on a regular basis.
Amy: And then Unity Point asks what could you have done differently to prevent yourself from being hurt. Not what they could have done to help us.
ME: So it’s your fault.
Amy and Deb: Always. Exactly. Of course.
I did a short interview with nurse Alex Wilken, above left.
ME: How did the march go?
Alex: It was good. Lots of energy. We marched through the East Village downtown and then along Grand through downtown proper. When we are marching on the east side over there, there’s lots of people in their apartments out on their balconies cheering us on. We got lots of cars, you know, people sticking their fists out the window. So definitely feeling that community support, which is awesome.
ME: And what do you want?
Alex: We want Unity Point to drop the objections to the election so that we can be certified and begin negotiations so we can take better care of our patients.
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I’m a proud member of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative. Please check out our recent work here. I also publish Cedar Creek Nature Notes, about Violet the Dog and my adventures on our morning walks at Cedar Bluffs Natural Area in Mahaska County, Iowa.
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As a retired rural Iowa MD family doctor, I strongly support a national health service. We battle 40+ years of right wing propaganda demonizing good government and any sense of the common good. Should sanity and reason ever break through that encrusted mind set, our country needs a re-awakening with not only reform but also an improved Constitution. If that day ever arrives, perhaps we can develop the kind of health care for all our citizens that advanced democracies around the world have achieved. Critics nit pick problems (their favorite is waiting lists, ignoring that unable to afford is the greatest waiting list of all) in many of those systems, but the US can learn from the recent successes to finally serve our citizens. In this specific labor situation, again with overcoming of the right wing despising of and sneering at workers, bargaining with a public sector union could be a far better proposition.
Money and greed vs. ordinary people trying to live their lives, do their jobs. It seems to be the constant, consistent narrative these days. Thanks for shining a light, Bob.