Michelle Silvio

South Jersey Healthcare, Vineland, N.J. Health Professionals and Allied Employees—AFT (HPAE-AFT)

Michelle Silvio

Michelle Silvio has been a registered nurse for 13 years; for the past 8 years as an emergency room nurse in South Jersey Healthcare in Vineland, N.J.   

Like all nurses, Silvio is dedicated to quality patient care, and she takes an enormous amount of pride in being able to help people every day.

In 2004, the hospital system consolidated several facilities into one large medical center. It was a large-scale structural change that left Silvio and her co-workers worried—about patient care and about their jobs.

According to Silvio, for the first time, during the restructuring, she thought to herself, “We don’t have any say in what’s going on here.”

Silvio says they began experiencing three-times the patient volume that they were used to. When the nurses tried to make their concerns heard, they were told, “Like it or leave it.” Silvio says management’s attitude and the instability of the transition pushed many nurses out of the system, making the shortage even worse. “It speaks to the competence of the nursing and other staff that there were no real problems during the transition,” says Silvio.

To ensure quality patient care and gain a voice in the decisions affecting their work, Silvio and her co-workers began forming a union with Health Professionals and Allied Employees–AFT (HPAE-AFT). 

 “I wanted to see us all taking care of each other as well as we took care of our patients,” says Silvio.

But management fought back with a flood of meetings, fliers, mail and e-mail against the workers’ union. The hospital forced nurses to sit through mandatory meetings on work time where management gave presentations on why the nurses should not want a union. It called employees into intimidating one-on-one meetings with supervisors and interrogated them about their support for the union. The company told workers they should report legal union leafleting to the police. The nurses filed charges against the hospital, but all management had to do was post a notice saying they would not break the law again.

Despite the hospital's campaign of fear and misinformation, Silvio and her co-workers persevered and won their election in July 2006. After their employer’s appeals winded through the courts, Silvio and her co-workers finally got their union in February 2007.