EVANSTON, Ill.—Registered nurses at Saint Francis Hospital in the Chicago suburb of Evanston filed a petition to unionize with the National Labor Relations Board on Aug. 24. The petition was filed on behalf of 275 nurses at the hospital.
“We’re being stretched too thin that we can’t care for our patients’ basic needs sometimes,” said Emily Isakson, a 26-year-old nurse who’s worked at Saint Francis for a year. “Whether it’s taking them to the bathroom spatially, helping them move and get back to being mobile, or even brushing their hair.”
Isakson said intensive care unit nurses are sometimes responsible for up to three patients for large portions of their shifts. She also said that previously at Saint Francis, nurses would be able to use electrocardiogram monitors at the bedside of every patient.
“Now we all share one machine or two machines throughout all the inpatient units, and that’s very dangerous in case there’s a lethal heart rhythm and you need time to identify it quickly,” Isakson said.
Mayor Daniel Biss joined nurses at the hospital this past Saturday. In a statement posted on social media, he said he was “standing with nurses who are organizing a union to stand up for themselves and their patients.”
Prime Healthcare, a national healthcare corporation based in California, officially acquired Saint Francis Hospital in March 2025. Prime is a for-profit healthcare company, but Saint Francis is officially being managed by the Prime Healthcare Foundation, an affiliated nonprofit, allowing the hospital to retain its nonprofit status.
Isakson said Prime’s response to this has been “very discouraging.”
“They’ve been trying to put fear in nurses,” Isakson said. “They’re reducing hours, taking people off the schedule, and it’s just really heartbreaking to see their sacrifice to patient care just to make a power statement.”
Mayor Biss acknowledged these reports of retaliation in his social media statement. “There is no place for that in Evanston. We support the right of workers to organize and fight for their own working conditions.”
Nurses at Saint Francis join a growing movement of Prime Healthcare employees across the country unionizing. Nurses at the Prime-owned Saint Mary Hospital in Chicago, along with those at Prime-owned hospitals in Anaheim and Redding, Calif., and Reno, Nev., have planned strikes for September.
They also filed on the same day over at a Prime hospital in Olympia Fields, Ill., and at a Prime facility in Maine. NNU is trying to coordinate efforts across the Prime system, according to a staff member who spoke to People’s World.
Nurses at Saint Mary of Nazareth in Chicago voted overwhelmingly to unionize with National Nurses United, the same organization working with Saint Francis nurses, in June. Saint Mary nurses will hold a double shift strike on Thursday, Sept. 3. They welcome others to join either session, from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. or 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. at West Division and North Oakley Boulevard in Chicago.
Also in Evanston, nurses at Endeavor Health’s Evanston Hospital took steps toward unionization this year, along with Endeavor Hospitals in Skokie, Glenbrook, and Highland Park.
The four hospitals were once part of the North Shore University Health System, which became part of Endeavor after North Shore merged with Edward-Elmhurst Health in 2022. Endeavor nurses are seeking to organize with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
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