Nurses at Portland-based Maine Medical Center are scheduled to vote next month on whether to remove the Maine State Nurses Association as their bargaining representative.
Voting will take place Aug. 17-18 at multiple Maine Medical Center locations, according to a notice from the National Labor Relations Board.
The notice comes after hundreds of workers petitioned for a union decertification election, the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation said in a July 21 news release. The foundation assisted nurse David Brooks and his colleagues in filing the petition with the NLRB.
In April 2021, Maine Medical Center nurses voted to join the Maine State Nurses Association, an affiliate of National Nurses Organizing Committee/National Nurses United. The vote took place during a mail-in election conducted over a month.
Since the election, union officials and Maine Medical Center management have been in negotiations to finalize a contract, according to the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation.
While some nurses told NBC affiliate WCSH they've seen some productive changes since unionizing, others reported the opposite.
In a statement shared with Becker's, Emily Wilder, RN, with the Maine Medical Center Nurses Union Bargaining Team, said: "The strong majority of nurses at Maine Medical Center continue to support our union. We will win the upcoming election to recertify our union. Soon after that, we hope to finish bargaining our historic first union contract. We look forward to continuing to represent all our nurse colleagues at Maine Medical Center."
In a statement shared with Becker's, Maine Medical Center said it received notification about the petition for union decertification and "respects the legal rights of all nurses to make choices about union representation. In the interim, we will continue to bargain in good faith with the MSNA/NNU."
The Maine State Nurses Association represents about 2,000 nurses at Maine Medical Center.