More than 700 registered nurses at St. Joseph Health Hospital in Bryan-College Station, northwest of Houston, voted Wednesday to join one of the nation’s largest nurses’ unions.
The vote took place Tuesday and Wednesday and was overseen by the National Labor Relations Board. The results of the vote mean the 700-plus workers at the hospital will be joining the National Nurses Organizing Committee/National Nurses United.
In a statement announcing the results, the union said the goal of the unionization was to address "patient safety issues" and increase staff recruitment and retention.
"Nurses understand the importance of putting patient care and safety before profits," Katie Oberhelman, a registered nurse at the hospital, said in a statement. "We must demand safe staffing in all our units and on every shift that takes into account the acuity of our patients. We must put in safeguards against workplace violence in order to ensure that our hospital is first and foremost a place of healing."
The union argues the 316-bed St. Joseph Health Hospital made $1.1 billion in profits last year and "clearly has the funds to address the patient safety issues.”
Hospital officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday regarding the union's vote.
The vote by the nurses in Bryan-College Station comes about a year-and-a-half after unionized nurses at Ascension Seton Medical Center in Austin ratified their first labor contract. According to the union, National Nurses United has more than 225,000 members nationally and represents more than 17,000 nurses at more than 30 CommonSpirit Health facilities.
The union also represents nurses in El Paso and Corpus Christi.
Lorraine Montemayor, the secretary-treasurer for the Texas American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), said in a statement released by the union that the Bryan-College Station nurses are putting their patients first by deciding to unionize.
"Now, they're going to inspire countless other workers across the state to claim their power and organize their workplaces," Montemayor said.
Copyright 2025 Houston Public Media News 88.7