Group Health Cooperative was founded on the concept that member voices are essential to provide the highest quality of affordable care that our community deserves. Our providers, as members of our larger community that provide exceptional care for us every day, also have voices that are important and yet are currently being ignored.  

While I have had the privilege of 15 years of membership and dedicated care, I have also recognized notable turnover in recent years that has resulted in an inconsistency of care, long wait times and regular changes to my care team of service providers. 

As I’ve leaned in to understand whether this was a post-COVID pandemic reality of today’s health care sector, I have instead learned that GHC offers lesser wages and has higher turnover rates than other local health care providers across our Dane County community. Further, as I’ve connected with GHC workers that have expressed interest in unionization, I have learned of their consistent 10+ years of dedicated service to GHC and our members. To me, this effort to unionize therefore represents their deep commitment to GHC’s mission—which at present fails to recognize their collective value. Additionally, these efforts to unionize reflect a last ditch effort to retain long dedicated care providers and recognizes that GHC leadership can do better and has a responsibility to ensure employee voice at decision making tables that determine the sustainability of this organization and it’s role in our larger community. 

I therefore stand alongside these workers and my fellow members as I call upon GHC leadership to recognize the workers’ right to unionize. 

There's a multitude of reasons many of us chose a cooperative model over a for-profit shareholder model for our health care and insurance over the past almost 50 years. High among them is that a cooperative health care provider isn’t responsible to profit-seeking shareholders, but only to its members. And yes, at GHC the employees are also members. Some of our fellow GHC members have chosen to form a union. A union is like a cooperative in almost every way. Just as GHC's members speak collectively for the best health care through our cooperative HMO, so also would our employee-members speak collectively through a union. Their goal is one we all support: the strongest GHC possible, with the ability to attract and retain the best employees. So I am disturbed that GHC has hired and acted on advice from the Husch Blackwell law firm, that advises clients how to thwart unionization. A cooperative's law firm should advise the cooperative to embrace the union model as reflective of its own cooperative model – not recommend confounding legal tactics and antiunion propaganda designed to undermine the collective voices of its members. I am calling on GHC to uphold the cooperative principles that it was founded on. If it is to be a cooperative in more than name, it must abandon this attempt to inhibit union organizing of its workers with shared issues. It must recognize the workers who want a union, and start bargaining – cooperatively – with them to provide the best quality patient care for all of us. 

My family has been through some hard healthcare events in that time, and it was made so much easier by the wonderful working folks from GHC. The healthcare professionals at GHC are the reason we trust this system with our health. But right now, those very people are being silenced, surveilled, and retaliated against for trying to form a union. What GHC is doing to its own employees is straight out of the playbook of Amazon and Starbucks. They’ve hired union-busting attorneys, filed legal challenges designed to dilute worker support, and have even pushed to make it harder for healthcare workers anywhere in the country to unionize. Instead of listening to their workers and us members, GHC has doubled down. They've removed union materials, banned workers from even discussing the union at work, and launched retaliatory complaints against staff who support unionization. That’s not democracy, that’s intimidation. It doesn’t need to be this way. At Willy Street, our union works collaboratively with management to establish reasonable staffing ratios for our grocery stores, changes in policy are discussed with the workers and implementation is negotiated, and we get bonuses whenever the co-op has a profitable year. WE COOPERATE. GHC can embrace the coop model while also embracing unionization. The seven principles that guide the cooperative movement demands this. With this approach everyone wins: the cooperative, the workers, and us, their patients. But let’s be clear: GHC’s antiunion tactics mean a fair election is no longer possible. The playing field has been so tilted that we, as patients and community members, have to speak up. We are calling on GHC leadership to stop. Stop trying to rig the union election. Stop the surveillance, the threats, the misinformation. Recognize the workers who already filed for a union, and come to the table in good faith. These workers want to care for us. Standing in solidarity with them at this moment is the best way for us to care for them in return.

When my mom and I chose to move to GHC we came here because we believe in the mission of providing cooperative care. Care where we are listened to and represented. But representation in my health care doesn’t stop at me. It includes the people who provide me with my healthcare. The nurses, care team support staff, providers, and others who show up for us every day, deserve a workplace where they’re respected, protected, and heard. Right now, we are listening to them say that that is not the reality. GHC management’s union-busting tactics – the legal maneuvers, the misinformation, and the retaliation – are not just disappointing, they are unacceptable. When the people providing care are burnt out, underpaid, or afraid for their jobs, our care suffers. We feel it in long wait times, in high staff turnover, and in the care that can’t be as good as it should be because our healthcare workers’ needs are not met. Workers who have their needs met, and workers whose voices are heard without fear of consequence can do their jobs better. As a patient I want unionized care workers because I want better healthcare. Every single person at GHC who wants a union should have one. That’s their right, and it’s outrageous that GHC is spending time and money fighting them instead of listening to them. As GHC members, we are watching. We’re standing with the workers who want a union, and we’re calling on GHC’s leadership to stop the union-busting, stop the intimidation, and come to the table to give workers a voice. As members, our care depends on it.

As an educator at UW-Madison, I know that my working conditions are my students' learning conditions. And as a GHC member for over two decades, I know too that my care team's working conditions are my healing conditions. When they are working with me, I want them to feel curious and unrushed. I unequivocally support them in their fight to form a union that creates the working conditions they -- and I -- deserve. I'm furthermore shocked and angered that my money is being used by GHC to attack my care team, who want nothing more than the respect and dignity that comes with a union contract. GHC needs to stop union-busting now, and recognize the workers who provide such great care for me and thousands of others.

As a long-time GHC member, and as a former GHC worker, I love my primary care provider and I stand with the GHC workers who are unionizing. I call on the GHC administration and Board to recognize the union now. GHC needs to stop fighting with the workers and respect their union. This is critical so that workers will be empowered by having a work environment that is supportive and respectful to the needs of workers. The unfortunate trend in all businesses, including healthcare, is to focus on making money instead of the mission of taking care of our patients, workers and communities. Through the power of the union, we can steer that focus back to what it should be. When we, the employees/workers are in a just and equitable working environment, we are free to complete our mission of providing exceptional care to all of our patients and communities. I started working with GHC at the Hatchery Hill Clinic in 2010 as an LPN. I was blown away by the respect and care that GHC provided for their employees at that time. The CEO of the company made sure then that GHC was living up to its promise of being a true non-profit and we did a lot of community work. It felt empowering as a caregiver in the healthcare field to be able to work in a place that valued my true priorities of healthcare, not just "sick care" for all of our patients, employees and our local communities. Some of my best memories come from the after hours child care "clinics" that each local clinic would host once a quarter. No one was forced to stay but most of us wanted to (and we were paid and given free dinner as well). During those events we would remain open later than usual and we focused on providing well child care for families from each clinic's adopted local school. We would have family practice, pediatricians, ophthalmology, and mental health providers available. We would make sure that children were up to date on vaccinations, renewed prescriptions, given resources for needed help, etc. Every child that came to GHC was given a member number and medical chart and as far as I remember, given essential care, regardless of insurance or ability to pay. We also would have yearly meetings at the Epic Campus, complete with meals and tours. Everyone worked together well as a team and felt like we were part of something that was improving our communities. I learned through the experience of working there that when a business takes care of its employees, the employees are much more likely to take care of the business. When you have flexibility with your work, bosses who work with you then the work environment is not stressful so you can use your energy to focus on others that need care. I returned to work as an RN in 2014 at the Sauk Trails Clinic. Although the benefits were still awesome, the overall goal of being a true community focused non-profit didn't seem as strong at that point and I remember feeling really upset about that. And while a lot is changing in the healthcare industry nationally, the best thing GHC can do to care for their patients and thrive in this corporate environment is to stop fighting their workers and recognize the union.

I became a GHC member just as I became pregnant with my first baby. Throughout the pregnancy, the care and compassion I received from my GHC care team has far exceeded my expectations.  When I am with my care providers,  they take the time and energy  to make me feel comfortable,  answer all of my questions, reassure me and thoroughly investigate any of my health concerns - even though I know their schedules  are  packed! I know my care team's time and energy  are finite resources and the level of care provided to me by GHC is only made possible by sustainable , supportive working conditions. That is why I fully support GHC's effort to unionize.

As a GHC patient, it's important to me that the healthcare workers caring for my family have fair wages, reasonable patient loads, and the right to organize without retaliation. GHC has a great reputation in our community as a nonprofit and a co-op; now they need to stop their union-busting tactics so that we patients can have consistent and high-quality care from providers whose needs are met in their workplace.

As a longtime GHC member and union member, I’m thrilled to see that GHC healthcare workers are organizing a union. That will ensure better working conditions for healthcare workers, which means better healthcare for GHC members. I urge GHC to do the right thing now rather than devastate the morale of the dedicated workers who take care of members like me. Drop your threats and recognize the union!

Just as the healthcare workers at GHC care for me and my well-being, so do I care about them and their working conditions. Their right to organize should not be questioned, and I fully support them in their effort to form a union.

I 100% support GHC employees in their fight for union recognition. Being a member of SEIU has empowered me to advocate for my patients and fellow nurses in a way that I never had before. It’s also allowed me to make amazing connections with my coworkers and the larger community. All of this has been invaluable for improving my patients' care, as well as the job satisfaction of my colleagues and myself.