The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Wednesday, August 31, 2022 — 7A

IRENA LI
Summer News Editor

Michigan Medicine nurses 
sue University amid contract 
negotiations

Union alleges ‘U’ violated state law on bargaining

Schedule an appointment with an advisor today!

lsa.umich.edu/Judaic




TRANSCENDS
LEARNING
THAT

BORDERS

I I .U M I C H . E D U/ P I C S

The current state and 
future of abortion care at 
Michigan Medicine 

TESS CROWLEY/Daily

What abortion access looks like at U-M

RILEY HODDER & 
SAMANTHA RICH
Summer Managing News Editor & 
Summer News Editor 

KEITH MELONG/Daily 

Read more at michigandaily.com

News

MICHIGAN GOVERNMENT

The 
Michigan 
Nurses 
Association filed a lawsuit against 
the University of Michigan amid 
ongoing 
contract 
negotiations 
with the University of Michigan 
Professional 
Nurses 
Council. 
The suit, filed Monday in the 
Court of Claims, alleges that the 
administration has violated state 
law by refusing to negotiate with 
the union over nurses’ workload. 
Specifically, the lawsuit claims 
the University is violating the 
Public Employment Relations Act 
of 1947, which requires bargaining 
agreements 
between 
public 
employers and labor organizations 
to consider “wages, hours and 
other conditions of employment.” 
According to a statement from 
the MNA, 6,200 nurses in the 
union have worked without a 
contract since July 1, when the 
union’s previous contract with the 

University expired. The two parties 
have yet to reach a new agreement 
and have been negotiating since 
March 15.
The 
Association 
also 
cited 
statistics 
identifying 
high 
workload ratios as responsible for 
preventable infections and injuries 
among patients and nurses in 
the United States. Renee Curtis, 
UMPNC president and registered 
nurse, said patient safety was the 
union’s primary concern.
“Our union is fighting for patient 
safety, first and foremost,” Curtis 
said in a statement. “It’s absurd 
to think that conversations about 
how to keep patients safe can be 
effective without talking about our 
nurses’ workloads.”
In an email to The Michigan 
Daily, 
Michigan 
Medicine 
spokesperson Mary Masson wrote 
that University of Michigan 
Health, 
Michigan 
Medicine’s 
clinical division, will “vigorously 
defend itself” in the lawsuit. 
Masson 
wrote 
that 
the 

University’s 
current 
contract 
offer provides a 6 percent raise 
for first-year nurses and a 5 
percent raise per year for the 
next three years. The University 
has also offered to introduce a 
salary step program for nurse 
practitioners 
and 
eliminate 
mandatory overtime to address 
overtime
“University 
of 
Michigan 
Health 
makes 
staffing 
determinations 
with 
patient 
safety at the forefront of its 
decisions, and this has produced 
outstanding 
safety 
results,” 
Masson wrote. “We continue 
to bargain in good faith.”In 
addition to the lawsuit, MNA 
filed an unfair labor practice 
charge against the University 
with the Michigan Employment 
Relations Commission. Pending 
the MERC ruling, the lawsuit 
asks for an injunction that would 
immediately force the University 
to bargain over nurse-to-patient 
staffing ratios.

MICHIGAN GOVERNMENT

The Supreme Court’s June 24 
overturning of Roe v. Wade ignited 
rapid changes in state abortion laws, 
with eight states having already 
banned abortion and four more 
expected to do so over the summer.
Abortion remains legal in Michi-
gan due to a preliminary injunc-
tion against the state’s 1931 law 
criminalizing all abortions except 
to save the pregnant person’s life. 
The 1931 law was nullified by the 
1973 Roe v. Wade decision but never 
officially repealed. In light of the 
uncertainty surrounding abortion 
access in Michigan, a coalition of 
organizations created the Repro-
ductive Freedom for All ballot ini-
tiative, a constitutional amendment 
to protect reproductive rights that 
received over 800,000 signatures in 
support.
The draft decision to overturn 
Roe v. Wade was initially published 
by Politico in May, after which the 
University of Michigan announced 
the creation of a “Post-Roe Task 
Force” composed of individuals 
across various areas and occupa-
tions, including healthcare profes-
sionals, legal representatives and 
students and faculty working in rele-
vant research areas. The task force is 
designed to mitigate the effects of a 
potential abortion ban in Michigan.
Dr. Lisa Harris, a physician at 
Michigan Medicine who provides 
abortion care and a co-chair of the 
task force, said this task force cov-
ered a wide variety of topics that 
arose when Roe v. Wade was over-
turned.
“There’s two broad buckets of 
work that the task force is doing,” 
Harris said. “One is campus work, so 

thinking about all the 
ways in which students 
and faculty and staff 
across all the different 
campuses and schools 
will be impacted. And 
the second bucket is 
around clinical care 
and treatment.”
Harris 
described 
the task force’s sub-
committees, 
which 
are working to address 
individual issues, such as which 
abortions Michigan Medicine could 
still provide if the 1931 ban, or a ban 
like it, were to take effect, as well as 
clarifying Title IX protections and 
student insurance policies.
Following the official overturn-
ing of Roe v. Wade, Michigan Medi-
cine released a public statement 
reaffirming its commitment to pro-
viding abortion care and resources, 
so long as abortion remains legal in 
the state.
“U-M Health remains commit-
ted to providing high-quality, safe 
reproductive care for patients, across 
all their reproductive health needs,” 
the statement read. “This includes 
abortion care, which remains legal 
in Michigan while challenges to 
various state-law criminal statutes 
continue to proceed.”
According to Michigan Medicine, 
many of the patients for whom they 
provide abortions are experiencing 
serious pregnancy complications 
or underlying health conditions. 
While they can provide outpatient 
medication abortions in some cases, 
they also outline various local clin-
ics such as the Planned Parenthood 
Ann Arbor Health Center that do so 
more often.
Michigan Medicine still provides 
access to abortion care, but Dr. Dee 
Fenner, chair of obstetrics and gyne-
cology at Michigan Medicine and 
co-chair of the task force, said that 

access would change if a ban were to 
be put into place.
“Obviously, we would follow the 
law,” Fenner said. “That would sig-
nificantly impact our ability to care 
for patients.”
Under the 1931 ban, Michigan 
Medicine would still be available 
to provide abortions in life-threat-
ening events. However, according 
to Harris, there is little clarity on if 
a doctor can provide an abortion in 
a situation where the threat to the 
pregnant person’s life is uncertain or 
evolving.
“It’s unclear if we would be able 
to provide abortion care early in 
pregnancy, when there’s not an 
imminent threat to someone’s life, in 
order to prevent an imminent threat 
later,” Harris said. “So that’s one 
thing that’s ambiguous: the timing 
of it. Do they have to be imminently 
at risk, or what if their risk is later?”
Harris highlighted ectopic preg-
nancies, a condition in which the 
fertilized egg implants outside of the 
uterus — most commonly in the fal-
lopian tube. The uterus is the only 
organ in which a pregnancy can be 
carried to term, so the treatment 
for an ectopic pregnancy is medi-
cal or surgical termination of the 
pregnancy. Left untreated, ectopic 
pregnancies can rupture and cause a 
life-threatening hemorrhage.

