CHICAGO—For more than two years, around 10,000 Illinois nursing home workers worked without a new union contract—waiting and agitating for a long overdue pay raise and better protection of their rights on the job. Those rights, they argued, would also improve the care of the ill and elderly in their charge.
Fed up with the owners’ intransigence, 5,000 of those workers announced that they were prepared to walk out. By raising the credible threat of the biggest strike in the history of the U.S. nursing home industry, the union convinced the leading employer alliance in the state—the Illinois Association of Health Care Facilities—to throw in the towel at the last minute.
Early this month, the owners agreed to most of the union’s key demands, and the union called off the strike. Later, workers voted, and 97 percent approved the contract.


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