We have some great news to share with you:

This week — by a huge 57 percent margin — registered nurses at Maine Medical Center voted to join the Maine State Nurses Association (MSNA)/National Nurses United, forming their first-ever union!

Maine Medical Center is the largest hospital in the state of Maine, and this victory means that MSNA will now represent 2,000 RNs at Maine Medical Center, the Scarborough Surgery Center, and the MMC Brighton Campus in Portland, ME. They’re also now a part of more than 170,000 RNs that National Nurses United represents from coast to coast.

Nurses at Maine Med cited growing concerns about inadequate staffing, mandatory scheduling that requires nurses to rotate between working days and nights that they say leads to burnout and fatigue, lack of meal and break relief, assignments to work in units for which they do not have clinical experience and proper orientation, and other workplace improvements and standards.

“MaineHealth has grown tremendously in recent years, but sometimes it feels like they’ve ‘outgrown’ bedside nurses’ clinical judgement,” said Maine Med Ambulatory Surgical Unit RN CJ Morse. “With a union and a union contract, RNs will have a real voice and we can hold MaineHealth accountable to our perspective as patient advocates.”

To celebrate this incredible victory, we wanted to call upon this community to send support and congratulations to the Maine Med nurses who made this happen. Will you share a short message of congratulations on this form? We’ll collect your responses and share them with the team.

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We are so grateful to the nurses, organizers, and community members who worked tirelessly over many months to secure this important victory — and we couldn’t be more proud of their unity, perseverance, advocacy, courage, and dedication.

Thursday’s historic victory in Maine was a win for workers everywhere. This win is the first step of many to give nurses the respect they deserve as they care for us — and reinforces the fact that when nurses are able to speak with a united voice, all of us are safer.

Let’s keep organizing,

National Nurses United

P.S. For more information on the union win, you can check out our latest video from National Nurses United on Facebook here. Please watch and share widely with your friends and family to celebrate this momentous win. Thank you!