Emily Berceau, a labor and delivery nurse at St. Mary's Hospital in Madison, Wisc. and a member of SEIU Wisconsin, joined the America's Work Force Union Podcast to discuss one of the most persistent organizing campaigns in recent Wisconsin labor history.
The push to unionize nurses at SSM Health's St. Mary's began in 2019 with a Service Employees International Union card drive. The effort reached approximately 40 percent of nurses with signed cards before COVID disrupted the momentum entirely. A second push followed, with Berceau joining the effort in 2024 and 2025. In June 2026, more than 800 St. Mary's nurses voted for SEIU Wisconsin with 89 percent in favor. She described the management tactics nurses faced throughout. It included flyers removed, workers told they could not discuss the union on work time despite federal labor law protecting that right, and nurses and doctors threatened with suspension without pay for wearing a badge reel reading Nurses United.
Berceau said the priorities going into their first contract bargaining include safe staffing ratios, fair compensation and seniority protections to retain experienced nurses. However, SSM Health continues to challenge the union on multiple fronts, even after the vote.
- The organizing campaign at St. Mary's has been underway in various forms since 2019, when a first push generated signed authorization cards from approximately 40 percent of the nurses before the pandemic disrupted organizing activity. A second push followed several years later, before Berceau was recruited into the effort in 2024 and 2025 after a coworker encouraged her. In June 2026, more than 800 nurses voted, with 89 percent in favor of SEIU Wisconsin, one of the most lopsided union election results in recent Wisconsin healthcare organizing, Berceau said.
- Management tactics during the campaign included removing union flyers and literature, telling workers they could not discuss the union on work time despite NLRA protections, telling one nurse who produced a National Labor Relations Board printout documenting those rights that she could get a lawyer if she wanted to bring the law into it and threatening nurses and doctors with suspension without pay for wearing a badge reel reading “Nurses United.” The administration initially filed objections to the election result, which were dismissed, and is now attempting to classify charge nurses as supervisors rather than bargaining unit members.
- First contract bargaining priorities identified through membership surveys include safe staffing ratios, fair compensation and seniority protections designed to retain experienced nurses past the three- to four-year burnout point. Berceau noted that one unit in the hospital had a maximum seniority of approximately two years, illustrating the retention crisis that unionization hopes to address. She said SSM Health's continued lack of cooperation signals the hospital is not looking to move toward a contract smoothly.
Folk Music, Ireland and a Path Into Labor
Emily Berceau did not grow up in a union household. But she grew up with folk music around the house, and folk music carries its own labor education. The themes of solidarity, collective action and taking care of your neighbor run through the genre in ways that map directly onto union organizing. Irish folk music in particular, she noted, carries the history of people who found that coming together was the only way to push back against a more powerful force. She absorbed those themes before she ever connected them to organized labor.
She was 15 or 16 when Wisconsin's Act 10 was signed into law by Gov. Scott Walker, stripping most public-sector workers of collective bargaining rights. She was too young to fully understand the policy, but she remembers her friends’ parents marching on the State Capitol with their unions. She saw the news coverage. The images stayed with her even as her direct connection to labor organizing went quiet for years.
Nursing, Labor and Delivery and the Work She Was Meant to Do
Nursing was not Berceau's original plan. She started college studying physical therapy, took her first PT-adjacent course, and quickly realized it was not the right fit. She wanted to be hands-on with patients, at the bedside, doing the work that nurses do. She switched tracks and found her way to labor and delivery, a specialty she described as notoriously difficult for new nurses to break into. She found a unit that was willing to take her on as a new nurse and has never looked back.
Labor and delivery, she explained, is not what most people picture. It is not holding babies. It is managing high-risk emergencies in a population where everything can be fine one moment and critical the next. It is, as she described it, an emergency department specifically for pregnant women. When things are going well, you observe and stay out of the way, she said. When things go wrong, they go wrong fast, and you have to be ready. That combination of calm observation and high-stakes emergency response is what drew her to the specialty, and she takes pride in her unit's collective skill in handling those moments.
A Flame Kept Alive Since 2019
The organizing campaign at St. Mary's did not start with Berceau. It started in 2019, when nurses working with SEIU launched a card drive that reached approximately 40 percent of nurses, who signed authorization cards. They were fighting an active anti-union campaign from management at the same time. Then 2020 arrived and with it COVID-19 and the momentum that had been building collapsed under the weight of a pandemic that made in-person organizing, meetings and even basic conversation about the union functionally impossible. Nurses were dying. The unit was short-staffed. Everything shifted.
A core group kept the flame alive, Berceau said. Some of the original organizers left. Others stayed and continued talking about what a union hospital could look like for St. Mary's nurses. A second push began several years later, and while there was genuine interest, forward momentum was slow. Then, in 2024 and 2025, Berceau was pulled in by a coworker who told her she thought she would be passionate about the cause. She was right. Berceau connected with SEIU Wisconsin, and the push began again, this time with the kind of momentum she described as pushing a boulder downhill.
In June 2026, more than 800 St. Mary's nurses voted, with 89 percent in favor of SEIU Wisconsin.
What Management Did Along the Way
Berceau then described what nurses faced during the campaign. Flyers and literature were taken down. Nurses were told they could not discuss the union on work time, a restriction that conflicts with the protections of the National Labor Relations Act. When one nurse produced a printout from the NLRB website documenting what workers are legally allowed to do, management responded that she could get a lawyer if she wanted.
Both nurses and doctors were threatened with suspension without pay for wearing badge reels that read “Nurses United.” Berceau said that the detail shows that hospital management was more interested in working against the nurses trying to organize than in patient care. That frustration, she said, was something every organizer knew they had to get through to get to the vote. And they did.
After the vote, and after SSM Health’s election objections were dismissed, the challenges continued. The hospital is now attempting to classify charge nurses as supervisors rather than bargaining unit members, Berceau said. Charge nurses on the floor coordinate staffing ratios, handle emergencies, fill gaps and take overflow patients. SSM Health has argued that they are part of the management team. Berceau said it is the latest battle in a fight that has been underway for years, but the nurses are prepared for it.
What the First Contract Needs to Accomplish
A membership survey to identify bargaining priorities is underway. Nurses have been filling out surveys and discussing what matters most. Berceau said the priorities are broadly shared across the unit even before the data is fully collated. They want safe staffing ratios, fair compensation and seniority protections that keep experienced nurses on the floor.
The retention issue is urgent. She described a hospital unit where the most senior nurses had, at one point, approximately two years of experience. New nurses are talented and passionate, she said, but there is no substitute for floor experience, and experienced nurses are burning out and leaving at the three- to four-year mark. A contract that creates real incentives to stay past that point is not just a bargaining goal. It is a patient safety issue.
Berceau acknowledged that a first contract takes time to negotiate, especially one that must establish on paper everything already in place, as well as the new standards the nurses are fighting for. She said she has no illusions about how long it will take, and SSM Health's continued challenges make clear the hospital is not moving toward a quick resolution. The nurses have been working on this for years. Whatever comes next, she said, is something they can handle.
Solidarity Is Power
Berceau closed with a message for workers going through their own organizing fights. She has no special training in union organizing. She is not a labor lawyer or a professional organizer. She is a nurse who fell into the work because a coworker thought she would care about it, and she did. A union, she said, is made up of average workers. As individuals, they have limited power. Together, they have the power to push for something better.
Solidarity is power. That is the whole thing.
More information on SEIU Wisconsin is available at seiuwi.org.
As of Sept. 8, St. Mary's nurses filed federal charges against SSM Health over the labor dispute.
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