Two nurses from UPMC Magee Women’s Hospital in Pittsburgh—Adrienne Andrews and Sharece Abee—joined the America’s Work Force Union Podcast to explain how frontline caregivers organized with Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Healthcare Pennsylvania and won a union election.
Their account traces a campaign that began with quiet conversations about staffing, burnout and patient care after the pandemic, then grew into a hospital-wide effort marked by intense anti-union messaging and widespread fear of retaliation. After an early card campaign fell short, management decisions reignited nurse anger and accelerated support.
In spring 2025, nurses secured a majority petition, demanded a vote and won. With the election behind them, the campaign has moved into first-contract bargaining, with negotiations underway since January and SEIU providing organizing, legal and bargaining resources to push for enforceable standards.
Across the country, nurses have been organizing, striking and bargaining for first contracts with a standard set of demands: safe staffing, fair pay and working conditions that allow caregivers to deliver the standard of care their patients deserve. At UPMC Magee Women’s Hospital in Pittsburgh, that national trend became a local campaign—built by nurses who say they were done absorbing system failures as “just the way healthcare is.”
On the America’s Work Force Union Podcast, registered nurses Adrienne Andrews and Sharece Abee described a union effort that moved from quiet conversations to a successful election and now into the difficult work of securing a first contract. Their story is a case study in how fear, burnout and corporate consolidation collide at the bedside—and how nurses can still build power when they decide patient advocacy must include workplace standards.
Andrews described nursing as a second career for her. After studying journalism and film in Georgia, she moved to Pittsburgh and chose healthcare because she wanted work rooted in purpose. She put herself through nursing school with a clear goal: to work at Magee Women’s Hospital and specialize in obstetrics.
Today, Andrews works in high-risk antepartum care, supporting patients whose pregnancies require close monitoring and complex medical management. Her description of the unit’s role emphasized whole-body care—an approach that reflects how maternity and women’s health can shift quickly from routine to high acuity.
Abee’s path began with a different motivation and evolved into a more profound commitment. She said she initially viewed nursing through the lens of career mobility and earning potential, but she then fell in love with patient care while working as a certified nursing assistant and later as an LPN. She became an ICU nurse and traveled during the pandemic, an experience she said revealed significant gaps in the healthcare system.
After becoming a mother in 2022, she returned to Pittsburgh and chose Magee—where she had delivered her child—because she felt called to the hospital and to improving it for patients and staff.
Abee said that when she started at Magee in March 2023, she saw a hospital with the capability to deliver exceptional care but a workforce strained by burnout and low morale. The day-to-day reality was not simply heavy workloads, she said, but a feeling of constantly “fighting the elements” of healthcare without adequate support.
The organizing spark came through a conversation with an OB resource nurse who described a growing movement on the obstetrics side of the hospital focused on improving patient care and nursing conditions. Abee said she immediately wanted in.
Andrews described the campaign in a broader context: UPMC’s regional footprint and the power imbalance nurses face when organizing against a dominant healthcare system. She described UPMC as a significant regional force that expands through acquisition and consolidation. In that environment, she said, organizing felt risky because the employer’s influence is so widespread.
In the years after the pandemic, Andrews said staffing and support did not fully recover. Nurses had carried the hospital through crisis conditions, and the lesson management appeared to take was that nurses would continue doing more with less.
The campaign did not move in a straight line. Andrews said a small group of nurses began with private conversations about what could be done to improve care. Early on, even the idea of a union felt intimidating.
As the effort grew, nurses met frequently with organizers from SEIU Healthcare PA. The campaign ran a card-signing effort that came close, but ultimately fell short of the majority needed to move forward. Andrews described that moment as devastating and said the group decided to pause and regroup.
Then conditions shifted. Management decisions angered nurses and reignited organizing energy, Andrews said. In spring 2025, the campaign relaunched with faster momentum and broader support. Nurses circulated a petition, reached a majority backing and demanded a vote.
They won.
Winning a vote did not erase what it took to get there. Abee described the anti-union messaging as relentless and exhausting. She said nurses were met with repeated claims that unionizing would reduce wages, limit raises, block communication with managers and restrict clinical supervisors from providing patient care.
She also described a workplace climate where nurses on the organizing committee felt publicly challenged and portrayed as self-interested rather than patient-focused. In her telling, management messaging attempted to separate “caring for patients” from “advocating for standards,” even though nurses viewed the two as inseparable.
Fear was one of the campaign’s biggest obstacles, Abee said. Nurses who previously had strong working relationships became hesitant to speak openly. Some avoided conversations entirely. She spent significant time trying to reassure coworkers that organizing was about improving conditions for everyone.
She also described how anti-union arguments were often delivered as “opinions” or “personal experience,” a framing that can blur the line between persuasion and fact for workers who are already stressed and uncertain.
With the election complete, the campaign has moved into first-contract negotiations—often the most difficult phase of a new union’s life.
Andrews said bargaining began in January and has included multiple long sessions lasting eight to nine hours. At this stage, she described negotiations as both substantive and relational: proposals are being exchanged, and both sides are testing how the bargaining relationship will function.
The nurses’ stated priorities remain rooted in patient care and working conditions, including staffing and the ability to implement evidence-based processes, she said.
Andrews credited SEIU with providing essential support across the campaign and into bargaining. She described organizers, negotiators and support staff as consistently present, responsive and prepared. She also emphasized that union resources translate into tangible capacity—communications materials, legal support and around-the-clock guidance that helps frontline workers navigate a complex process.
For nurses building a union in a high-pressure healthcare environment, that infrastructure can be the difference between a short-lived campaign and a durable organization capable of winning enforceable standards.
The Magee campaign reflects a broader shift in healthcare labor relations: nurses are increasingly unwilling to accept chronic understaffing and burnout as normal. They are also reframing union activity as a form of patient advocacy—an effort to align staffing, safety and professional standards with the realities of bedside care.
The vote at UPMC Magee Women’s Hospital was a milestone. The next milestone will be the first contract that turns organizing energy into enforceable language. Andrews and Abee made clear they understand the climb ahead.
They also made clear they are not climbing alone.
Every victory at the bargaining table starts with workers standing together. From the shop floor to the statehouse, hear how activists are fighting for better wages, safer conditions and a stronger future. Subscribe to the America’s Work Force Union Podcast to get the latest interviews with the leaders and organizers building worker power across America.