Nashville, Tenn.-Nearly 100 union nurses from across the U.S. protested outside the April 27 Frist Family Gala at the Frist Art Museum in Nashville, Tenn., a black-tie event named for the family that founded and is a major shareholder in HCA, the largest for-profit health care company in the country. The protesting nurses work at HCA facilities, where they are in contract negotiations this year represented by National Nurses Organizing Committee/National Nurses United (NNOC/NNU), the largest union of nurses in the U.S. today.
“It was black-tie inside, but we were outside in red,” said Molly Zenker, RN at HCA-owned Mission Hospital in Asheville, N.C. “Nurses have protested this gala before to let the world know that the Frists fund galas and art museums by pillaging and plundering the hospitals that HCA buys up.” NNOC/NNU nurses have protested the previous two Frist Family Galas in 2022 and 2023, making this the third protest of the event in three years.
More than 10,000 nurses at 18 facilities in six states — Florida, Texas, North Carolina, Kansas, Missouri, and Nevada — are represented by NNOC/NNU in union contract negotiations with HCA this year. In bargaining, nurses are fighting for safer staffing, against unit closures and service cuts, and for responsible implementation of new technology like artificial intelligence. For more information on HCA facilities represented by NNOC/NNU, see here. To kick off bargaining with the health care giant, nurses at NNOC/NNU-represented facilities have held a series of rallies, including in Texas, North Carolina, Missouri, and two in Florida.