Registered nurses at Sutter Tracy Community Hospital in Northern California this week voted to join the California Nurses Association/National Nurses United (CNA/NNU). The more than 150 nurses say they faced an aggressive anti-union campaign of surveillance and harassment.

But according to many nurses who voted to join CNA/NNU, those tactics backfired, underscoring the need for union representation. RN Clarissa Concepcion says:

It’s been very oppressive since 2005, when Sutter came in to this hospital. Now, with the union representing us, there will be democracy and equality. I feel like I’m in the United States rather than somewhere else.

Nurses say the key issues that galvanized the RNs to organize centered on patient protection provisions that already exist in CNA-represented Sutter hospitals. Dotty Nygard, an emergency room RN, says:

Sutter has been dreaming up takeaways, while hiring anti-union consultants, diverting resources that hurt patient care. But we stood up to that pressure, and now we’ve won, and patients and RNs alike will be better off in a CNA-represented Sutter hospital.

Overall, CNA/NNU now represents 6,200 RNs at 16 Sutter facilities, one of the biggest and wealthiest hospital chains in California.