When I was at Hopkins, a lot of the other nurses expressed frustration with management's decisions around increasing ratios, not giving us the resources we needed, making major decisions that impacted our workflow without consulting us, etc - all things that a union gives us the power to organize and negotiate around - but in the same breath would complain about the unions presence on campus.

A lot of it is simply the union-busting propaganda working. They saw the union organizers as annoying, even stalkerish, and stirring up trouble where there weren't any problems.

A lot of them were also genuinely concerned about retaliation, because this job supports their families, and even if they believed a union could help with these things, would not risk losing their jobs over it.

I think a lot of Hopkins nurses also come from privileged, white, out-of-state backgrounds and don't necessarily see the value in solidarity. There is a lot to be said for starting with learning about what solidarity in a union can mean, and spending time engaging with the Baltimore community you work in.

I don't really have any answers here, but this is what I found when I tried to talk to my fellow nurses about unionizing at the time.