“WILL YOU MARRY ME, ED HOWE?”

Burlington Memorial Hospital nurses and other workers strode down the aisle to Aurora Health Care headquarters on W. Montana Street June 23 — in bridal gowns — to ask Aurora CEO Ed Howe, who is paid more than $3 million per year, to marry them.

Why all the talk about marriage? Aurora is demanding that Burlington healthcare workers take a cut in pension and healthcare benefits, positions that the nurses union, the Burlington Memorial Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals (FNHP) is fighting. During a recent bargaining session, a top Aurora official told the union’s negotiators that there’s a better way than collective bargaining to get a good pension.

“If you want better pensions, you should just marry well,” said Gene Krauklis, vice president of human resources for the southern region of Aurora Health Care.

“I can’t think of anything more demeaning and sexist,” said Pam Mueller, president of the Burlington Memorial Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals.

Aurora CEO Howe recently moved $1.3 million into his pension, according to a Racine Journal Times report. Meanwhile, nurses and other employees are faced with pension cuts.

Within the Aurora system, only the nurses and technicians at Burlington and Elkhorn hospitals are unionized. As a result, they have the ability to fight Aurora’s demands in contract negotiations.

Howe was in a meeting when the nurses arrived by bus at Aurora headquarters to demand pensions equal to the CEO’s. They left stacks of postcards for Howe at the front desk, then staged a brief rally outside.

Aurora officials refused to answer questions from reporters about the bevy of brides, instead issuing a statement of commitment to negotiation a new contract and criticizing “this silly display of street theater” for not moving the union and the health care conglomerate closer to an agreement.

Burlington Memorial Hospital is located in Racine County. At last check, Krauklis was still employed by Aurora.