"We're prepared to be here all night if we have to."

That was the latest word from Teamsters Local 743's Catherine Schutzius, chief negotiator in the union's bargaining with administrators at the University of Chicago Medical Center. I called her nearly two hours after her meeting with managers there was scheduled to begin yesterday afternoon.

The union is negotiating over wages and health-care benefits for about 1,400 of its members at the hospital. The workers, who include clerical, service and maintenance employees at the medical center, say they deserve better than what's on the table. But hospital officials say it's a tough time for business, pointing to budget cuts and layoffs at the hospital earlier this year.

"It is a very difficult economic climate, and a lot of industries have been forced to get concessions from their staff," says hospital spokesman John Easton. "So just breaking even is progress in the current environment."

Easton mentioned $100 million in budget cuts and about 450 layoffs at the hospital during the winter and spring, and he said no one at the hospital received a raise during the current fiscal year.

He wouldn't comment on details of the talks, saying they're still in flux.

But according to union officials, administrators made a "final offer" last month that would freeze wages for some workers, hike health-care payments by as much as 10 percent and threaten their overall job security. They say more than 93 percent of members who voted on the proposal came out against it.

Union representatives say the offer is unfair because, despite a national economic downturn, the hospital seems to be doing just fine.

"The University of Chicago is not in financial trouble," Local 743 President Richard Berg said during a rally at the university, hours before he met with administrators. "We know there's a downturn, but it has not affected this place."

Berg said management's offer seems hypocritical since top officials at the medical center make six- and seven-figure salaries. In one flier, the union cites a 2006 Internal Revenue Service report that details salaries for top executives at the hospital: former Chief Executive Officer James Madara made $1.7 million, and Vice President Lawrence Furnstahl, $820,369.

"The fact is, we're not even demanding our fair share of the pie," Berg said.

Kendra Mitchell, a nursing assistant at the hospital's neurology department, says she makes $15.45 an hour. That's less than $4 over her starting pay seven years ago, she says, and now hospital administrators want to cut her bonus and raise health-care payments for her, her husband and her 1-year-old son.

"We need to be able to save," she says. "They look down on the nurses' assistants as if it's not a professional job," she says. "It is. We're the ones that comfort the patients. The nurses don't have time to sit down and give them empathy. They need to recognize that."

Leonard Charley, who makes beds and cleans up around the hospital, says that since the layoffs, he's been doing the work of two and three people.

"The patient care actually goes down because you can't concentrate on one job, even if it's just little things like cleaning his trash," he said.

He says he makes $15.45 an hour, less than $6 over his starting pay at the hospital 11 years ago.

"It's a struggle every pay period to figure out how you're going to pay this and that, and what you're going to do," he told me. "We want a fair contract and decent wages."