Union launches campaign urging patients to ‘insist on a registered nurse’

There’s no substitute for the professional judgment and personalized care nurses provide to their patients. That’s the message behind radio and online ads airing across the country, including in Minnesota, that advise the public to “insist on a registered nurse.” National Nurses United, the nation’s largest union of nurses (the Minnesota Nurses Association is a […]

Lunds gives downtown St. Paul a full-service, union grocery store

Good news: Downtown St. Paul finally has the full-service grocery store residents have been clamoring for. Even better news: It’s a union shop. After years of planning and waiting, Lunds opened a 27,000-square-foot store on the ground floor of the Penfield Apartments at 10th and Robert streets May 15. The store’s 80 workers are members […]

Hastings nurses OK contract with Allina

After waging a public campaign to gain parity with nurses at other Allina Health facilities in the Twin Cities, members of the Minnesota Nurses Association at Regina Medical Center in Hastings voted May 1 to accept a contract that comes up short in the areas of pension and health insurance – with a vow to […]

Panel explores new approaches to building a better economy

Cantaré Davunt nodded her head as Anne Winkler-Morey talked about struggling to make ends meet as an adjunct professor. To Davunt, the challenges adjunct faculty face – low wages, unreliable hours, few opportunities for advancement – sounded all too familiar to her experience as an associate at Walmart. Davunt and Winkler-Morey joined a panel discussion […]

Hastings nurses authorize strike as Allina sticks with second-rate offer

Union nurses are keeping the pressure on Allina Health to do right by their colleagues at Regina Medical Center in Hastings, where nurses voted yesterday to authorize their leadership to call a strike if contract talks break down. Meanwhile, about 100 nurses and supporters from the labor community staged informational picketing outside Allina-owned United Hospital […]

Nurses at Plymouth care center go union

Registered nurses at WestHealth Emergency Department and Urgent Care voted Feb. 13 in favor of joining the Minnesota Nurses Association, a health care facility based in Plymouth and operated by Abbott Northwestern. In the unit of 32 nurses, 92 percent voted in favor of joining MNA in balloting conducted by the National Labor Relations Board. […]

St. Paul Schools, teachers reach tentative agreement

Three days before members of the St. Paul Federation of Teachers were scheduled to take a strike-authorization vote, negotiators for the school district and the teachers’ union reached a tentative agreement on a two-year contract that will run through the 2014-15 school year. Teachers planned a ratification vote for March 4, and the union’s executive […]

NLRB proposes rule changes to modernize, streamline organizing elections

Seeking to hasten an organizing process ripe for obstruction and fraught with delays, the National Labor Relations Board today proposed changes to the rules governing elections that determine union representation in most U.S. workplaces. The NLRB, the federal agency that oversees union-organizing elections, voted 3-2 in favor of pursuing the rule change. In a press […]

Allina stonewalls Hastings nurses as contract talks continue

Negotiations on a new contract are dragging into the new year, but nurses at Regina Medical Center in Hastings, members of the Minnesota Nurses Association, continue to resist Allina Health’s effort to treat them differently than nurses in every other Allina hospital in the Twin Cities Metro Area. The two sides returned to the bargaining […]

UPDATED: Teamsters authorize strike at St. Paul Park refinery

Workers at Northern Tier refinery in St. Paul Park voted Dec. 16 to authorize their leadership to call a strike if the company continues to demand cuts that, workers say, “could dramatically undermine the safety of operations” at the facility. Northern Tier is in contract negotiations with about 200 members of Teamsters Local 120 who […]