Minnesota union members led the fight to secure bonus pay for 1 million frontline workers

October 4, 2022 by

“It was hard times, but we made it through,” said Keith Farr, a meat cutter at Lunds and Byerlys.

Over 1 million Minnesotans will begin receiving payments of $487.45 from the State of Minnesota this week as a token of public appreciation for their work on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic.

As emails carrying the news began appearing in workers’ inboxes yesterday, union members who led the push for bonus pay gathered at the Capitol in St. Paul to celebrate the victory with the lawmakers who carried the measure in the House and Senate.

“This is a thank you to those who made safe happen,” said Rachel Hanneman, an intensive care nurse who worked at Bethesda and St. Joseph’s hospitals during the pandemic.

A member of the Minnesota Nurses Association, Hanneman worked in coalition with members of other unions to demand lawmakers compensate all workers who, by showing up to their jobs, helped keep the state’s economy running during the COVID-19 emergency.

Union nurses and other coalition members notably rejected efforts last year, after the Legislature approved a $250 million bonus pool, to pit frontline workers against each other. They refused to accept a proposal that would have excluded thousands of retail, public service, hospitality and other workers from recognition payments, and they succeeded in lobbying for a larger allocation, which Gov. Tim Walz signed into law April 29.

“Every effort was made to include anyone who had no choice but to go to work in order to continue to receive a paycheck,” Hanneman said. “We stood firm that health care workers never carried the weight alone.”

Applications for frontline worker payments exceeded the number anticipated by state officials, which meant payments fell short of the estimate of $750 from last spring.

But for Gene Sparks, an EMT and member of SEIU Healthcare Minnesota and Iowa, the bonus delivers on the outpouring of gratitude he and other frontline workers received at the height of the pandemic, which, he said, “often felt like empty words.”

“So many of us, especially health care workers, faced unimaginable challenges during the first year of COVID,” said Sparks, who worked in the emergency department of St. Francis hospital in Shakopee. “Long shifts, uncertain procedures and the constant threat of infection to ourselves, our patients and our loved ones had many of us worried throughout the day and sleepless at night.”

“It’s better than nothing,” said Keith Farr, a meat cutter at Lunds and Byerlys. The father of three said he and his wife plan to put the money toward their rent payment.

“I’m just happy that we’re finally getting this payment,” he added. “It was hard times, but we made it through.”

Nearly 1.2 million Minnesotans submitted applications for frontline worker payments over the summer. Those who were initially denied payments had 15 days to appeal in August, and the Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry processed those appeals last month, with a final eligibility count of 1,025,655 workers.

Eligible applicants will receive an email from the state this week, and payments will go out by direct bank deposit or debit card, depending on which preference the applicant chose upon filing. Nicole Blissenbach, acting commissioner of the Department of Labor and Industry, said the agency will continue processing payments through the fall.

Lawmakers and workers applauded state employees for quickly developing an application and appeals process from scratch.

“It’s hard for me to believe it has only been a little over five months since this bill was signed into law by Gov. Walz,” Blissenbach said.

Two DFLers who authored the legislation, Rep. Cedrick Frazier of New Hope and Sen. Erin Murphy of St. Paul, agreed that it was a good day for workers in Minnesota – one that would not have come without the persistence of union members working in the frontline worker coalition.

“It did not cease to amaze me over the seven months that we listened to your stories the sacrifices that we did not know about that you all made,” Frazier said.

Added Murphy: “It is proof that when we lead with purpose and we persist despite entrenched politics, we can make progress for the people of Minnesota.”

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Union members push back on AT&T’s return-to-office plan

August 24, 2022 by

Charli Haataja shares the results of a survey showing AT&T call center workers are more productive and less likely to miss work when allowed to work from home.

AT&T will begin forcing workers to report to call centers in Minneapolis and Bloomington next month, a decision that members of Communications Workers (CWA) Local 7250 condemned as unnecessary, risky and costly for workers and their families.

Union members aired those grievances at a press conference today outside the United Labor Centre in Minneapolis. They said corporate executives abruptly backed out of an agreement reached with CWA earlier this month to extend the Work-From-Home (WFH) agreement in place since COVID-19 hit in March 2020.

“They drew up a contract and gave us a return-to-office date of March 31, 2023,” union steward Yolanda Olmo said. “The contract was signed, but in less than 24 hours AT&T came back and said they weren’t going to honor that contract.”

Call-center workers said absenteeism is down and productivity is up since they began working from home, with workers more likely to work through mild symptoms, illnesses to family members, extreme weather and other events that might prompt them to avoid the shared workspace.

“You want us to be in each other’s faces,” union steward Angela Bates said. “Now, we may not be able to be in our families’ faces.”

Yolanda Olmo

A survey of over 500 CWA members found an overwhelming majority reported concerns about rising commuter costs, COVID risks and the safety of AT&T’s downtown location. Local 7250 President Kieran Knutson said members are “more united and passionate” about keeping their WFH agreement than any issue in his 18 years with the union.

“Work From Home is our new normal,” Local 7250 Area Vice President Charli Haataja said. “If you’re going to change that for us, we want actual reasons why.”

AT&T has yet to provide a legitimate business reason for the return to in-person work, union members said.

“You say that you need us to come back to the office for collaboration,” Olmo said. “We are credit representatives that collect money. Why do we need to collaborate collecting money?”

Meanwhile, call center employee Sara Fry said, costs associated with returning to the office – parking, transit, gas, child care – will hit workers like a pay cut when the policy takes effect Sept. 21.

“We haven’t had a meaningful raise in over five years,” Fry said. “We didn’t have the money before COVID, and we can’t afford to go back to the office now.”

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Hospital nurses in Twin Cities, Duluth vote to authorize strike

August 16, 2022 by

Members of the Minnesota Nurses Association announce plans to take a strike vote.

Nurses at 15 Minnesota hospitals voted yesterday to authorize a strike, after union negotiators accused health care executives of refusing to bargain contracts that protect the safety of their patients and address the crisis facing their profession.

“What we are being forced to do is totally against every ethical principal that we have,” Minnesota Nurses Association (MNA) President Mary Turner said, choking back tears during a press conference announcing the strike vote. “But we have no choice.”

A strike could put as many as 15,000 nurses on the picket line at 12 hospitals in the Twin Cities and three in Duluth. According to the MNA, it would be one of the largest nursing strikes in U.S. history, and the first time Twin Cities and Twin Ports nurses went on strike together.

Bargaining units are legally obligated to give hospitals 10 days’ notice before any work stoppage.

MNA members have been in bargaining with the hospital systems – Allina Health, M-Health Fairview, Children’s, HealthPartners and North Memorial in the Twin Cities – since March. They have focused their contract campaign on improving patient care by investing in measures to keep hospital nurses at the bedside.

It’s the first round of talks since COVID-19 shocked the health care landscape, and MNA members – in the media, at the Capitol and via workplace actions – have been sounding the alarm about the toll staffing shortfalls are taking on patient care and staff morale.

A report issued by the Minnesota Department of Health earlier this month showed a 33% increase in adverse events in Minnesota hospitals from 2020 to 2021. Union leaders pinned the blame on short staffing and retention issues, noting MNA members’ own reports of unsafe staffing concerns have increased 300% since 2014.

“Our management, our leaders have failed,” said Amy McGlone, a nurse and member of the Children’s Hospital bargaining team. “They have failed us nurses, as well as the patients and families who come through our doors for care… What is happening in our hospitals is not safe and not sustainable.”

As the crisis continues to deepen, even more nurses are considering giving up on the profession or moving to positions away from the bedside, studies suggest.

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the Illinois Economic Policy Institute (ILEPI) issued a report in June that found 51% of surveyed nurses considered leaving the profession within the next year, and they cited short staffing and moral distress as the driving factors. That constitutes a “public health crisis,” Turner said, and it is a direct consequence of “corporate health care policies pursued by our hospital executives with million-dollar salaries.”

“Our management, our leaders have failed,” says Amy McGlone, a nurse and member of the Children’s Hospital bargaining team.

“Our integrity dictates we demand the kind of care that we would want for ourselves, our families and our loved ones – for every single patient that crosses our threshold,” said Meghan Matteson, an acute rehab nurse at Fairview Riverside.

“The best care possible is not receiving emergent care in a hallway. The best care possible is not having to wait hours for a higher level of care – sometimes days. The best care possible is not having nurses with more patients than we can care for safely. Unfortunately, this is our current reality.”

To turn the tide in their profession, Minnesota nurses are seeking new contracts that include wage increases and a seat at the table in decisions about staffing levels in their units.

They also want paid family leave, after many health care workers zeroed out their paid time off while isolating, quarantining or caring for family members affected by the pandemic. At least one hospital system, according to a nurse at the bargaining table, has responded to the request for paid family leave by suggesting nurses buy their own short-term disability insurance.

“Fairview has taken advantage of our goodwill during this pandemic and has highly normalized this chaotic staffing situation that we are currently in,” HealthEast nurse Katie Donner said. “We’ve risked our lives and the health of our families to care for our community. Our community recognizes us, so why won’t Fairview?”

The community may get an opportunity to show its support for nurses on the picket line soon, if the strike vote – which drew support from a “supermajority” of nurses who cast ballots – doesn’t prompt hospital executives to get serious about the union’s demands.

“We don’t take this decision lightly,” Turner said. “All 15,000 nurses want to be at the bedside, but we have been driven to this. We have tried to put forward proposals that would bring back nurses to the bedside, but they are not interested. For the safety of our patients, we need to take this action.”

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In memoir, United Hospital nurse reflects on experiences in COVID ICU

April 27, 2022 by

The cover photo for Amanda V. Peterson’s memoir was taken by Dr. Avi Nahum, who treated COVID patients at Regions Hospital.

After accepting a post in United Hospital’s COVID intensive care unit in March 2020, Amanda V. Peterson began writing as a form of what she calls “paper therapy.” Two years later, Peterson is a published author, and her memoir, “Everybody Just Breathe,” sold out its first press run in just three weeks.

The book, published by Beaver’s Pond Press in St. Paul, is a candid, emotionally charged reflection on Peterson’s experience as a nurse and mother during the global pandemic. Its subtitle is something of a warning: “A COVID Nurse Memoir of Stamina and Swear Words.”

“ICU nursing kind of brings swear words to begin with, but I counted it up and my COVID-to-Jesus-to-F-bomb ratio was pretty solid,” Peterson laughed.

“It’s a year in the life of me trying to survive, of everyone trying to survive,” she added. “All day long I was telling my patients, ‘Just breathe, that’s your one job,’ because no one could. Then it became my own mantra, my own way to escape.”

Peterson, a member of the Minnesota Nurses Association, lives in Hudson, Wis., with her husband and two children. She has worked as a registered nurse since 2006, and in the ICU at St. Paul’s United Hospital for the last 14 years.

When United created a stand-alone COVID ICU in the spring of 2020, Peterson was among those who volunteered to work inside. For a full year, she saw only COVID-19 patients, and after a brief respite in 2021, Peterson was back in the COVID ICU when it reopened to handle the Delta wave last fall.

For Peterson “it wasn’t even a question” as to whether she would volunteer to work in the COVID ward.

“This was everything we had trained for,” she said. “You knew this was going to be a pivotal moment in everyone’s career, and I couldn’t sit that out. I wanted to be able to tell my kids that their mom stepped up.”

Peterson did not initially intend to write a book about her experiences – she calls herself an author “by accident” – but began typing her thoughts into a Word document and, sometimes, posting on social media after the pandemic began.

“I wrote a lot on social media about trying to educate the public, urging everybody to bond together and explaining what we were going through in the hospital,” Peterson said. “And I also wrote at home to kind of document what I was going through, almost trying to get it out of me so I could absorb more.”

Every January, Peterson makes a bound photo album for her family of highlights from the previous year, and last year she decided to do the same with her writing, collecting it in a 75-page file. Peterson sent the file to two local publishers and asked if they could bind it together as a keepsake.

Amanda V. Peterson

“Within two weeks both had written back and said they wanted the rest of this story,” Peterson said. “I picked the one that was going to let me keep my swear words.”

The book was scheduled to print last fall, but when the Delta wave hit, Peterson decided to keep writing. It finally published March 28, and a second press run is already in the works.

Reader reaction, she said, has been overwhelmingly positive, with nurses across the country reaching out with their responses to the book. For Peterson, it’s been a form of validation.

“It’s been like, ‘This is how I felt, but does anyone else feel this way?’” Peterson said. “And the response has been, ‘Hell yes, we felt that way!’”

Just as the writing process was therapeutic for her, Peterson hopes the book can be therapeutic for readers as well. She worked with a mental health professional to compile a list of discussion prompts, included at the end of “Everybody Just Breathe.”

“We as nurses had to just ‘do’ for so long that you couldn’t emotionally pass through it because you had to keep going,” Peterson said. “Normally, ICU nurses are adept at having a crappy shift, going home and letting it go. We compartmentalize for a living.

“But the problem with COVID was that it was everywhere. Everybody else is living it too. It’s all over the news. There’s a fear factor. We don’t know what we’re dealing with. So people don’t want to hear about your bad day because they’re coping like you’re trying to cope. You couldn’t vent it out. You couldn’t let it go.”

Peterson continues writing online at thisnursemom.com, where you can also buy a copy of “Everybody Just Breathe.”

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Frontline workers’ focus turns to Senate after House passes bonus pay

February 25, 2022 by

As lawmakers debate bonus pay on the House floor, frontline workers rally outside the chamber.

The Minnesota House passed union-backed legislation yesterday that would deliver bonuses of up to $1,500 to the frontline, essential workers who have kept the state and its economy running during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Unions representing nurses, food-production workers, janitors, public employees and other workers called on Republicans who control the Senate to follow House members’ lead and take up the $1 billion measure, which would tap into the state’s projected $7.7 billion budget surplus.

“When everyone else was locked down safely in their homes, we were out there doing our job, and we continue to do our job,” Minnesota Nurses Association President Mary Turner, a nurse in the North Memorial intensive care unit, said during a press conference in advance of the House vote. “We deserve a little bit of recognition.”

Turner’s message to members of the Senate: “Do what is right to honor us and the work we did and that we continue to do.”

If the House bill becomes law, an estimated 667,000 Minnesotans would be eligible for payments.

The measure limits eligibility to workers who logged at least 120 hours in frontline positions between March 15, 2020, and June 30, 2021. It also would restrict workers who collected more than 20 weeks’ worth of unemployment benefits from accessing the funds.

But the bill faces an uphill climb in the Senate, as Republicans have sought to carve out a much narrower slice of frontline workers eligible for pandemic bonuses since debate over the issue began last summer.

In July, Minnesota lawmakers agreed to create a $250 million fund to compensate essential workers, but a bipartisan working group failed to reach an agreement on which workers should be included.

Republicans blocked any plan that did not narrowly target health care workers, first responders, long-term-care workers and correctional officers. But Sen. Erin Murphy, a DFLer from St. Paul, called it “unconscionable” to exclude food-processing workers, custodians, child care providers and others on the front lines.

“There are so many people who did their part, and today the Republicans are serving as a roadblock to recognizing their unique contributions at a time when they continue to put themselves in harm’s way,” Murphy said. “It’s time for the Senate Republican majority to get off the dime and to do their work.”

As lawmakers debated the bill on the House floor last night, frontline workers rallied outside the chamber. Members of a coalition of unions and other worker advocacy groups pledged not to be divided as they push for legislation that recognizes the sacrifices of all Minnesotans who showed up to work.

“Other frontline workers supported us inside and outside the hospital,” Turner said, looking back on the early days of the pandemic. “At least I had one N95. They had nothing.”

“I thank you as a Minnesotan for what you’ve done to allow myself and my family to stay safe, but also have the services we need to continue moving forward – and I know that all Minnesotans appreciate you as well,” said Rep. Cedrick Frazier (D-New Hope). “I am imploring our senators on the GOP side to move this bill forward…

“Let’s get together, let’s get it passed and let’s honor all of our essential workers.”

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As staffing crisis deepens, DFL lawmakers respond with bill to keep nurses at bedside

February 4, 2022 by

Nurses and lawmakers hold a press conference to unveil the Keeping Nurses at the Bedside Act.

Minnesota lawmakers are taking aim at the staffing crisis in Minnesota hospitals and its crushing toll on registered nurses and their mental health.

Members of the Minnesota Nurses Association joined DFL lawmakers at a Capitol press conference Thursday. They unveiled legislation that would set a hard cap on the number of patients under any nurse’s charge, require hospitals to be more transparent and give nurses a say in unit-specific staffing limits in their hospitals.

The Keeping Nurses at the Bedside Act would also direct funds to recruit and retain nurses, including $5 million for student loan forgiveness, and it would fund new mental health programs for hospital staff.

Sen. Erin Murphy, a registered nurse and the bill’s chief author, called the measure “a hyperlocal, hospital-by-hospital approach” to dealing with the staffing crisis.

“This is no quick fix,” she said. “This is a comprehensive proposal to prepare and retain Minnesota’s nurses at the bedside.”

Sen. Melissa Lopez Franzen listens to MNA member Becky Nelson (L) and retired member Jean Forman talk about conditions in hospitals.

Union nurses have been clamoring for action on unsafe staffing levels in their hospitals since long before the COVID-19 pandemic began, making the issue a focal point of their contract and legislative campaigns.

But the pandemic has deepened the crisis. As hospitals buckled under the pressure of multiple COVID-19 waves, some nurses opted to take more lucrative work as temporary “travelers,” while others, like Jean Forman, opted to leave the profession rather than watch standards further erode.

“I left knowing that my moral compass no longer aligned with my employer’s, and that was really hard,” said Forman, who retired from her job as an intensive care nurse at Abbott Northwestern last year.

Becky Nelson, chair of MNA’s Government Affairs Commission, has stuck with her job at Abbott, but the stress of being asked “to do more with less” has led to depression and stress-related hair loss, she said.

While nurses are “putting their physical and mental well being on the line,” St. Joseph’s nurse Daniel Clute added, the impact of short staffing on patient care “keeps us up at night, haunting us.”

Nelson and Clute aren’t the only ones speaking up. Over 200 MNA members joined a virtual town hall with legislators last month, flooding the chat with heartbreaking stories from the front lines and pleas for assistance.

MNA President Mary Turner, a nurse in North Memorial’s COVID ICU, said members reported more than four times as many incidents of unsafe staffing in their hospitals last year – 7,800 reports statewide – as they did in 2014.

The staffing crisis “keeps us up at night, haunting us,” said St. Joseph’s nurse Daniel Clute.

“The thing is, it’s the patients who suffer,” Turner said. “It’s the patients who don’t get turned every hour and a half to two. It’s the patients who don’t get their bathing done. It’s the patients who don’t get the help eating. It’s the medication that maybe isn’t given on time. It’s the treatments that don’t get done…

“We are here because we, honest to God, are seeing that our patients are suffering, and it is intolerable to us.”

Gov. Tim Walz has earmarked $40 million in federal relief funds to reinforce staffing – primarily among nurses – in Minnesota hospitals this winter. Members of the Minnesota National Guard are also deployed to some hospitals.

But the legislation unveiled yesterday, Nelson said, is the kind of long-term solution needed “to ensure hospital executives adhere to the staffing grids they set, and that there are programs in place to support nurses at the bedside, where we want to be.”

Added Clute: “We aren’t trying to sink hospital systems with unreasonable demands. We’re trying to preserve the quality and standards that will keep Minnesota being one of the best states for health care for years to come. We’re trying to protect our patients and our practice.”

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As session begins, Minnesota unions see opportunity for investments in infrastructure, frontline workers

January 31, 2022 by

Essential workers marched outside the Capitol during a union rally last summer.

With a projected $7.7 billion budget surplus, state lawmakers have an historic opportunity, union leaders said, to fully invest in public services, infrastructure and frontline workers during the 2022 legislative session, which began today.

Lawmakers traditionally take up capital investments – the so-called “bonding bill” – in even-numbered years, but the record surplus, coupled with unspent federal pandemic relief funds, could allow for more broad spending measures this year, including long-delayed compensation for frontline workers.

Unions also plan to lobby for pro-worker policy changes like paid family leave, and to remain vigilant in preventing attacks on existing worker rights and protections from gaining traction.

While Gov. Tim Walz and a labor friendly DFL majority in the House have expressed an appetite for robust investments and pro-worker policies, the outlook is less rosy in the Senate, where Republicans hold a narrow majority.

“The Senate has proven to be an obstacle – if not a roadblock – for years to paid family and medical leave, as well as more recently frontline worker pay,” said Melissa Hysing, the Minnesota AFL-CIO’s legislative and strategic research director. “The challenge is always going to be the Senate.”

Minnesota unions are sure to advance their own priorities to the Capitol with solidarity from the labor community. But here’s a look at the agenda unions crafted together as part of the Minnesota AFL-CIO, which unites over 1,000 affiliate unions and 300,000 working people.

Union tradespeople called on lawmakers to pass a bonding bill outside the Capitol in 2020.

• Infrastructure jobs

Not only is it a bonding year, but the $1 trillion federal infrastructure bill, signed into law by President Joe Biden last November, gives Minnesota an opportunity to leverage additional funds for capital investment and create tens of thousands of family-sustaining jobs.

The Minnesota Building and Construction Trades Council, the voice of the state’s construction unions, praised Walz’s Local Jobs and Projects Plan, unveiled earlier this month. In a statement, Executive Director Tom Dicklich said the $2.7 billion infrastructure bill would leverage funding to support “statewide projects for years to come.”

“The passage of the Local Jobs and Projects act will provide an opportunity to create a solid pipeline of projects that can sustain the construction industry and the jobs it provides,” Dicklich said. “We thank Governor Walz and his team for putting forward this plan and urge all lawmakers to work together to make these needed investments in the jobs and infrastructure that Minnesota deserves.”

At a rally in downtown Minneapolis in December 2021, advocates called on legislators to stop playing politics with a fund created to compensate essential workers.

• Frontline worker pay

Last July, Minnesota lawmakers set aside $250 million in funds to compensate essential workers for keeping the state running during the COVID-19 pandemic. But workers never received a penny, as lawmakers on a bipartisan working failed to agree on who should be eligible.

Republicans on the working group blocked any plan that did not direct the payments to a narrow pool of health care workers, first responders and long-term-care workers. But unions, including the Minnesota Nurses Association, argued against excluding any frontline worker.

Hysing said the Minnesota AFL-CIOwill support Walz’s proposal to give each of the state’s estimated 667,000 frontline workers a $1,500 bonus, calling it “unfinished business.”

Julie Bleyhl, executive director of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Council 5, called Senate Republicans “disrespectful” for seeking to exclude retail workers, bus drivers, janitors and others from the payments. Many Minnesotans have churned through their paid time off – or gone without pay – to quarantine or provide care for themselves and their families.

“While the need for public services has increased dramatically for many years, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a particularly devastating impact on our workforce, through forced overtime and COVID-19 exposure,” Bleyhl said. “That is why our union remains steadfast in our commitment to fighting for frontline worker bonus pay for all frontline worker heroes.”

• Paid family leave

In more unfinished business, the Minnesota AFL-CIO will continue to co-chair a statewide coalition of labor, faith and community organizations lobbying to extend paid family and medical leave benefits to all workers in the state.

The coalition supports creating a statewide insurance pool that would cover the cost of replacement wages for workers who take time off for the birth or adoption of a child, or to be with an ailing family member. Workers would be eligible for up to 12 weeks of leave, with benefits ranging from 55 to 80 percent of their typical wages.

The program is included in Walz’s proposed spending package, and House DFL leaders have proposed using part of the budget surplus to pre-fund benefits for two years.

“Working people should never be forced to choose between a paycheck and taking care of themselves and the people they love, and lawmakers can take action so we never have to make that choice again,” Minnesota AFL-CIO President Bill McCarthy said.

• Workers’ Compensation eligibility

Unions will encourage lawmakers to extend the law, passed in 2020, creating a presumption that first responders and health care workers who contract COVID-19 did so on the job, making them eligible for Workers Compensation benefits.

• Wage theft

Despite passing with bipartisan support in 2019, Minnesota’s new wage theft law – the strongest in the nation – has been a target of attempts to weaken its protections and soften penalties on offending employers. Hysing pointed to Republican proposals last year that would have stripped language requiring employers to notify new workers of their wages before their first shift.

“So workers wouldn’t know until after they’ve received their first paycheck what they’re supposed to receive,” she said. “One of the first defenses against wage theft is workers knowing what they’re supposed to be paid – that shared understanding between the worker and employer about what the wage is for work performed.

“We will continue to work to maintain these hard-won protections and make sure workers get paid for the work they’ve done.”

For updates on the Minnesota AFL-CIO’s work at the Capitol and alerts about how to take action, follow the federation on Facebook and Twitter, sign up for text and e-mail alerts.

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After hitting the streets, Ramsey County workers win raises

January 26, 2022 by

Ramsey County AFSCME members hold informational picketing in downtown St. Paul.

By showing up in force outside the Ramsey County Courthouse, members of five AFSCME locals persuaded county negotiators to put their proposed wage freeze on ice.

In bargaining that began Dec. 29 – one day after workers rallied – and stretched into the early-morning hours, the local unions reached tentative agreements on new contracts with the county that, if ratified, will increase wages by 6% over three years, in addition to one-time bonuses for staff who worked on the front lines of the pandemic.

“With over 200 members and allies, we showed the county employer and the residents of Ramsey the solidarity that we have as workers,” public health nurse Douangta Vang-Sitcler said. “This is the largest level of local union mobilization we have seen in many years.”

Vang-Sitcler’s union, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 8, bargained with the county alongside locals 151, 707, 1076 and 1935. AFSCME members ratified the contracts, which cover thousands of workers, in voting that concluded last week.

The new agreements expand eligibility for paid parental leave and make Juneteenth a holiday, among other gains. The union bargaining team also succeeded in beating back steep increases to workers’ medical and dental insurance costs, in addition to the proposed wage freeze.

But the county didn’t get serious about workers’ demands until union members got loud outside the courthouse. Ramsey County locals planned the Dec. 28 rally with support from AFSCME Council 5, and tapped into solidarity from across the labor community.

 

“Many of our members are Ramsey County residents or grew up in this county like I did, so our hearts belong to this community, our community,” Vang-Sitcler said. “We’re dedicated to serving the residents, especially right now with the world events that we are experiencing and the impacts of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.

“I hope the county board heard what we had to say about who we are and why we are here working for them. I hope that made a difference and continues to make a difference moving forward.”

Julie Bleyhl, executive director of AFSCME Council 5, credited members for sticking together to demand a better offer from the county.

“Unions are the most powerful, people-centered movements that lift up the standards of living for all working people,” she said. “To our members: The historic level of activism you have shown in the form of calling and emailing County Commissioners, signing petitions, attending an informational picket during a snowstorm, talking to your co-workers, and voting on your next contract are all emblematic of the times we are all living in – that workers call for dignity and respect for the work they do and won’t accept anything less.”

But Vang-Sitcler, who served on the bargaining team, said AFSCME members can’t afford to let their guard down, even though bargaining may be over.

“We represent workers from multiple job classes and salary ranges across the county, and we recognize that today’s inflationary market may impact each family’s economics and budgets differently,” she said. “Ultimately, our TA was recommended … with the realization we will continue our collective efforts to push back on any future harmful proposals.”

Filed Under: Organizing, Union Events Tagged With: , , ,

Quick fix for staffing crisis not enough, hospital nurses warn

January 21, 2022 by

One day after Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz announced a $40 million plan to bolster hospital staffing with temporary hires, long-serving nurses from many of the state’s hospitals met with state and federal lawmakers to make clear that the crisis demands more than a quick fix.

The virtual town hall Jan. 13 drew over 200 participants, with members of the Minnesota Nurses Association logging on to sound the alarm about dangerously low staffing levels in their hospitals.

Many pinned the blame on administrators for ignoring signs of trouble well before the COVID-19 pandemic began. “This problem was not created overnight,” Allina nurse Vanessa Soldo-Jones said.

Without meaningful action to change the way hospital systems conduct their business in Minnesota, nurses warned, staffing shortfalls will only worsen, threatening the state’s reputation for quality patient care.

“We are tired of delivering substandard care and putting patients at increased risk due to lean staffing,” United Hospital nurse Ali Marcanti said. “Hospital administration has been cutting back on staffing year after year, with staffing grid changes that take very little patient acuity into account.”

Marcanti, Soldo-Jones and other union members offered a series of dire reports from the front lines of a pandemic that has strained Minnesota’s health care system. They described treating patients in hallways, leaving patients’ hygiene needs unmet and being tasked with transporting bodies to trailers serving as makeshift morgues.

“There is very often a list in the double digits of patients who are waiting for a bed to open up,” Abbott Northwestern intensive care nurse Kelly Anaas said. “But we don’t have enough nurses to staff all the ICU beds.”

Sue Schroeder, a mental health nurse who works with adolescents at Abbott Northwestern, said violent incidents in her unit have increased since administrators altered staffing minimums for nurses and support staff last spring.

Nine of her colleagues, Schroeder said, have sustained injuries severe enough to require extended medical leave, but administrators have given no indication that they intend to reverse course on staffing levels. “This is unconscionable,” she said.

Nurses described a snowball effect to the staffing crisis; the worse it gets, the more likely others are to leave the profession. Doreen McIntyre, a nurse at Children’s in Minneapolis, said she doesn’t blame colleagues who, after a wage cut, furloughs and two rounds of layoffs, decided to walk.

“Every day I work, nurses are making plans for the future, and the future does not sometimes include being a nurse anymore,” she said. “I also have had many days where I have weighed my options also.”

Burnout, Marcanti added, doesn’t begin to describe how nurses are feeling. And they aren’t alone. Weeks earlier, members of SEIU Healthcare Minnesota who work in hospitals held a similar event to voice concerns about their short staffing in their ranks.

“Every day we go home after a full, 8- to 16-hour shift of providing substandard care, it takes a little piece of us,” Marcanti said. “Every day we walk out that door knowing we could have done so much more for you if we were adequately staffed.”

In addition to their exhaustion and frustration, hospital nurses on the call expressed a shared perception that administrators have been alarmingly out of touch with what’s happening in their units. And it’s not for nurses’ lack of speaking up.

Nurses at Children’s Hospital, McIntire said, filed over 3,000 reports of unsafe staffing in 2021. Abbott Northwestern nurse Adiam Midekssa said she was sent home from her shift and disciplined for refusing to take more patients than she felt she could safely manage.

“I requested that the assignment be modified so I could provide safe patient care, but I was denied that and sent home,” Midekssa said. “Our goal is to keep our patients and ourselves safe, and I feel like things need to change so we can do that.”

The town hall meeting came a day after Gov. Tim Walz announced the state would spend $40 million in federal relief funds to reinforce staffing – primarily among nurses – in Minnesota hospitals. The funding will stretch across 60-day period.

The move was accompanied by calls from some lawmakers to allow nurses with licenses from other states to practice in Minnesota – a move union nurses warned would undermine the high quality of care Minnesotans expect.

“There is no surplus of nurses in other states,” MNA President Mary Turner, an ICU nurse at North Memorial, said. “We are training more than enough nursing students to meet the need here in Minnesota, but CEO’s have made our hospitals into places that push our nurses away from the bedside to serve the bottom line.”

Instead of lowering standards, union members said, hospitals and lawmakers should be doing more to retain registered nurses and bring those who have left the profession back into the fold. Equitable compensation, more training opportunities and greater flexibility, nurses said, should be part of the solution.

“What I’d like to see from the hospital administrators is a little more recognition of our humanity and our limits,” Anaas said. “The stresses that every single person … is living through as a result of this pandemic are happening to nurses too – and then we go to work.”

The solution must also include taking nurses’ concerns about safe staffing and quality care to heart, said Sen. Erin Murphy, herself a registered nurse. Lawmakers and hospital administrators too often have tuned out those concerns, despite work stoppages, lobbying campaigns and thousands of reports documenting unsafe staffing, Murphy said.

“For more than a decade you have been telling us that staffing is inadequate in the hospitals in Minnesota,” the St. Paul DFLer said. “You have brought to bear countless, thousands of unsafe staffing forms. You have come and testified. You have asked for relief. Part of the reason we are experiencing what we are experiencing now is because the hospitals were never prepared for this level of crisis.”

Filed Under: Community, Politics Tagged With: , , , , ,

Essential workers call bonus pay holdup ‘a slap in the face’

December 6, 2021 by

At a rally in downtown Minneapolis, advocates call on legislators to stop playing politics with a fund created to compensate essential workers.

What do nurses, janitors, educators and other essential workers want from state lawmakers this holiday season? They spelled it out last week during a rally and march through downtown Minneapolis.

“Quit playing politics and get the job done,” Minnesota Nurses Association President Mary Turner said, standing alongside a chain of essential workers holding large, block letters spelling out “ESSENTIAL PAY.”

In July, Minnesota lawmakers set aside $250 million in state funds to compensate essential workers for keeping the state running during the COVID-19 pandemic.

But workers have yet to receive a penny from that fund, and it appears unlikely they will before the 2022 legislative session convenes Jan. 31.

That’s because legislators on a bipartisan working group failed to reach agreement on who should be eligible for payments.

Republicans refused to budge from their position that a smaller pool of workers – including health care workers, long-term-care staff and first responders – should be compensated, while DFLers insisted on including grocery clerks, cleaning workers and child care providers like Tamara Greene, who directed her comments at the rally to GOP legislators.

“Tell us your justification for excluding us from this bill,” said Greene, director of All Ages & Faces Academy in St. Paul. “We want to know. We find it an insult and an absolute slap in the face.”

DFLers on the committee accused Republicans of rejecting their compromise proposal, which would have cast a wider net while compensating some workers more than others.

Turner, a nurse in the North Memorial hospital intensive care unit, said the GOP wouldn’t succeed in its attempt to divide essential workers.

“That’s not going to fly,” she said. “It never has, and it never will.

“The reason is because I have been at the bedside, along with our other nurses. People from security and cleaning and teaching and the food industry and every other industry represented here – we have been at their deathbeds. We have seen the number of essential workers that have died.”

Lawmakers could supplement the fund with additional dollars, but it would require Gov. Tim Walz to call a special session, giving Republican Senators an opportunity to act on threats from some in the caucus to remove Department of Health Commissioner Jan Malcolm, an architect of the state’s pandemic response.

As the political fight drags on, workers like Angie Halseth, a caseworker at Lino Lakes Correctional Facility, are left wondering if the compensation they were promised will ever come. A member of the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees, Halseth described the additional duties tacked onto her workload during the pandemic, like administering temperature checks to inmates in quarantine.

“But like so many, extra work is just the start of the hardships,” she added. “We’ve all worried that our jobs will make us or our families sick. I’ve had several colleagues become ill from COVID-19 outbreaks at our facilities, including one who gave COVID to their pregnant wife and elderly in-laws.”

Activists were also keen to point out that CEOs in Minnesota have taken exorbitant bonuses and pay raises during the pandemic, while workers in their companies’ warehouses, on their shop floors and elsewhere on the front lines see their “hero pay” held up at the Capitol.

The event began on the sidewalk outside the Ameriprise Financial building, where workers hoisted a large photo of CEO James Caracchiolo with the tagline, “This guy got a 283% raise last year!”

“We are a state that is lucky to have more resources available,” Halseth said. “I am asking the state to spend those resources helping our frontline workers try to be whole again.”

Filed Under: Labor Voices, Politics Tagged With: , , , , , ,
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