HealthPartners workers strike at Stillwater Medical Group

July 8, 2025 by

SEIU bargaining team members Heather Eggers (L) and Ellie Conway lead a rally on the picket line at Stillwater Medical Group.

United “like never before,” a bargaining unit of 80 workers at HealthPartners Stillwater Medical Group began a four-day strike this morning, escalating their campaign for a new union contract that delivers wage gains and longevity bonuses.

Members of SEIU Healthcare Minnesota and Iowa on strike at SMG include licensed practical nurses, certified medical assistants and other workers in the facility’s family-medicine, OB/GYN, pediatrics and specialties departments.

On the picket line, union members said they felt stung by HealthPartners’ decision to fork over money to temporary workers and pay overtime wages, rather than meet their bargaining team halfway and avoid a strike.

Workers voted last month, with near-unanimous support, to authorize a strike. In talks since then, the employer “has barely moved in their proposals,” LPN and bargaining team member Kelly Parent said.

“We tried to come down with our numbers,” CMA Ellie Conway, another member of the bargaining team, added. “Unfortunately, they didn’t reciprocate.”

Heather Eggers, a CMA and union negotiator, said SMG workers have taken on more responsibilities in recent years, as the facility struggled with short staffing. She said HealthPartners needs to offer more than just a “thank you.”

“The cost of living is rising, and we need HealthPartners to step up,” Eggers said. “They keep saying we are working together for the common good. If that’s the case, then why isn’t our leadership working for us, the workers?”

Workers walk the picket line at HealthPartners Stillwater Medical Group.

Although SMG is under the HealthPartners umbrella, workers’ wages and benefits lag behind those earned by many of their peers in the system. SMG workers bargain on their own, outside a larger SEIU contract that covers over two dozen HealthPartners sites in the metro.

“We’re doing the same work for the same company,” said Conway, who has worked at SMG for over five years. “We believe we deserve the same wages and bonuses.”

SMG workers don’t expect to make up the difference with one contract, but Conway said they intend to do better than the “chump change” in HealthPartners’ most recent proposal, which amounts to raises of less than $1 per hour for many in the bargaining unit.

“We refuse to accept that this is the best HealthPartners has to offer us,” she said. “It feels like the money makes its way to corporate leadership but skips right past the front line.”

The unit came into contract negotiations this spring fired up, having beat back an attempt to decertify their union just weeks before bargaining began. Workers voted to keep their union, with 72% support.

“The employer was very vocal in the decertification about how they could work with us so much better without a union,” Conway said. “Fortunately, the members saw through those empty promises.

“Like never before, our union is ready to stand together and demand better working conditions.”

Union members plan to picket from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. each day of the strike, scheduled to end Friday. SMG is located at 1500 Curve Crest Blvd.

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

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Appeals court sides with home care workers’ union – again

January 18, 2018 by

Minnesota PCAs who worked Monday – on MLK Day – received holiday pay for the first time, thanks to a new provision in their union contract with the state.

A day later, home care workers received more good news. The Minnesota Court of Appeals ruled against a group seeking to roll back holiday pay and other gains workers and their clients have made through collective bargaining by decertifying their union.

Corey Van Denburgh, a home care worker from Anoka, said he was relieved the court decision would preserve advances made since workers organized in 2014.

“We’ve won sick pay for the first time, raised the wage floor by $3 per hour, won free access to trainings, won over $150,000 in back-pay awards for workers who were underpaid, built an online matching registry to help home clients find the workers they need and established time-and-a-half pay for holidays, among other gains,” Van Denburgh said. “Through these accomplishments, we are finally beginning to address the severe care crisis in our state, which has only been getting worse for years because of the low pay and lack of benefits provided for this important work.”

It was the latest legal setback for MNPCA, an anti-union group that petitioned the state Bureau of Mediation Services in December 2016 for a decertification election. But MNPCA fell far short of collecting signatures from 30 percent of home care workers represented by the union – the threshold necessary to trigger a vote, according to state law.

When the BMS rejected its decertification petition, MNPCA sued. In Tuesday’s ruling, a panel of three Appeals Court judges upheld the BMS’s decision.

Still, it’s unlikely to be the last legal Hail Mary for the well-funded MNPCA, which has ties to right-wing legal funds and shadowy think tanks like the Center of the American Experiment. MNPCA has been pestering home care workers’ union, SEIU Healthcare Minnesota, with lawsuits since before workers voted to organize.

Van Denburgh, a vice president of his union, called MNPCA’s efforts a “tragic misuse of time and energy.”

“As home care workers and people who receive home care services, we resolved to never let these extremist attacks stop us from making progress for the people of Minnesota, nearly every one of which will need home care services at some point in our lives,” he said.

“Whether Democrat or Republican, we all have been or will be impacted by the shortage of caregivers because of low pay and lack of benefits, so I hope we can put these divisive court cases and anti-union attack campaigns behind us. Let’s come together to make sure every Minnesotan can get safe, quality care and stay in their home with their loved ones.”

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Workers stand up to union busting at Lakeville rail company

January 15, 2013 by
Corey Plath, president of UTU Local 911, representing workers at Progressive Rail, talks to workers on the informational picket line.

Corey Plath, president of UTU Local 911, representing workers at Progressive Rail, talks to workers on the informational picket line.

Progressive Rail is harassing, intimidating and firing its workers in an attempt to supplant their union, leaders and members of the United Transportation Union said during informational picketing outside the company this morning.

Eight workers at the Lakeville-based railway have been fired or harassed into resignation since February 2012, when a union contract covering 12 employees went into effect at company.

Their replacements, fired workers say, have been hand picked by management to support a company-backed “sham union” over the UTU in an upcoming decertification election.

Phil Qualy, UTU state legislative director, said enough union supporters remain eligible to vote down the decertification drive. The informational picket, which drew more than 40 UTU members from across the state, was designed to show Progressive Rail workers their union is behind them.

“We show up and support our guys,” Qualy said. “It doesn’t matter if it’s 1,000 members or it’s one member, we’re going to stand as the UTU for our brothers and sisters.”

Union supporters targeted

Stewart Howe (left) and Mike Bargmann are appealing Progressive Rail's grounds for firing them last year.

Stewart Howe (left) and Mike Bargmann are appealing Progressive Rail’s grounds for firing them last year.

In addition to challenging the decertification drive, the union has appealed the firings of Progressive Rail workers like Stewart Howe and Mike Bargmann, who say they were targeted by management because of their support for the UTU.

Howe, a locomotive engineer active in efforts to organize a union at Progressive Rail three years ago, was fired for exceeding the maximum speed on a locomotive – even though the conductor with him during the alleged incident received no disciplinary action at all.

Bargmann, a conductor fired for “insubordination that never occurred,” wasn’t with the company when workers voted 11-1 in favor of joining UTU in 2009. Still, he refused to join the decertification drive – and claims he lost his job as a result.

“About a month before (being fired), I was asked by a fellow conductor to sign a sheet of paper saying that I wanted the UTU out of here,” Bargmann said. “I didn’t want to sign it because I know the UTU is a good thing to have in place here.

“Without the UTU, the working conditions and pay would be atrocious.”

Indeed, some UTU members at Progressive Rail gained a $14,000 raise in one year after implementation of the collective bargaining agreement. UTU members also gained access to representation during disputes with the company over safety and working conditions.

Workers’ rights don’t depend on railroad size

Several so-called “short-line” railroads like Progressive Rail have taken over operations from large carriers like Canadian Pacific in recent decades. Unions say the “short-lines” are designed to avoid union contracts and lower wage and benefits for rail workers.

But Phil Craig, a member of the UTU Executive Board who traveled from Mankato to attend the Progressive Rail picket, said workers at railroads big and small deserve the right to form unions freely, without intimidation or harassment from their employers.

“We want these guys to understand everybody’s standing behind them,” Craig said. “They’ve got 190,000 brothers and sisters that are supporting them to maintain the UTU on this property.”

The UTU is a division of SMART (Sheet Metal Air, Rail Transit) union, which has 190,000 members nationwide, including 1,200 in Minnesota.

Progressive Rail’s decertification vote is scheduled to begin by mail Jan. 29, Qualy said.

The union is planning to stage another informational picket, with support from the broader labor community, the same day.

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