Strike ends as Hazelden nurses ratify historic contract with safety guarantees

July 30, 2026 by

Members of the Minnesota Nurses Association vote on the proposed contract with Hazelden.

Nurses ended their strike at the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation’s Center City campus this week, settling a first contract that, union members say, will address concerns that sparked their historic organizing campaign.

Members of the Minnesota Nurses Association’s bargaining unit – about 60 nurses in all – voted to ratify the contract today. Union negotiators reached a tentative agreement with Hazelden on Tuesday.

That brought a halt to picketing outside the prestigious addiction-treatment facility that began July 15 and persisted through steamy temperatures, smoky air and gridlock at the bargaining table.

That resolve sent a strong message to management, members of the bargaining team said.

“It was taxing physically, financially, mentally and sometimes spiritually, but the best thing about it was we were really able to bond on that line,” Anne Coleman, a registered nurse at Hazelden for the last two years, said. “And not only did we bond, but we were able to have our voices heard, which we know has not been the case consistently for years and years – especially around security and safety.

“This was historic, and I’m really proud of our team.”

Indeed, nurses at the Chisago County campus became the first anywhere across Hazelden Betty Ford’s system to win a union contract, and one of their key gains – providing staff with panic buttons – will extend to nurses and other caregivers nationwide, veteran registered nurse Jody Burton said.

“It’s going to be in California, Chicago, Florida – it’s a huge win,” Burton said. “From Day 1, they were like, ‘No, this (safety language) is never going to be part of your contract.’ But we won it, and we won it for everyone. We’re a powerful team.”

The contract establishes a firm deadline for management to implement panic buttons and other workplace safety measures. Nurses also pushed Hazelden to staff their rural facility with security or safety personnel, and the employer committed to “a contractual pathway to implement safety staff,” according to MNA.

Safety emerged as a top issue in negotiations for union members, who pointed to the increased abuse of highly potent drugs, like fentanyl, among their patients. MNA pulled public data that found county sheriff’s deputies responded to nearly three calls each week, on average, to the Center City campus between Jan. 1, 2025, and July 19, 2026.

Coleman called the contract “a move in the right direction that I don’t think would have happened if we had not gone on strike,” and she pledged that the union would “keep promoting and advocating for safety protocols to help us do our jobs.”

“And it’s not just about the nurses,” she added. “I think about the techs who have been in verbal and physical altercations. I think about the other nurses who have been kicked, punched, spit on. I think about the other patients who are terrified by a psychosis event. In a highly emotional, stressful environment, there should be better safeguards, and this contract is leading that way.”

The contract also delivers economic gains and puts nurses’ health-insurance benefits in writing, protecting against the kind of sudden, arbitrary cuts that many Hazelden employees experienced two years ago – and provided the spark for nurses to form a union with MNA.

Additionally, nurses gained recognition of their full bargaining unit, including casual and on-call nurses. Hazelden fought to divide the unit during their organizing drive, forcing two separate union elections, both of which were successful.

Now, Burton said, nurses are eager to get back to work and back to their patients. The financial strain of going on strike was significant for many union members, she added.

“But you could never tell by the way people showed up on the line with their family, shouting and screaming and digging in their feet,” Burton said. “We would have fought longer if we’d have had to.”

– Michael Moore, UA editor

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Hazelden nurses ‘not backing down’ as strike enters second week

July 23, 2026 by

Nurses speak with press after bargaining with Hazelden in St. Paul Tuesday.

Nurses bargaining a first union contract with the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation launched an open-ended strike July 15 at the renowned addiction-treatment facility in Center City, and their picket line remains up after two bargaining sessions this week.

Members of the Minnesota Nurses Association (MNA) voted to authorize a strike nearly a year into negotiations. Nurses have filed multiple unfair-labor-practice complaints during that time, accusing Hazelden of making unilateral changes to working conditions without bargaining and attempting to prevent workers from protected union activity.

But nurses also say that, at the bargaining table, Hazelden has refused to address the issues behind their vote to unionize in January 2025, including workplace safety, competitive wages and benefits, and improved working conditions that they need to care for patients with increasingly complex needs.

“We keep coming with a new solution that they’re immediately shutting down,” Jody Burton, a registered nurse with nearly 11 years of experience at Hazelden, said. “We come with a different solution; they shut it down. We’ve been doing this for almost a year now, and they don’t ever bring a solution to the table.”

Burton and other members of MNA’s bargaining team have been traveling to negotiations in St. Paul – nearly an hour’s drive from their workplace in Center City – at Hazelden’s request.

Back in Chisago County, members of the 60-person bargaining unit are keeping an active picket line up at the intersection of U.S. Highway 8 and Pleasant Valley Road, near the entrance to Hazelden’s main campus. (Support is welcome on the picket line; follow MNA’s social media for updates.)

“We literally have had people on the lines in the hottest days, in bad quality air,” Burton said. “We haven’t budged. We are still strong, still energized, and we will still be there every day that (management) are not willing to negotiate because we are fighting for a reason – for our patients to have a safe place to change.”

Hazelden nurses picket in Center City.

But safety has been a sticking point in contract negotiations between MNA and Hazelden.

At a time when healthcare workers nationwide are expressing concerns about workplace safety, Hazelden nurses are increasingly treating patients under the influence of highly potent drugs like fentanyl. Nurses say the de-escalation tactics that they are trained to use when a patient becomes violent are insufficient alone.

In bargaining, nurses have floated proposals like round-the-clock security, panic buttons and minimum staffing levels to protect patients, caregivers and visitors. Hazelden has responded that a greater security presence is incompatible with its care environment, according to union members.

“Some of us who have been at Hazelden for decades, we’ve seen a shift in the patients that we take in, and with that shift comes a lot of violence,” Burton said. “We may not have needed those (protections) five, seven or 10 years ago, but we need them now.”

But on Day 1 of the strike, nurses were quick to notice that security personnel crossed their picket line to support replacement nurses – “the same security protections nurses have been bargaining for over the past year but still have not received,” bargaining team member Ann Coleman said.

“Temporary nursing staff have security, and we don’t. Let that sink in,” Coleman added. “Safety isn’t a luxury, and it’s not optional – and it shouldn’t be something nurses have to fight for.”

MNA and Hazelden are scheduled to resume bargaining tomorrow, and they have another session scheduled July 28. Coleman said the strike won’t end until management comes ready to “bargain with purpose.”

“We’re not backing down,” she added.

– Michael Moore, UA editor

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Nurses picket as Hazelden Betty Ford drags out first-contract talks

June 5, 2026 by

MNA members picket outside Hazelden Betty Ford’s facility in Center City.

Nurses bargaining a first union contract with the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation held informational picketing June 2 at the renowned addiction-treatment facility in Center City, looking to raise awareness of their safety and staffing concerns.

Members of the Minnesota Nurses Association had hoped Hazelden administrators would take a collaborative approach to addressing the issues behind their vote to unionize in January 2025.

But those hopes have fizzled over 16 months of mostly unproductive talks.

“A lot of things that we propose, they’ll propose back that they don’t need it to be written out,” Cara Bergner, a registered nurse in Hazelden’s detox unit, said on the picket line. “They just want it up to management’s discretion, which kind of defeats the whole purpose of the contract.

“I think their hopes are that if they put it off, we’ll get tired and give up. But I don’t see that being the case.”

Anne Coleman, another registered nurse in the detox unit, said nurses are bargaining for changes that will make their jobs more sustainable – and they’re doing it because they believe in the Hazelden Betty Ford mission.

“We take people in a crisis situation who, a lot of the time, come in very broken, and I just love to see them get their lives back, to get the confidence and light back in their eyes,” Coleman said. “I love to see them heal.

“We wouldn’t be here if we didn’t love the mission, the patients and the many things that Hazelden has done for the community and nationwide. But the healthcare system itself is broken, and, unfortunately, it’s trickled down to Hazelden.”

As the rate of violence against healthcare workers rises nationwide, Hazelden nurses are increasingly treating patients under the influence of highly potent drugs like fentanyl. Union members say de-escalation tactics, which they are trained to use when a patient becomes violent, are insufficient alone.

“We’re bringing in higher-acuity, more severe cases of people who have mental-health issues and severe addictions,” Bergner said. “We don’t have any other safeguards (besides de-escalation) and any true, straightforward protocols for staff members’ safety.”

In bargaining, nurses have floated proposals like round-the-clock security, panic buttons and minimum staffing levels. Some units, Bergner and Coleman said, have just one nurse on the floor at times, leaving staff overwhelmed.

Perhaps predictably, an increasing number of Hazelden nurses are leaving the bedside. Turnover has affected about a third of MNA’s 60-person bargaining unit of registered and licensed practical nurses, according to the union.

Coleman said factors behind the attrition include stagnant wages over the last two years, recent benefit cuts and management’s unwillingness to agree to measures that would make nurses feel safer and more supported on the job.

Newly hired nurses are leaving too. “They come here,” Bergner said, “and before they really get a love for the job, they’re like, ‘This space is crazy.’”

For nurses who remain, the turnover creates more short staffing and extends their shifts. Coleman said she has worked as many as 16 hours straight.

“I’m happy to do it because I want my patients to have the support they need and the safety,” she said. “However, it’s not sustainable.

“We’ve got so many experienced nurses who really, truly care for our patients that we’ve lost. All that we’re asking is for Hazelden to work with us.”

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

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Joining MNA a ‘proud moment’ for Hazelden Betty Ford nurses

February 4, 2025 by

Newly unionized Hazelden staff members include (L to R) Jody Burton, an LPN, and registered nurses Crystal Olson and Meaghan Albrecht. (photo courtesy MNA)

Nurses at the esteemed Hazelden Betty Ford addiction treatment center in Chisago County voted to unionize last month, part of a recent organizing surge among health care workers in the Twin Cities area.

The new bargaining unit at Hazelden brings together 45 registered nurses and 11 licensed practical nurses, who voted in separate elections overseen by the National Labor Relations Board to join the Minnesota Nurses Association. About 75% of voting nurses supported the union drive.

Detox nurse Meaghan Albrecht called the union vote a “proud moment” for the tight-knit unit at Hazelden’s Center City campus, where nurses moved quickly to form a bargaining unit in response to benefit cuts announced by management last fall.

“Everyone cares deeply for each other and our patients, so it was not difficult to be unified, especially since this change was so significant and impacted so many people within our department,” Albrecht said. “Even those nurses who were not directly affected were impacted by the loss of morale on the team.”

Albrecht, who has worked at Hazelden for over six years, was among roughly 130 employees at the facility who were poised to lose their health care and other benefits after management moved to exclude anyone working under a .75 full-time equivalent (FTE), up from .6 previously.

The announcement caught Albrecht and other nurses off guard. They reconnected with the MNA, which had supported an organizing drive two years earlier that fizzled out before reaching an election.

This time around, Hazelden nurses saw the process through the finish line, and they will soon begin locking down their benefits – among other terms of employment – in the form of a union contract.

“Having MNA representing us gives us a seat at the table so we can make decisions about our wages, benefits, and safe working conditions,” Hazelden LPN Jody Burton said.

Minnesota-based Hazelden merged with the Betty Ford Center in 2014 to create the nation’s largest nonprofit alcohol and drug rehab provider.

The foundation was not supportive of nurses’ organizing campaign, Albrecht said.

“There were a lot of meetings held and discussions with the nursing team regarding the ‘negative impact’ that a union would bring to the organization,” she said. “They felt as though it would sever relationships, and they did not like the idea of a third party coming in.

“But we are the union. The nurses brought it in. We aren’t a third party.”

As Hazelden nurses’ focus shifts from organizing to bargaining a first contract, they will focus on fairness, inclusivity and transparency in the workplace, Albrecht said, as well as longstanding concerns around sustainable workloads.

“One of our goals is to foster meaningful dialogue with Hazelden management to create policies that prioritize staff well-being and patient care,” she said. “We think this is an opportunity to build a more just environment for nurses and patients alike.”

Nearly 700 health care workers in the Twin Cities area have organized unions in the last two months, led by a landmark victory for the MNA at North Memorial’s Maple Grove Hospital.

The total also includes nurses at Hazelden and 16 catheter-lab nurses at United Hospital, who organized with the MNA. And it includes members of the nursing staff at The Emeralds of St. Paul, a long-term care facility operated by Monarch Healthcare Management, where the union vote was a unanimous 27-0 in favor of joining SEIU Healthcare Minnesota and Iowa.

Nearly 100 more health care workers – unit coordinators at Park Nicollet Methodist Hospital in St. Louis Park – were scheduled to take a union vote Feb. 7, after a majority of eligible workers filed a petition to join SEIU Healthcare.

– Michael Moore, UA editor

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