Jamie Gulley: Time is right to organize ‘unions for all’

September 21, 2022 by

Jamie Gulley is president of SEIU Healthcare Minnesota and Iowa.

As we celebrated Labor Day this year, it felt like there was some wind at the backs of working people and our unions. Don’t get me wrong, we still are facing unprecedented challenges and well-funded opposition who would love nothing more than for us to no longer exist, but there is a spark evident everywhere you look that showcases that we may be entering a new phase of the American labor movement.

The union for which I am the elected president, SEIU Healthcare Minnesota and Iowa, has seen an amazing surge in the last year. We had over 1,500 new members join our union, most of them just in the last half of 2021. There are more organizing campaigns happening as we speak.

It is exciting to see win after win, especially as workers at places like Starbucks and Amazon are taking on big, national fights of their own. Some of the groups joining our union were small shops of just a dozen health care workers. We also welcomed over 400 mental health workers from local hospitals and over 400 Planned Parenthood workers across five states. Each one of these amazing health care workers deserves respect from their employer, and our union plans to fight like hell alongside them to make sure they get it.

Each union win was different, but each also felt linked by the agitation from a system that is so clearly broken. You would think the COVID-19 pandemic, which exposed clearly just who is “essential” to keep our state running, would help push the small handful at the top to do better by their frontline workers. But that isn’t the case.

Despite health care workers risking their health and safety throughout the pandemic, too many are still fighting for basic respect, protection and pay. Many workers are finding out what readers of this paper have probably known for a long time: there is power in a union.

It is exhausting to see these billionaires flying to space and seeing local “non-profit” health care leaders having their pay skyrocket, all while too many of our members struggle to pay the rent or mortgage, and to afford the rising costs that have come from corporate greed.

We can’t fool ourselves: unions are in a rough position. With just over 10% of workers in unions (and much less in the private sector), we’ve been beaten back by decades of attacks from those at the top. We know that their playbook is trying to divide us by what we do for a living, where we live or the color of our skin. They want us mad at each other to distract from their greed.

While health care workers who kept our state safe and running during this pandemic are sitting at their kitchen tables trying to make the math work on how to pay their bills, people at the top who care only about profits are taking more and more for themselves.

This is why our work to build a strong union movement is so critical. We’re proud of the growth our local has seen in the last year (not to mention the big gains we’ve made in the last decade, when we doubled our size and expanded into neighboring states), but we need the whole labor movement to grow.

We need to capture the energy that is out there now and make sure this growth results in more people who have a strong union contract. A strong union means higher wages and better benefits, but it also means demanding respect from our employer. It means having a voice and being able to stand up for what is right.

It was exciting to celebrate Labor Day this year with new polls showing the highest approval ratings for unions in decades. But we need to meet this moment.

At SEIU we have been saying we are fighting for Unions For All, and I hope that goal can be closer to a reality in the next year. I hope next Labor Day we’re celebrating continued popularity and growth for not just SEIU, but every union in Minnesota and across the country, and we can begin the real work of taking this country back from the rich and powerful. Together, we will make sure the working people who make this country run are getting the respect and pay they deserve.

– Jamie Gulley is executive director of SEIU Healthcare Minnesota and Iowa, a union of nearly 50,000 health care and long-term care workers in hospitals, clinics, nursing homes and home care across the two states. His column appeared in the October 2022 issue of The Union Advocate.

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

Albert Lea hospital workers stand up to Mayo with historic one-day strike

December 19, 2017 by

ALBERT LEA – Minnesota’s largest hospital system has picked a fight with two of its smallest bargaining units, but union members at the Mayo Clinic Albert Lea hospital aren’t backing down in their fight for job security and quality rural health care.

Workers aren’t standing alone against the health care Goliath, either.

Nursing assistants, housekeepers, maintenance staff and other frontline workers at the Albert Lea hospital staged the first-ever strike at a Mayo Clinic facility today. Their picket line swelled with community supporters, members of other unions and elected officials.

“We are out on strike today because it is insulting that Mayo has treated us and our community this way,” said Sheri Wichmann, an employee in the facility’s sterile processing unit. “We hope this will make Mayo realize they need to come to the table and negotiate in good faith.”

Striking workers are members of SEIU Healthcare Minnesota, which represents two Albert Lea bargaining units in negotiations with Mayo. The one-day strike pulled together members of both units, 85 workers in all.

Picket lines went up at 6 a.m. and were scheduled to come down at 6 p.m. The strike, called in response to alleged unfair labor practices, is a legally protected action, and workers hoped to return to their jobs tomorrow, though Mayo has threatened to lock them out for six more days.

That kind of bullying typifies Mayo’s approach to contract negotiations in Albert Lea, striking workers said. Perry Jensen, a utility worker with 20 years of experience at the hospital, called it “my way or the highway.”

“It’s hard to feel valued or appreciated with what they are offering us and what they are proposing to take away,” said Jensen. “It feels like there isn’t the concern for us as employees and community members like there used to be. They won’t budge at all and want to force us to take what they want without sitting down and bargaining. It is a slap in the face.”

Jensen and other workers want protections for local jobs and contract language to prevent further erosion of rural health care in southern Minnesota. Workers have reason to be wary of potential outsourcing at Mayo, which last year handed over its food service operations to a subcontractor from Atlanta.

Mayo negotiators, meanwhile, want to strip workers of their right to “negotiate over pensions, over benefits, over disability plans, over paid time off,” SEIU Healthcare Minnesota President Jamie Gulley said.

 

At picket-line rallies throughout the day, speakers decried an increasingly corporate feel in Mayo’s expanding network.

State Rep. Tina Liebling, whose district includes Mayo’s headquarters in Rochester, said the hospital’s nonprofit status should mean more than an exemption from paying taxes. “Mayo needs to understand that … it has to be about the people that it serves, and that includes the people who work for it, who give Mayo its soul,” she said.

Others renewed concerns about the dwindling number of services Mayo offers in Albert Lea – and at other hospitals and clinics across southern Minnesota. State Rep. Paul Thissen said it’s worth revisiting the statute that provides state funding for Rochester’s $6.5 billion Destination Medical Center “to make sure Mayo’s obligations to the people of Minnesota are spelled out clearly.”

Mary Turner, president of the Minnesota Nurses Association, added: “I’m very concerned about the people of Albert Lea come winter when the services that they need are not here, and they’re supposed to get on a freeway that they’ve just put the gates across because of a blizzard.”

Turner also presented striking workers with a $10,000 check for their hardship fund. “We may not always say it, but you guys are the right arm of the nurses,” she told striking workers. “We appreciate you 100 percent.”

Filed Under: Organizing, Politics Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Fight for $15 putting upward pressure where it’s needed – on wages

January 27, 2016 by
Fast food strikers and supporters rallied during a one-day strike in Minneapolis last April.

Fast food strikers and supporters rallied during a one-day strike in Minneapolis last April.

Currents across the country created a wave of support for $15 as a just minimum wage last year, with fast-food workers in New York and airport workers in Seattle scoring high-profile victories in the so-called “Fight for $15.”

But the rising tide is lifting wages for local workers as well, including some who carry union cards.

Several contracts recently negotiated by Minnesota unions demonstrate how $15 per hour is becoming a new threshold for wages – not only among unorganized fast food workers, but also among people working in banks, nursing homes, local government and beyond.

The idea of $15 as a minimum wage has “crept into the consciousness” of working people, SEIU Healthcare Minnesota President Jamie Gulley said.

Employers are taking note too.

St. Paul Federal Credit Union unilaterally established $15 as its base wage last fall, resulting in raises of $1 to $3 per hour for several employees. Tom Glatt, CEO of St. Paul Federal, acknowledged that “talk on the national level” about $15 per hour was a catalyst for the financial institution’s decision.

The buzz around $15 began when fast-food workers in New York staged strikes for $15 and union rights more than two years ago. The spark quickly spread quickly to all corners of the U.S., including the Twin Cities.

“It was laughed at when it first started,” Gulley said. But since then, cities like Los Angeles and Seattle have established $15 minimum-wage laws, and New York state lawmakers passed a measure last September requiring fast-food restaurants in the city to pay $15 by 2018.

No one’s laughing anymore.

“Now workers are bringing the same demands to their union meetings and saying, ‘If fast-food workers can get $15, why can’t I get $15?’” Gulley said. “That’s what is so great about the demand.”

In December 2014, more than 200 people joined a march in support of establishing $15 as a minimum wage at MSP Airport.

In December 2014, more than 200 people joined a march in support of establishing $15 as a minimum wage at MSP Airport.

Winning $15 in contracts

Members of SEIU Healthcare Minnesota were among the first locally to seize on the momentum of the Fight for $15 and incorporate it as a demand at the bargaining table.

Last February, members who work in hospitals across the Twin Cities and at the Mayo Clinic won contracts guaranteeing full- and part-time workers make at least $15 per hour within their first six months on the job.

Other bargaining units have claimed similar victories since then:

• In separate negotiations last fall, Hennepin County and the University of Minnesota reached new contracts with six locals of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees that establish $15 minimum wages.

AFSCME Local 34 President Jean Diedrich, a leader in negotiations with the county, called the $15 minimum wage “one of the big wins,” particularly for clerical workers. “Anyone who begins employment with Hennepin County (in 2016) will do so knowing that they will earn at least $15 per hour,” she said.

• Hospitality workers at Minneapolis St. Paul International Airport, newly organized members of UNITE HERE Local 17, saw their wages increase by up to $4 per hour and into the $15 range as a result of their first union contract, which also provides comprehensive health benefits, according to the union.

• St. Paul Federal Credit Union didn’t wait for contract negotiations to establish a $15 starting wage for members of Office and Professional Employees Local 12, which represents 16 to 19 tellers, member-services representatives, loan officers and accounting employees.

“Our contract states they can pay higher (wages) if they want to,” Local 12 representative Lance Lindeman said. “I was surprised, to say the least. I know ($15 per hour) is significantly more than a lot of other banks or credit unions in the Twin Cities pay their employees.”

Glatt, the credit union’s CEO, said investing in “the folks who are the face of the credit union” is money well spent.

“We may be ‘small’ in terms of asset size for a financial institution, but I would put our workers up against any institution of any size as far as delivery of quality service goes, so we didn’t want to lose any of our people to any other employer because of money,” Glatt said.

• Direct-care workers in nursing homes across the state are seeing wage gains as big as $5 per hour as they negotiate new union contracts in the wake of a legislative victory last year that reduced funding disparities between urban and rural care centers.

Sonja Lemire, an SEIU member who has worked at Parkview Care Center in Buffalo for the last 38 years, said her unit recently negotiated a contract that raised wages for all nurses and nursing assistants by $2 in 2016.

“That’s astronomical for us, tremendous,” Lemire said. The bump in pay makes the starting wage $14.86, or “almost to that $15 an hour mark,” she added.

Lemire said union members worked together to push the reimbursement increase through the Legislature, and now they’re working locally to make sure the funds trickle down into workers’ paychecks.

“Employees across the state are seeing the Fight for $15 is real, and a lot are doing their part,” she said.

352A ‘wageless’ recovery

Whether small or large in scale, wage increases for any group of workers are reason for celebration, as slow wage growth has been dragging down the U.S. economy since the start of the 2008-09 Great Recession.

Economist Lawrence Mishel, president of the Washington-based Economic Policy Institute, wrote in a recent blog post that from the beginning of the economic recovery in 2009 to 2014 (the most recent year for which data was available), the income of median working-age households dropped by almost $3,000, from $63,532 to $60,462, when adjusted for inflation.

“This followed the earlier period from 2000-07 where income fell 3.4 percent,” Mishel wrote. “So, we’ve had 14-15 years of pitiful income growth. No wonder people are not feeling the recovery.”

Most economists agree annual wage growth between 3.5 and 4 percent is ideal, but few workers – union or non-union – this side of Wall Street are realizing those kinds of gains.

Generating an upward push from the low-wage sectors of the economy probably would help, and that’s one reason organized labor has thrown its support behind Fight for $15 campaigns, low-wage worker centers and efforts to pass local minimum-wage ordinances, including in St. Paul and Minneapolis.

“Unions are experiencing a difficult time making (wage) gains in collective bargaining,” Gulley said. “The thinking in SEIU was we needed to have a fight over wages that was broader than just the labor movement and across the whole economy.

“Every victory shows that it’s possible – cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle and others are making these huge gains. It just shows it is possible if you’re organized.”

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

NLRB: North Memorial responded to staffing campaign with harassment, retaliation

October 30, 2014 by
Union nurses and health care workers picketed outside North Memorial June 26.

Union nurses and health care workers picketed outside North Memorial June 26.

North Memorial Hospital illegally retaliated against union nurses and health care workers who participated in a campaign to fight staffing cuts and protect patient safety at the Robbinsdale hospital, according to a complaint issued this week by the Minneapolis-based Regional Director of the National Labor Relations Board.

The complaint finds merit to charges of unfair labor practices filed by two unions working together on the staffing campaign at North Memorial, the Minnesota Nurses Association and SEIU Healthcare Minnesota. A press release issued jointly today detailed the unions’ charges.

MNA and SEIU Healthcare Minnesota filed charges with the NLRB after the hospital fired one employee, revoked work agreements and forced employees to work weekends, “repeatedly interrogated” staff about their union activities, warned employees and union staff that talking about unions was prohibited and threatened to file charges if discussions continued – all because they participated in the June picketing.

Members of the two unions staged informational picketing June 26 after hospital management moved unilaterally to cut staffing among nurses, dietary aides, housekeepers and other support workers. The cuts, workers said, made it more difficult for them to provide the quality of care North Memorial’s patients deserve.

Melvin Anderson, an SEIU member who took part in informational picketing, was fired from his position in the sterile processing unit at North Memorial – “a move alleged to be illegal by the NLRB,” according to the unions.

“Despite the challenges that North Memorial’s retaliation has caused for me, I don’t regret for one second that I spoke up for safe staffing levels and patient safety,” Anderson said. “I hope this ruling makes North Memorial understand that they can’t intimidate employees and that it is time to finally address their staffing levels. My co-workers are telling me that recent cuts in staff are putting their safety and patient safety at risk.”

The NLRB will hold a hearing on the case in January. If the board agrees that North Memorial committed unfair labor practices, it could order the hospital to compensate workers who were the target of harassment or retaliation, like Anderson.

Presidents from MNA and SEIU Healthcare Minnesota also commented on the complaint against North Memorial. MNA President Linda Hamilton:

North Memorial management’s actions were outrageous. Hospital staff were exercising their legal rights to a peaceful event to protest staffing plans that could endanger patient safety. The hospital should have used its energy to create safe staffing levels that ensure patient safety and allowed nurses to perform quality work.

SEIU Healthcare Minnesota President Jamie Gulley:

SEIU Healthcare Minnesota members bravely raised their voices to address staffing levels at North Memorial in June, but instead of listening to their front line staff, North Memorial decided instead to retaliate against and even fire workers who took part in the informational picket. The ruling Tuesday from the NLRB recognized this for what it is: harassment and intimidation. As staffing levels continue to decline, posing increased risks to patients, North Memorial must stop retaliating against employees and should instead focus on making certain their hospital has safe staffing levels as they care for our families.

View The Union Advocate’s coverage of the June 26 informational picketing in Robbinsdale.

Filed Under: Organizing Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Health care local celebrates 80th anniversary, welcomes PCAs into union

September 27, 2013 by
Jamie Gulley, president of SEIU Healthcare Minnesota, and home-care provider Karen Urman answer questions during a press conference on the union's efforts to organize PCA's.

Jamie Gulley, president of SEIU Healthcare Minnesota, and home-care provider Karen Urman answer questions during a press conference on the union’s efforts to organize providers statewide.

The nation’s oldest union of health care workers marked its 80th anniversary Sept. 20 by welcoming a new group of members, home care workers, into the local.

For the first time ever, roll call to open SEIU Healthcare Minnesota’s convention included a unit of personal care attendants who are hired by their clients and paid by the state, or “consumer-directed home care” workers.

Nicole Villavicencio and Ziggy Norberg talk about why they support their home health care providers’ efforts to join SEIU Healthcare Minnesota. “If my PCA has a better quality of life, I will have a better quality of life,” Villavicencio said.

Nicole Villavicencio and Ziggy Norberg talk about why they support their home health care providers’ efforts to join SEIU Healthcare Minnesota. “If my PCA has a better quality of life, I will have a better quality of life,” Villavicencio said.

These workers had been barred from collective bargaining by state law, but Gov. Mark Dayton and DFL majorities in the Minnesota Legislature lifted those restrictions last spring, setting the stage for a massive organizing drive that could nearly double the 15,000-member union’s rolls.

“Home care workers provide care for our seniors and people with disabilities,” local President Jamie Gulley said. “Yet today they have the same struggles the hospital workers who founded our unions faced 80 years ago – low pay, lack of benefits and lack of respect. We look forward to their inclusion in our great tradition of improving people’s lives.”

Gulley said the organizing effort is likely to kick into high gear later this fall.

At a press conference during the convention, home care workers expressed optimism that forming a union would improve their wages, benefits and training opportunities – changes that would improve not only their own standard of living, but their clients’ as well.

“The PCA system is a blessing when it works,” Shaquonica Johnson said. “But in my years as a PCA, I see it’s not working because of turnover and a lack of training opportunities. Our clients should never wonder, ‘Is my PCA trained, and will he come back tomorrow?’”

Karen Urman, a PCA for her son, called her profession a workforce in crisis, pointing to studies that show Minnesota’s changing demographics will result in a care gap of more than 53,000 workers needed to provide home care services over the next decade.

“We need to grow the field,” Urman said. “To attract workers to do this work, we need to provide livable wages and benefits.”

Filed Under: Organizing Tagged With: , , , , , ,