Twin Cities nurses picket, demand hospitals put patients over profits

June 2, 2022 by

Nurses at United and Children’s hospitals in St. Paul combine their picket lines along Smith Avenue.

Registered nurses picketed outside 11 Twin Cities hospitals yesterday, calling on health care executives to put patients over profits in contract negotiations with their union, the Minnesota Nurses Association (MNA).

Talks covering 15,000 nurses in the metro and Duluth began in March. Twin Cities nurses, who work at Allina Health, Children’s Hospital, M Health Fairview and North Memorial hospitals, saw their contracts expire Tuesday.

On a combined picket line outside United and Children’s hospitals in St. Paul, nurses said the crisis facing their profession demands urgency and bold action to keep nurses from leaving the bedside.

“I think a lot of our co-workers are waiting to see what happens with this contract to make determinations about what they’re going to do next, if they’re going to stay at the bedside,” United emergency department nurse Brittany Livaccari said. “We can’t continue to try to take care of patients and not be able to provide the care that we know they deserve. We’re ready to fight for our patients.”

But at the bargaining table, hospital administrators have failed to meet that urgency.

Instead, hospitals want concessions from the union to gain more scheduling flexibility, and they have balked at nurses’ demands for more say over staffing levels, increased pay, family and medical leave, and other measures to recruit and retain nurses.

Lisa Sanford, an intensive care nurse at Children’s in St. Paul and member of the bargaining committee, said management is back to treating nurses like numbers on a spreadsheet after showering essential workers with platitudes during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“For two years now we’ve been asked to put ourselves last, but now it’s become an expectation,” Sanford said. “It’s unsustainable, and it’s precisely why we have lost so many at the bedside.”

Sanford said “block scheduling” language in nurses’ previous union contract is “non-negotiable” for members of her bargaining unit, who rely on the stability it provides to care for themselves and their family members. More, she called management’s proposals to “float” more nurses between units a dangerous and unsustainable fix for staffing shortages.

“A nurse is not a nurse is not a nurse,” Sanford said. “It doesn’t do me any good to have a nurse who’s not an ICU nurse in my ICU. Nurses have set skills, and when you take them out of their environment, you put everybody at risk.”

Last month, the MNA released a report showing the number of reported staffing concerns from its members doubled from 2020 to 2021, pinning blame on hospitals for inadequately staffing units and failing to address high rates of turnover. Sanford said about 40% of nurses at her hospital have left the bedside.

But staffing issues didn’t start with the pandemic. Livaccari said Allina Health, which owns United Hospital, began “benchmarking” its nurse staffing in 2019, looking to align staffing levels with comparable hospitals in other parts of the country.

“They wanted us in the bottom 40th, meaning 60% of the hospitals that are benchmarked to (United) would have better staffing than we would,” she said. “In terms of patient care, that means we have delays, we have less time to spend individually with patients.

“Your emergency is an emergency, whether you’re about to stop breathing or your heart’s about to stop, or if you broke your arm. We don’t want you to have to wait. You shouldn’t have to wait eight hours for care. You shouldn’t even have to wait two hours, but that’s a typical thing we’re seeing.”

Livaccari and other nurses often point to short staffing’s “snowball effect,” as frustrations boil over into more nurses leaving the bedside, adding to the crisis. Many nurses that remain extend their work agreements to cover the gap, often at a cost to their own health.

“When you hear your co-workers are drowning and the patients are at risk, you want to go in,” said Sanford, who has increased her work hours by about 35%. “But it has absolutely taken a toll.”

Meanwhile, many hospitals have increased executive pay, and they continue to address high turnover rates by filling vacancies with temporary, traveling nurses, whose wages are significantly higher.

“Our CEO got a 47% increase in his pay from 2018 to 2019,” Sanford said. “I think they can handle giving us a little bit more.”

In addition to informational picketing yesterday, MNA also launched a new advertising campaign this week, highlighting hospital CEO pay and urging supporters to visit MNPatientsBeforeProfits.com to share their stories about the impact of short-staffing in hospitals.

“Hospital executives with million-dollar salaries have created a staffing and retention crisis which is pushing nurses away from the bedside,” MNA President Mary C. Turner said. “The future of our healthcare system depends on the choices we make now. Nurses are ready to fight and win for our patients and our practice. I hope the public will stand with us in our fight to put patients before profits in our hospitals.”

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Safe staffing concerns soar among Minnesota nurses

May 11, 2022 by

Abbott Northwestern nurses Angela Becchetti (L) and Becky Nelson talk about the impact of shortstaffing on patient care in their hospital.

The Minnesota Nurses Association released data today showing the number of reported staffing concerns from its members doubled from 2020 to 2021, prompting union members who joined a Capitol press conference to plead for action from lawmakers and hospital administrators.

“Each one of these represents multiple incidents and multiple patients who are not getting the care they deserve,” MNA President Mary Turner said, pointing to a stack of 7,857 paper reports submitted by union nurses in 2021. “And why is this? Because our hospitals continue to treat us like we’re factory workers and our patients are on an assembly line.”

The new report compiles and analyzes reports submitted last year by MNA members concerned that short staffing may have negatively impacted patient care during their shift. The reports documented 9,381 cases in which understaffing delayed nurses’ ability to administer medication, complete a patient assignment, answer patient call lights or otherwise deliver care.

In over 80% of those cases, managers failed to respond to the concerns adequately, according to the report.

MNA has been collecting reports of unsafe staffing for over 25 years, and cases have increased 300% since 2014.

The staffing crisis reached a tipping point during the COVID-19 pandemic, as nurses like Jean Forman walked away from the profession. The former Abbott Northwestern nurse cited persistent frustrations over staffing, which weighed on her mental health.

“Hospital executives have watched reports of unsafe staffing increase and have done nothing to solve the crisis,” Forman said. “It is time for action, before more nurses reach the same conclusion I did, that they can no longer care for patients the way they were trained and called to do.”

MNA President Mary Turner, pictured with concern-for-safe-staffing forms collected by the union, is an ICU nurse at North Memorial hospital.

The statewide nurses union is pushing for action on two fronts: at the bargaining table and at the Capitol.

Legislation passed by the DFL-controlled House would set a hard cap on the number of patients under any hospital nurse’s charge, require hospitals to be more transparent and give nurses a say in unit-specific staffing limits in their hospitals, whether or not they are unionized.

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.

The bill has not been heard in the Senate, but MNA members are holding out hope for its prospects in end-of-session negotiations and Gov. Tim Walz this month.

Becky Nelson, chair of the MNA’s Government Affairs Commission and a nurse at Abbot Northwestern, credited an “incredible outpouring of energy” from nurses this legislative session for getting the bill passed in the House.

“From new nurses just months or years out of school to those who have been in this career for decades, we all recognize that the current staffing practices in our health care system are not sustainable,” Nelson said.

Nurses also continue to push for staffing language in their collective bargaining agreements, something MNA has been fighting to win “as long as I’ve been a nurse,” Abbott Northwestern RN Angela Becchetti said.

“Executives use phrases like ‘lean,’ ‘just-in-time staffing’ or ‘benchmarking,’” she said. “But the outcome is always the same: asking fewer nurses to care for more patients with less resources and support.”

Nurses in the Twin Cities area and Duluth are currently in contract bargaining with their employers. The talks cover about 15,000 union members.

Twin Cities nurses’ contracts are set to expire May 31, but union leaders said an extension was likely.

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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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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.”

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MN nurse on Biden task force: ‘I’m the one who brings reality’

September 22, 2021 by

MNA President Mary C. Turner

As the Biden-Harris administration assembled its COVID-19 Health Equity Task Force in the weeks following the inauguration, there was one health care leader the president asked for by name: Mary C. Turner, president of the Minnesota Nurses Association.

Turner had moved Biden to tears during a press conference roundtable in November 2020, as she described what she and other nurses working in North Memorial Health Hospital’s intensive care unit were experiencing at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Turner accepted Biden’s appointment to the 12-member task force, but admits that she initially felt intimidated to be working among experts in public health and other fields, who were accustomed to high-level discussions of data and policy. “I’m just a bedside-care nurse, who the hell am I anyway?” she remembered thinking.

A phone call to Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith, chair of the task force, erased any lingering doubts.

“She said this to me,” Turner recalled. “‘Out of all 12 people, you’re the only one President Biden knows personally. He said that Mary Turner is so passionate about her patients, we’ve got to have her on the task force. Just be who you are, and you’re going to be just fine.’”

The task force began meeting in late February and will deliver its final recommendations to President Biden in October. Turner discussed the experience this interview, which has been edited for length.

UA: When the task force began meeting, vaccine production was just starting to ramp up. How has the scope of its work changed since then?

MT: We’ve had different topics, everything from vaccine hesitancy to the mental health of frontline workers and children. Then we did personal protective equipment, testing and what do we might do for the next pandemic. We’ve had four subgroups that meet, too. It’s been a lot of reading, a lot of meetings.

UA: What perspective or guidance has the task force delivered to the administration?

MT: The topic we started out with, vaccine hesitancy and immunizations, was cool because we had recommendations right away that we got to the president. Now, that’s not to say every state used those suggestions, but I know we did here in Minnesota. One of the recommendations was for migrant workers, to actually go in vans and take the vaccines right to them. And going by zip codes, into neighborhoods – those were all recommendations that came in that first month.

We also were instrumental in pushing OSHA to implement emergency temporary standards (in June), which, unfortunately, only covered health care workers. In the final report, we are pushing not just temporary but permanently updated OSHA standards, rather than guidelines, for all workers.

UA: I imagine you’re guided here not just by your experience as a nurse, but also as a labor leader.

MT: It’s funny because one of the chairs of our committee is a hospital administrator. He’s trying to say we don’t want standards, we want guidelines. I say, ‘No we don’t! Guidelines aren’t enforceable!’ …

If OSHA would have implemented standards instead of guidelines from the start, so many (workers) wouldn’t have died. That’s the reality of it. Guidelines give our employers free rein to just think of the bottom line and not necessarily keeping workers safe. If I do nothing else on this task force but to push through permanent, updated OSHA standards, I’ll consider my work successful.

I’ll be honest, though. It seems like whenever we run into a problem, especially in health care access, inevitably somebody will say, ‘Mary, the only way that’s going to be solved is Medicare for all or some kind of system where everyone has health care.’ A lot of the issues with our pandemic are due to our broken health care system.

UA: How do you feel you’ve influenced the task force?

MT: I may not be the one who can bring all the fancy data, but what I am is the only frontline worker with eyewitness testimony. I’m the one who brings reality. They’re all wonderful people, but I’m the only one who has been not just in my COVID ICU, but at the forums and picket lines and actions, where I have been with other frontline workers from different industries. I’ve heard all their stories. I am the dose of reality.

UA: What is it like to work closely with these experts, and then turn on the TV or log into social media and see disinformation on full blast?

MT: I think we all have a family member who’s in denial and watches more YouTube than they should. But it’s heartbreaking at the bedside for me. People coming in now, unvaccinated, it’s so tragic. That’s what all of that misinformation is doing. So it’s almost a joy to go back to any meeting of the task force and be back to reality.

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Essential workers tell lawmakers: Minnesotans support emergency leave

June 17, 2021 by

Bill Schwandt, an paraprofessional educator in the Bloomington schools, speaks at a press conference in support of emergency paid leave for essential workers.

Thousands of essential workers in Minnesota have lost hours or exhausted their paid time off after being exposed to the coronavirus over the past 15 months, while a measure that would make them whole remains caught up in Capitol gridlock.

That needs to change, according to more than 5,000 nurses, janitors, educators, child care workers and other Minnesotans who signed onto a petition in support of the Essential Workers Emergency Leave Act.

Union members delivered the petitions to Gov. Tim Walz and legislative leaders today after holding a press conference on the Capitol steps.

“We deserve more than nice words, pats on the back and hearty handshakes,” said Bill Schwandt, a paraprofessional in the Bloomington schools and member of Education Minnesota. “We deserve to be remembered, respected and, yes, compensated for the work that we did.”

Lawmakers are scrambling to negotiate the particulars of a $52 billion, two-year budget by the end of the month. The budget taps into federal relief funds that, as several workers pointed out, should prioritize support for essential workers, according to guidance from the Department of Treasury.

Emergency leave for time lost would help workers like Eva Lopez, a local janitor, regain their footing. Lopez is vice president of Service Employees (SEIU) Local 26, which represents janitors and security guards in the Twin Cities, and she said over 1,000 members of her union have missed work to quarantine or wait for test results.

“Most don’t make enough to have big savings accounts, and we can never work from home,” Lopez said via a translator. “This year has been so hard.”

Minnesota Nurses Association President Mary Turner, an intensive care nurse at North Memorial hospital in Robbinsdale, said members of her union have “dipped into their savings, their retirement, their 401(k)” plans to pay their bills while riding out quarantine.

The financial strain many health care workers are facing, Turner added, has only added to the stress of providing care through a crisis that has resulted in over 7,500 deaths statewide.

“We aren’t asking for a handout,” Turner said. “What we are asking for is justice.”

Turner and Troy Bowman, a Minneapolis custodian who had to quarantine twice in the last year, delivered copies of the petition to Walz, who has pledged support for the measure, and Sen. Erin Murphy (DFL-St. Paul), a lead author of the bill.

The DFL-controlled House included funding for emergency leave in its jobs bill last month, but Republicans in control of the Senate did not. Murphy, a registered nurse, promised to bring the petition to Senate Majority Leader Paul Gazelka’s attention, and thanked essential workers for their service to Minnesota during the pandemic.

“You went to work, you took care of us, you kept us alive, you kept us healthy and you kept our economy going,” she said.

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As special session nears, unions push lawmakers to prioritize working people

May 25, 2021 by

Kellen Sundet, 11, and Payton Del Rosario, 4, make signs at a rally May 15 calling on lawmakers to fund public education and other critical needs.

Minnesota legislators adjourned their regular session last week with the framework of a two-year budget in place, but the agreement merely sets the stage for another round of negotiations over spending and policy details.

That gives the state’s unions one last opportunity to push their legislative priorities – like crisis relief, paid leave and protections for working people – as lawmakers prepare for a special session beginning June 14.

Several labor groups joined the state’s largest labor federation, the Minnesota AFL-CIO, in a joint letter to Gov. Tim Walz and lawmakers yesterday as they began meeting in post-session working groups. The letter outlines measures – many of which have already passed in the DFL-controlled House – that unions want to see included in the final jobs bill.

“Working Minnesotans are hurting,” the letter says. “More than a year of pandemic-induced economic hardship, risks and sacrifice on the job, and civil unrest has exhausted workers and made existing racial and economic inequities even worse. Working people need their lawmakers’ help.”

[Individual supporters can sign onto the letter here.]

Unions want to see lawmakers create or extend benefits for workers who have struggled during the COVID-19 pandemic, like enhanced unemployment insurance, pandemic pay for frontline workers and a “right-to-return” guarantee for former employees as the hard-hit hospitality industry continues to recover.

Hourly school employees have been fighting for years to change a state law barring them from access to unemployment insurance. But the fight took on new urgency when schools shut down in-person learning last year, leaving thousands out of work.

“The path is not closed yet, but the road is narrowing,” SEIU Local 284 Executive Director Kelly Gibbons said, noting that the statewide association of school boards is fighting the measure.

“These are usually jobs where it’s women and people of color working with the children, working day in and day out, and they have no work in the summer and can’t get unemployment,” said Gibbons, whose union represents 7,000 school support staff statewide. “This is just so discriminatory.”

Making essential workers whole

Workers who could not stay home during the pandemic, meanwhile, aren’t giving up their fight to secure emergency paid leave, including retroactive benefits, for hours lost due to the pandemic.

Many health care workers, janitors, educators, warehouse and other workers burned through their paid time off – and often took unpaid leave – after being exposed to the coronavirus, or to provide care for family members.

In a roundtable discussion with Walz, Minnesota Nurses Association President Mary Turner, a nurse in North Memorial Hospital’s COVID ward, said members of her union have lost 23 hours, on average, during the pandemic.

“Nurses didn’t bat an eye. We walked into the unknown – a horrible unknown,” she said. “We’ve had to face going to our job unprotected because we did not have the PPE we needed. We’ve had to put ourselves and our families at risk for over a year, and many have died.

“We’ve been there from the beginning, and we’re not leaving the front line. But we need justice.”

Building back safely

Other priorities unions will push in advance of the special session include jobs-creating investments in infrastructure and recovery from civil unrest in St. Paul and Minneapolis last summer.

Although the Legislature typically takes up so-called bonding bills in even-numbered years, House DFLers have advanced a $1 billion proposal to take advantage of historically low interest rates and ease uncertainty in the construction industry.

Minnesota’s Building Trades unions have backed the measure, and they are also pushing a new law that would require contractors at oil refineries – like the Marathon facility in St. Paul Park, where workers are sounding the alarm about safety concerns – to hire workers who have completed registered apprenticeships.

“More than 1,000 Minnesotans have called legislators to pass the refinery bill,” said Joel Smith, president of the Laborers District Council of Minnesota and North Dakota. “It is critical that lawmakers use this time to take action to keep refinery workers and nearby communities safe by requiring the use of a skilled workforce.” 

Unions and partners in the We Make Minnesota coalition staged a rally last month near the Capitol calling on lawmakers to “fund our futures.”

School funding set

Although much of the Legislature’s work remains unfinished, the budget deal reached last month does offer certainty to public school districts and their employees, who had been bracing for layoffs this spring.

The $52 billion biennial budget would increase K-12 education funding by 2% in each year. While that’s enough to prevent the layoffs many educators feared, Education Minnesota President Denise Specht said, it falls short of the sustainable investment public schools need and deserve.

“Minnesota schools should be a place where every student can succeed, no exceptions,” she said. “This budget should stem the tide of harmful local budget cuts, but educators throughout the state want to be able to promise their students and parents that their local school will have the resources to meet the needs of all students for years to come. We can’t do that today.”

The statewide educators’ union delivered a petition with over 20,000 signatures to lawmakers, calling on them to increase taxes on corporations and the wealthiest Minnesotans to make up for investment gaps over the last decade-plus that have left schools underfunded.

Walz initially included the tax hike in his budget, but it was left out of the final agreement, which, instead, would tap into flexible funding from federal pandemic aid to cover proposed spending increases.

“While we’re disappointed the education spending in the final budget deal wasn’t closer to earlier budget proposals from the governor and the House, we are hopeful the final budget will limit layoffs and allow some schools to rehire educators who have already been pink slipped,” Specht said.

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

Unions hold vigil for workers exposed to COVID-19

May 2, 2020 by

Lisa Weed of SEIU Healthcare Minnesota speaks at a vigil on the Capitol steps. Social distancing behind her are (L to R) UFCW Local 663’s Paul Crandall, the Firefighters’ Chris Parsons, MN AFL-CIO’s Bill McCarthy and MNA’s Mary Turner.

One thousand votive candles flickered on the steps of the State Capitol last night, a tribute to Minnesota’s essential workers who have fallen ill with COVID-19.

“To workers who have contracted COVID, this is for you,” Minnesota Nurses Association President Mary Turner said, opening the candlelight vigil as the sun set in St. Paul.

Statistics show health care workers make up about 18% of Minnesota’s 5,000-plus COVID-19 cases. Shortages of personal protective equipment nationwide have only increased the risks faced by people working in hospitals, nursing homes and other health services.

“Our members are fearful,” said Lisa Weed, executive vice president of SEIU Healthcare Minnesota, which represents more than 35,000 health care and long-term care workers across the state. “We as one Minnesota have a responsibility to make sure health care workers are not being put in harm’s way, as well as the residents and patients they care for.”

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But the coronavirus has spread in other industries, too. More than 20 meatpacking plants nationwide have been forced to halt production, including Worthington’s JBS pork processing facility, where over 200 employees have tested positive for COVID-19, according to a report in the Sioux Falls Argus Leader.

Warehouse workers, retail clerks, transit operators, child care providers, corrections officers – the list of essential workers at high risk of being exposed to the pandemic is long.

Unions representing many essential workers in Minnesota – including United Food and Commercial Workers Local 663, which represents workers at the Worthington plant – took part in the vigil, which fell on International Workers Day, appropriately enough.

Local 663 Secretary-Treasurer Paul Crandall said at least 400 members of his union had contracted COVID-19. Chris Parsons of the Minnesota Professional Firefighters Association said lack of PPE creates a common fear among everyone who works with the public.

“The greatest fear among all of us is that we will bring (COVID-19) home to our families,” Parsons said.

Union leaders at the vigil said the best way members the public can help keep frontline workers safe is to follow state guidelines designed to contain the virus.

“Right now the best way we can prevent the increased spread of this illness is to stay at home,” Parsons said.

But Minnesota AFL-CIO President Bill McCarthy, head of the state’s largest labor federation, acknowledged those measures have created hardship for people working in industries like hospitality and leisure, who are making an “extraordinary sacrifice” during the pandemic response.

“As we pause this evening to recognize workers who have suffered and, in some cases, even died from COVID-19, we owe them action,” McCarthy said. “We owe it … to them not to simply focus on when we can reopen the economy, but rather how we can reopen it to ensure the health and safety of working people.”

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With N-95 collection drive, nurses gear up for challenge ahead

March 25, 2020 by

MNA members and staff loaded the Teamsters Local 120 semi truck with N-95 masks and other personal protective equipment donated during their collection drive in St. Paul this week. (Facebook photo)

As the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Minnesota grows higher, prompting the state’s health care system to brace for a wave of hospitalizations, registered nurses are holding a collection drive at their union headquarters in St. Paul to stock up on personal protective equipment (PPE) and other supplies.

The public’s support in just the first two days of the drive, Minnesota Nurses Association President Mary Turner said.

“I think we got 30,000 masks on Saturday,” she said. “On Sunday we didn’t get quite as many, but we had a steady stream of cars… No one could go to church, so they came to visit the nurses instead.”

MNA plans to continue its collection drive each day through Sunday, from noon to 2 p.m., at 345 Randolph Ave. The union will work with the Minnesota Center for Emergency Preparedness and Response to distribute supplies where they’re needed throughout the state.

The union is accepting paper lunch bags, Tyvek hazmat suits, safety goggles, latex-free gloves, electric respirators, PAPRs and N-95 masks of both the medical and industrial variety.

MNA’s international union, National Nurses United, recently announced a partnership with North America’s Building Trades Unions, representing over 3 million skilled tradespeople. The organizations will work together to get N-95 respirator masks and other protective equipment to nurses during the pandemic.

That’s already happening locally, Turner said, as several Building Trades unions have made deliveries to MNA headquarters.

“I never knew how many professions used masks,” Turner said. “I kind of knew the nail industry did, but jewelers, artists – wow. Our hallways and conference rooms are filling up, and it’s great to see.”

For Turner, who works on the designated COVID-19 floor at North Memorial Hospital, the scene was an encouraging sign that Minnesotans understand we’re all fighting the pandemic together, even as health care workers ready themselves for work on the front lines at a time when so much – like the availability of testing and protective gear – remains unknown. She discussed the challenges ahead in this interview, edited for length and clarity, for The Union Advocate’s April 2020 issue.

UA: What are nurses seeing in their hospitals now?

MT: You’ve got the moratorium on any kind of elective surgery now, so places like St. Paul and Minneapolis Children’s hospitals are negotiating potential layoffs. Their census is way down, so nurses in some hospitals are not working, which is ironic. You’ve got a hospital like Bethesda in St. Paul, which – remember? – not even two or three weeks ago laid off 75 nurses. And now all of a sudden they’re going to have a COVID-19 floor, and all the nurses have found other positions, so they have to put ads out for traveling nurses. Not a lot of foresight on that situation.

But things are changing day to day, and to give them their due, hospitals are constantly having to adjust things. Floors are changing from step-down to an ICU or other care level, adjusting plans daily. That being said, you’ve got surgical floors and even ICU’s where managers are locking up N-95 masks, and deciding who gets masks and who doesn’t. And you’d better have a darn good reason if you want one.

I heard someone say on the news, though, that they’re encouraging people to make cloth masks for us to wear. This is not the dark ages! A little handkerchief is not going to save us. It’s almost insulting.

(MNA Facebook photo)

UA: It’s a bit alarming, isn’t it, that nurses need to hold their own equipment drive during a pandemic?

MT: People have gotten a little crazy with having stuff that they don’t need.

UA: MNA has tried to get hospitals to meet to discuss issues like this.

MT: And they’re not. It’s so frustrating. We’ve got managers who are locking up the supplies and only handing them out if you’ve got a good reason. They’re supposed to be consolidating and rerouting the supplies to where they’re needed. But here’s the problem: they’re not doing any testing! So nurses in the ICU and on the surgical floors are saying, “We don’t know who is and isn’t COVID-19 positive.” You can understand their angst and anxiety because no one knows who has it.

UA: Locally, MNA has been a leader in efforts to expand people’s access to paid sick time. We’re seeing the importance of that work now, aren’t we?

MT: I am very proud of the fact that as an organization we have been on the front lines of earned safe and sick time and $15 an hour. I’m also very grateful that our hospital, North Memorial, has stopped all visitors. Over the years, hospitals are wanting to be more welcoming and like a five-star hotel. So I’m happy that most hospitals have shut down that extra traffic.

UA: It does seem like some people have been slow to accept what’s required of us to slow the spread of coronavirus, things like social distancing. As a nurse, what do you say to those people?

MT: I was driving up toward MNA today, going by a little park area, and I saw people walking three to five in a group – and that’s not social distancing. And it’s going to force the governor to get more and more stringent. Nurses, on the job, we can’t social distance. We are going to get within inches of our patients. So it’s hard to grapple with the idea for us.

UA: And that’s why we need to get you the highest-quality protective equipment.

MT: Not a bandana, either. I would rather walk in with nothing or with a piece of typing paper across my face, because that is just insulting.

UA: For people reading this who might have to interact with the health care system in the next few weeks, what do nurses want them to know?

MT: If you’ve got symptoms that are light, where you’re not having a hard time breathing, stay home. Weather it out in lockdown. If you have a really high fever and can’t breathe, you need to go to the hospital, and it’s best that you let them know you’re coming. That’s where we can protect our emergency-room workers.

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

Union-led coalition takes on proposed hospital cuts

January 29, 2020 by

A Bethesda Hospital nurses speaks out at a town hall meeting hosted by her union.

Alarmed by the news Fairview Health is considering drastic cuts to two St. Paul hospitals, health care workers, patients and community members have quickly organized a campaign to keep Bethesda and St. Joseph’s open, with unions leading the way.

The Minnesota Nurses Association and SEIU Healthcare Minnesota hosted a town hall meeting last night at a church two blocks from Bethesda. The pews buzzed with energy and outrage as nurses, doctors, patients and community leaders took turns at the microphone, sharing personal stories about how critical the hospitals are to their community.

Dr. Katie Freeman, who practices family medicine at HealthEast, said she referred a patient just that day to St. Joseph’s for OB-GYN services. If the hospital closes, she said, the nearest hospital in the system would be in suburban Maplewood.

“Having a hospital you can get to easily, a hospital in your neighborhood that you can access by public transit – that allows us to access care,” Freeman said. “Before any decisions are made, the people that use these hospitals need to have some input on what they need.”

But the communities Bethesda and St. Joseph’s serve stretch beyond St. Paul’s neighborhoods.

Bethesda is an intermediate-term care facility that takes patients from many different hospitals in the Twin Cities – sometimes, MNA President Mary Turner said, from other states. St. Joseph’s, the first hospital in St. Paul, also serves a unique patient population, including those with mental health issues.

If Fairview proceeds with plans to close more than half of Bethesda’s beds by Feb. 10, and possibly close St. Joseph’s altogether, it will have a ripple effect at health care facilities across the region.

Fairview has also announced plans to close a substance-abuse-recovery program for people who communicate in American Sign Language – a one-of-a-kind facility in the U.S., deaf advocates like Phillip Steinbruckner said.

Organizers left an open chair for Fairview Health’s CEO.

“My access to treatment is not the same as my hearing peers,” Steinbruckner, who has been sober for one year thanks to the Fairview program, said. “Deaf-to-deaf, sign-to-sign (communication) is really key for our treatment.”

Unions invited Fairview Health CEO James Hereford to attend the town hall meeting, but he sent a letter declining the offer. His seat, marked with a placard bearing his name, remained empty on the stage for the duration of the meeting.

Turner pointed out that, in spite of Fairview’s supposed need to cut costs, Hereford recently received a significant pay increase, earning $913 per hour.

“This is patient abandonment,” Turner said. “As a nurse, if I were to abandon my patients, I’d lose my license.”

The coalition of community members, workers, deaf advocates and others concerned about the proposed cuts – the “No Cuts On Quality Care” coalition – is urging supporters to submit their stories of care and their concerns about the cuts by email to comments@fairview.org.

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