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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MN nurses authorize strike as hospitals stonewall safe-staffing proposals

June 24, 2025 by

Jes Busselman, a nurse at Abbott Northwester, speaks during MNA’s press conference to announce results of their strike vote.

Members of the Minnesota Nurses Association at 11 Twin Cities hospitals voted yesterday to authorize a strike, escalating their campaign to bargain enforceable nurse-to-patient staffing ratios into their union contracts.

Hospital representatives have outright refused to engage with the union’s staffing proposals – members’ top priority – during negotiations, leaving nurses feeling demoralized and disrespected.

Jes Busselman, a surgical and oncology nurse at Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis, said she and other nurses in the Allina Health system have “poured our hearts out” trying to describe the “brutal reality” of what understaffing in their units means for patient care and nurse morale.

“We’ve given tearful testimony,” she said. “We’ve been brutally honest. And still, Allina’s leaders sit across from us, disinterested, dismissive and unwilling to even have a conversation.”

MNA members allege the hospitals are not bargaining in good faith, and the union has filed several charges of unfair labor practices with the National Labor Relations Board, protecting nurses from being fired or permanently replaced if they do go on strike.

MNA has not set a strike date, and the union must notify hospitals 10 days before any work stoppage begins.

Nurses at Aspirus St. Luke’s and Essentia Health hospitals in Duluth also voted to authorize a strike yesterday, as did MNA bargaining units bringing together clinic and hospice nurses and advanced practitioners in the area.

Altogether, about 15,000 MNA members were eligible to vote. The union does not make specific balloting results public, but said the authorization was “overwhelmingly” approved.

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Hospital nurses picket for safe staffing in Twin Cities, Duluth

June 4, 2025 by

Nurses picket outside United and Children’s hospitals in St. Paul.

For over a decade, Minnesota nurses have been fighting at the bargaining table, on the picket line and at the Capitol for staffing ratios that, they say, would help ensure quality patient care and keep nurses at the bedside.

Any hospital executive wondering whether members of the Minnesota Nurses Association would give up that fight got a resounding answer today, as thousands of nurses, dressed in MNA’s signature red, were back on picket lines at 17 hospitals in the Twin Cities and Duluth area.

“We’re not giving up on our patients,” United Hospital oncology nurse Asher Herndon said during a press conference outside the St. Paul facility. “We’re calling for safe staffing, we’re calling for dignity and we’re calling for a health care system that actually puts care first.”

MNA members picketed at Allina Health hospitals like United, as well as hospitals in the Children’s Minnesota, HealthPartners, M Health Fairview, North Memorial, Essentia and St. Luke’s systems, which are currently bargaining contracts covering over 15,000 MNA members.

The action was informational picketing, not a strike. But many union members outside United and Children’s Hospital in St. Paul wore blue stickers that said “Ready” — a warning that their next step is a strike-authorization vote if nurses don’t see progress on their top demands.

That means contract language that would set minimum staffing levels and ensure safe workloads for nurses and patients. But so far, Children’s nurse Melisa Koll said, executives across the table “simply are not interested in this idea.”

MNA President Chris Rubesch has said “shoestring, COVID-era staffing levels” remain in too many Minnesota facilities – a crisis that shows up in reports filed by hospital nurses who spot unsafe staffing in their units.

At Children’s Minnesota’s campuses alone, nurses have filed over 6,500 reports of concerns in the last 30 months, Koll said. “That means our youngest, most vulnerable patients didn’t get the care their nurses felt they needed or deserved.”

United nurse Asher Herndon speaks during a press conference on the picket line.

Some stories behind those reports are devastating.

Herndon, who said they have been assigned as many as five patients with complex medical issues at a time, recalled providing end-of-life care to a patient at the same time as they were caring for multiple others with acute needs.

“I was doing everything I could, but by the time I got back to him, he had already passed – without family, with no one there to hold his hand,” they said. “It’s not because we don’t care; it’s because there weren’t enough of us to be there for him.”

Another patient in Herndon’s unit got so frustrated waiting for help going to the bathroom that the patient tried to go alone and fell, resulting in serious injuries.

“These are not rare events,” Herndon said. “These are predictable outcomes of chronic, dangerous understaffing.”

Stories like Herndon’s are why MNA says short staffing is behind alarming levels of burnout among nurses, and increased medical costs incurred by hospitals and patients. It’s an idea backed up by research that has prompted other states – including Nevada earlier this week – to pass laws establishing limits on the number of patients that can be assigned to nurses.

Hospital systems here shouldn’t wait for lawmakers in Minnesota to act, Rubesch said. They should work together with nurses on safe staffing standards that meet local communities’ needs.

“Nurses are taking action because our health care system cannot afford more delays or excuses,” he said.

— Michael Moore, UA editor

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Twin Cities doctors, nurses to picket June 3-4 as progress stalls on contract campaigns

May 29, 2025 by

Nurses at United and Children’s hospitals in St. Paul picketed during their 2022 contract campaign. (UA file)

Picket lines are coming to several Minnesota hospitals and clinics next week, as unionized doctors and nurses escalate their contract campaigns at Allina and other local health systems.

Newly organized doctors, physicians’ assistants and nurse practitioners at Allina Health clinics and urgent cares will hold picketing June 3 from 6 to 7 a.m. at four locations: Bloomington, Coon Rapids, Maplewood and West St. Paul.

It will mark the first time Minnesota doctors have staged informational picketing, members of the Doctors Council, a Service Employees (SEIU) affiliate, said during a virtual press conference yesterday.

“The contract Allina is offering us will unquestionably worsen primary care,” Dr. Matt Hoffman, who practices at Allina’s Vadnais Heights clinic, said.

By picketing, he added, the bargaining unit of over 600 doctors and clinicians hopes to show the public that “we are fighting to make primary care sustainable, and we want the same things as our patients.”

Members of the Minnesota Nurses Association will hold informational picketing the following day, June 4, at 17 hospitals in the Twin Cities and Duluth, where the union is bargaining contracts covering more than 15,000 members.

Nurses’ contract demands include minimum staffing levels in their units and other provisions to ensure the safety of both workers and patients. MNA President Chris Rubesch said “shoestring, COVID-era staffing levels” remain in too many Minnesota facilities.

“Nurses are doing everything they can to keep patients safe, but we are being stretched beyond our limits,” he said. “Patients are facing longer waits, and overworked staff are facing dangerous conditions. Nurses are taking action because our health care system cannot afford more delays or excuses.”

Nurses plan to picket at hospitals in the Allina, Children’s Minnesota, HealthPartners, M Health Fairview, North Memorial, Essentia and St. Luke’s systems throughout the day. Supporters are encouraged to sign up to join them on the picket line.

Unionized doctors in the Allina system held a press conference in Minneapolis last fall.

Both the doctors and nurses stressed that they are not striking, and their actions will not interrupt care.

Improving patient care is a top priority for both unions. Doctors and practitioners formed their union in 2023, Hoffman said, to gain back a voice in health care decisions that many felt they had lost at Allina, and that remains an issue “important enough for us to picket over.”

Since the two sides began bargaining a first contract in February 2024, they have reached tentative agreements on scheduling, a new mentorship program and labor-management committee, discipline language and safety protections.

But Allina has refused even to discuss union members’ proposal to ensure adequate staffing among support staff – clinical assistants, nurses, lab workers and others – in their clinics. And union members want more assurances that they will have adequate time to devote both to their patients and the ancillary tasks their profession requires, like paperwork, trainings and meetings.

Dr. Dain Meyer said Allina has introduced a troubling new metric to evaluate the urgent-care clinic where he works: patients treated per hour. “We should be aiming at highest quality and not fastest speed,” he said.

“I feel like progress has stalled (in bargaining), and I’m picketing to draw attention to this so that, in the same way we support our patients in the clinic, they might support us in winning the changes we all need,” Meyer added.

– Michael Moore, UA editor

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Chris Rubesch: We need all workers to stand with us against Essentia

May 23, 2025 by

MNA President Chris Rubesch spoke at a contract rally in Duluth May 22. (MNA photo)

This spring, over 15,000 nurses across Minnesota are in contract negotiations with hospitals. In these negotiations – but, in particular, negotiations in Duluth – something far more serious is happening. Essentia Health executives aren’t just resisting fair staffing levels and workplace protections; they are testing how far they can go in undermining a unionized workforce.

Let’s be clear: if Essentia gets away with it here, they will do it anywhere. And so will every other employer that is watching these tactics with great interest from the sidelines.

This is about more than nurse staffing. It’s about whether working people in Minnesota still have the power to shape their jobs, their safety and their futures.

At a time when corporate CEOs are riding high on record profits and federal protections for workers are under threat, Essentia’s aggressive stance is a signal. Their executives think this is the moment to turn back the clock, to roll back union gains, to break the model of solidarity that Minnesota labor has fought for decades to build.

We can’t let them.

A win here doesn’t just mean safer hospitals and clinics. It means showing that no employer is too big, too remote or too powerful to be held accountable. It means proving that unions still have teeth – that we can still organize, still bargain and still fight for what’s right.

Safe staffing saves lives. So does a strong union movement. And right now, those two things are one and the same. When nurses fight for staffing levels, we’re fighting for patients. When we fight for union rights, we’re fighting for every worker whose boss is hoping they stay quiet.

So if you’re in the trades, on the line, in a classroom or at the counter – this fight is yours, too. Come to a picket. Talk to your neighbors. Tell Essentia – and every CEO like theirs – that Minnesota doesn’t let corporations call all the shots.

If they can win here, they can win anywhere. But only if we let them.

– Chris Rubesch is president of the Minnesota Nurses Association. Stay up to date on ways to support nurses in your community at mnnurses.org.

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MN nurses double down on staffing demands with historic, three-day strike

September 16, 2022 by

Striking nurses picket outside Children’s Hospital in St. Paul.

Members of the Minnesota Nurses Association returned to work Sept. 15 after a record-breaking, three-day strike at hospitals in the Twin Cities and Duluth that energized their fight for contracts that put patients before profits.

Believed to be the largest nursing strike in Minnesota history, the walkout covered 15,000 union members and brought picket lines to 15 hospitals statewide, including United and Children’s hospitals in St. Paul.

Last-ditch contract negotiations between the nurses’ bargaining committees and seven hospital systems extended into the weekend before the strike began. But hospitals refused to budge on a key demand for union members: a voice in determining staffing levels in their units.

Staffing shortfalls that limited hospitals’ capacity during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic are threatening to become the norm, nurses on the picket line said. They want more power to act when shortstaffing becomes unsafe for patients – and to refuse unsafe assignments that could jeopardize their careers.

MNA President Mary Turner said hospitals have disciplined nurses for refusing assignments they believed would put patient safety at risk. “We want assurances that we can use our intelligence and our education and our assessment skills to know whether our assignment is safe or not,” she said.

But contract proposals that would include nurses’ voice in staffing decisions – like one measure that would require support from 51% of nurses in a ward before any change to its staffing levels – have gone nowhere, according to union members at the bargaining tables.

“They don’t want to even begin to talk to us about staffing,” United emergency department nurse Brittany Livaccari said. “They keep telling us, ‘We will never give operational control to the nurses.’ But we’re not asking for operational control. We’re asking to be heard, we’re asking to protect our licenses and we’re asking to protect our patients.

“We know that the care we’ve been having to give inside this hospital since the pandemic isn’t what the community deserves. The community deserves better, and that’s what we’re asking for.”

Union nurses are also seeking significant economic increases throughout the three-year contract. Nurses say raises are needed to recruit and retain bedside professionals, prevent staffing shortfalls and keep pace with inflation. They also want family leave benefits, after many burned through their paid time off in quarantine or isolation during the COVID-19 outbreak.

But hospital administrators seized on those demands in the media and launched a joint a public-relations campaign to smear nurses as greedy and out of touch.

It rankled nurses like Melissa Koll, who works at Children’s campus in St. Paul. Her hospital system has lost 500 nurses in the last three years due to the “distress of no longer being able to provide the care with quality your children deserve,” she said.

Nurses who remain at Children’s have filed 3,500 reports documenting their concerns over the safety of staffing scenarios on their floors – more than any other hospital system in the state.

“The hospitals would like you to think this all about the money,” Koll said. “That’s simply not true.”

Union leaders acknowledged their economic demands are part of a give and take at the bargaining table, and they could come down if hospitals agreed to put staffing language into their contracts.

“If all we cared about was money, we would be out there traveling right now,” said Turner, an ICU nurse at North Memorial hospital in Robbinsdale, referring to the highly compensated temporary nurses that fill staffing shortfalls in hospitals around the country. “We are out here literally to save our profession.”

Several hospitals, however, canceled bargaining sessions scheduled with their nurses after the strike began Sept. 12, and they reiterated their call for the MNA to agree to bring a federal mediator into the talks.

Turner said mediators are appropriate to help get negotiations over the finish line when two sides are close to an agreement, and that isn’t the case at Minnesota hospitals yet.

“Once the mediator comes in, [hospital administrators] don’t face us across the table anymore,” Turner said. “In my mind, that means they never wanted to hear our stories of unsafe staffing. They never wanted to face their nurses.”

Nurses in the Twin Cities have been working without a contract since May 31. Contracts for nurses in the Duluth area expired June 30.

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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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MN nurses union backs mask mandate

July 7, 2020 by

The Minnesota Nurses Association is urging state and local lawmakers to make face coverings mandatory in public places, calling it a “necessary measure to protect the public and stave off a resurgence of the vicious COVID-19 virus that has ravaged this state.”  

The union’s board of directors adopted a statement supporting a mask mandate July 2. The MNA represents 22,000 registered nurses in Minnesota and three surrounding states. 

Some cities in Minnesota already have adopted mask ordinances. St. Paul requires people to wear face coverings when inside public facilities and businesses licensed by the city.  

Gov. Tim Walz has said he is considering a statewide order.

Public health recommendations regarding masks have evolved as researchers continue to learn about the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19, particularly how it spreads from carriers who show no symptoms – or have yet to show symptoms – of the disease.  

“Asymptomatic transmission is a significant concern in how rapidly and easily this virus can cause COVID-19,” the nurses’ statement said. “Mandatory use for those who can wear cloth face coverings, rather than only requiring symptomatic individuals to wear masks, may reduce asymptomatic transmission.” 

The MNA’s statement stressed that face coverings are merely one piece of the broad public-health response necessary to combat the pandemic and safely reopen the economy. Simple cloth masks do not protect the wearer, but they may protect others by limiting the infectious particles the wearer releases into the air. 

Masks are not a replacement, the union warned, for other measures that prevent the spread of COVID-19. Physical distancing requirements, workplace protections and policies ensuring workers who feel sick can stay home remain critical to protecting the public, nurses said. And cloth face coverings should not be used in health care settings.  

“Nurses will continue to support physical distancing policies, including stay-at-home and shelter-in-place orders, as the most effective method for reducing the spread of infection,” the MNA said. “The decisions to protect the public must be made based on the ability to provide needed care, not to achieve profits or cost-savings.” 

Read MNA’s full statement here.

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

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.

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