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

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

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.

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

Allina nurses end strike, pledge to keep up fight for patient care, workplace safety

October 14, 2016 by

web-allina-picketsignAllina nurses voted yesterday to ratify a three-year contract and end their historic strike at five Twin Cities facilities, but their fight for workplace safety, adequate staffing and respect on the job isn’t over.

And after spending nearly a month and a half on the picket line this year, nurses know it’s a fight they are not in alone.

The contract campaign was a “lesson in labor education” for nearly 5,000 members of the Minnesota Nurses Association at Abbott Northwestern, Mercy, United and Unity hospitals and Phillips Eye Institute, United nurse Bunny Engeldorf said.

“They were supported by the labor community for 38 days,” Engeldorf, a member of the union’s negotiations committee, said. “People joined them on the line and in the labor hall, talking to them, encouraging them, bringing them food and just being there for them. That was a lesson learned … that an injury to one is an injury to all.”

The contract, ratified by a majority vote, phases out nurses’ preferred health insurance plans – Allina’s top priority in negotiations.

But nurses were able to extract a guarantee from Allina that benefits under its “core plans” will not diminish through 2021. By extending that guarantee beyond the life of the new contract, set to expire in 2019, nurses also locked in an opportunity to negotiate health insurance again before Allina can alter coverage levels.

Additionally, the contract makes progress on two of nurses’ top priorities heading into negotiations, staffing and safety – but only if nurses make their voices heard on labor-management committees and task forces empowered to deal with those issues.

Engeldorf said she expects nurses to stay engaged and active, even as they begin returning to work in the coming days. Already, 30 nurses have volunteered to become new union stewards at United.

“Nurses are already coming up and asking, ‘How do I get on that committee? How do I become more involved?’” Engeldorf said. “We understand that this contract is only as good as we enforce it.”

MNA President Mary Turner acknowledged mixed emotions among Allina nurses, who rode a “roller coaster of emotions” in recent weeks, including some “anger and frustration and feeling that we need to keep fighting.”

“We had a lot of those arguments, and there’s a spectrum of emotion and opinion,” Turner said. “But it’s a democratic union, and the members have spoken.”

And while Allina may have gotten what it wanted most, the not-for-profit corporation likely paid a steep cost when it comes to relations between nurses and management.

“They will never be the same,” Engeldorf said. “Maybe they can be repaired – let’s hope so – but they will never be the same.”

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

Bobby Kasper: Solidarity is alive and thriving in St. Paul

October 6, 2016 by
allina-rlf-group

Delegates to the St. Paul Regional Labor Federation, AFL-CIO, adjourned their meeting early Sept. 14 to join striking Allina nurses on the picket line outside United Hospital.

 

Last month at the East Side Freedom Library, I joined a roundtable discussion with historians, artists, trade unionists and community activists on the subject of solidarity. It was a lively, challenging and essential dialogue, and it served as another reminder of how fortunate we are in St. Paul to have a space like the Freedom Library – a union hall for the whole community.

Our conversation that night reflected on struggles from our past in which working people used solidarity to get justice. There have been many examples, as any history buff knows, including the 1934 Teamsters strikes in Minneapolis, which saw union, non-union and unemployed workers standing together on the picket line. Using solidarity, they broke the powerful alliance of employers that had so effectively blocked workers in a range of industries from bargaining for a better life.

We’ve seen solidarity work in a global context, too. When NAFTA unleashed a race to the bottom among manufacturers in the mid-1990s, Autoworkers from St. Paul reached out across the border to workers inside Ford Motor Company’s Mexico assembly plants, building a unique relationship and bearing witness to the poverty wages and poor working conditions there.

But we don’t need to look backward to see the power of solidarity. It’s thriving right here, right now in St. Paul.

Our City Council last month passed an ordinance to guarantee all workers access to earned sick and safe time – the strongest and most progressive of any municipality in the country. It was a victory for working people – in particular, working people of color – but it didn’t happen by accident. Labor unions and small businesses teamed up with worker centers, community groups like Neighborhoods Organizing for Change and religious organizations like ISAIAH. We worked together, in solidarity, to make earned sick time a priority, to make our voices heard and, eventually, to make history.

Solidarity is alive and well on Allina nurses’ picket lines as well. The St. Paul Labor Center serves as a strike hub for nurses at United Hospital, and every day I come into work, I’m inspired by the members of the Minnesota Nurses Association – young and old, from a wide range of backgrounds – who are standing together and refusing to give in as Allina attempts to break their union. And it warms my heart to see so many members of other unions joining these courageous nurses on the picket line and supporting their strike fund financially.

As long as it takes to get the contract they deserve, that’s how long we’ll stand with nurses in their fight. It’s the right thing to do. It’s what nurses would do if it were any of us out on a picket line. It’s what solidarity is all about.

– Bobby Kasper is president of the St. Paul Regional Labor Federation, AFL-CIO, which unites more than 100 affiliate unions representing 50,000 working people – and publishes The St. Paul Union Advocate.

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

Nurses take over street outside Allina board member’s St. Paul office (photos)

October 5, 2016 by

web-allina-securian-2Striking nurses poured into the streets of downtown St. Paul today and joined a boisterous, traffic-snarling rally outside Securian Center, the high-rise building that houses Allina Health board member David Kuplic’s offices.

Kuplic, a senior vice president at Securian, refused to meet with a delegation of nurses who entered the high-rise office building at 4th Street and Robert, prompting chants of “Where’s Dave Kuplic?” from hundreds of nurses in the street outside.

An employee in Securian’s public relations department told nurses he would pass their message along to Kuplic, United Hospital nurse Jennifer Michelson said. “But he wanted to know why we felt there was impact on Securian.”

Here’s whyallina-board-numbers_Layout 1. Securian is one of a handful of investment firms and corporations, including General Mills and Buffalo Wild Wings, whose executives dominate Allina Health’s not-for-profit board. Striking nurses are hoping public pressure will prompt those board members to reconsider management’s hard-line approach to contract negotiations.

It’s an approach that is costing the not-for-profit health provider tens of millions of dollars each week the nurses are on strike – costs that already have eclipsed the concessions Allina wants from its nurses in contract negotiations. Mercy Hospital mental health nurse Julie Anderson said leaders who would invest in union busting over community care have no place on a charitable board.

“Why do we have all these financial (executives) on a non-profit board of directors?” Anderson asked. “What do they know about health care?”

 

The nurses originally intended to stage the demonstration outside RiverCentre, where Allina CEO Dr. Penny Wheeler was to join a panel discussion on health care costs. But Wheeler backed out at the last minute, prompting nurses to seek out Kuplic instead.

About 4,700 members of the Minnesota Nurses Association employed at five Allina facilities in the Twin Cities have been on strike since Labor Day, their second strike of 2016. They voted Monday to reject the provider’s most recent contract proposal, saying it did not do enough to contain health insurance costs or address safety-related staffing concerns.

The vote result means the strike will continue indefinitely. Click here for a list of ways to support nurses in their fight for a fair contract.

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