Fairview Lakes nurses make progress on staffing with contract

August 5, 2014 by

mna-logo3-300x300WYOMING, Minn. – After leading a campaign to raise awareness of potential threats to safe patient care at Fairview Lakes Medical Center, nurses at the Chisago County facility voted yesterday to ratify a new contract that makes progress for both nurses and patients.

Nurses at Fairview Lakes are represented by the Minnesota Nurses Association, which announced the election results in a press release today.

The new contract, according to the union, will move Fairview Lakes closer to staffing levels that ensure safe patient care, and it will enable the hospital to attract and retain nurses.

“Our priority is ensuring that nurses have enough time to provide the quality care our patients deserve,” Sandie Anderson, co-chair of the nurses’ bargaining unit, said. “This contract moves us toward that goal.”

Nurses had planned to stage informational picketing outside the facility yesterday to draw attention to their concerns about Fairview Lakes’ attempts to move backward on nurse staffing in negotiations. But after the two sides reached a tentative agreement July 30, nurses spent yesterday voting rather than picketing.

Fairview Lakes nurses were successful in standing together for a fair contract, unit co-chair Sue Kreitz said, because the community stood behind them.

“We achieved a good contract because members stood together,” Kreitz said. “Signs in local businesses, stickers, a giant ‘sympathy card’ for management, plans for an informational picket, and a video showing the unequal treatment of clinic nurses sent a clear message that we were going to stand up for a fair contract that benefits staff, patients and our community.”

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Union launches campaign urging patients to ‘insist on a registered nurse’

May 27, 2014 by

There’s no substitute for the professional judgment and personalized care nurses provide to their patients. That’s the message behind radio and online ads airing across the country, including in Minnesota, that advise the public to “insist on a registered nurse.”

National Nurses United, the nation’s largest union of nurses (the Minnesota Nurses Association is a member organization), is underwriting the ad campaign in response to sweeping changes underway in the nation’s health care delivery system.

Those changes, according to nurses, pose potential threats to patient safety.

“An unchecked proliferation of unproven medical technology and sharp erosion of care standards are rapidly spreading through the health care system, far outside the media spotlight but frighteningly apparent to nurses and patients,” the NNU said in a statement announcing the campaign.

Among the emerging trends that have nurses concerned is an expansion of “digitalized care,” in which computers diagnose patients and dictate their treatment based on generic population trends – and not the health status or care needs of the individual.

Computerized electronic health records systems, too, pose a threat to patient safety. The Office of the Inspector General for the Health and Human Services Department has reported widespread flaws in these systems, and when they fail, doctors and nurses are left in the dark, without access to medical histories or medical orders.

Computer programs should never supplant the professional assessment and judgment of experienced nurses and doctors, according to NNU Co-President Jean Ross, a member of the Minnesota Nurses Association.

“The American health care system already lags behind other industrialized nations in a wide array of essential health barometers from infant mortality to life expectancy. These changing trends in health care threaten to make it worse,” said NNU Co-President Jean Ross, RN. “Behind every statistic is a patient, and their family, who are exposed to unnecessary suffering and risk as a result of the focus on profits rather than what is best for individual patient need.

“What we are advising every patient, every American to do is stand up and be heard. When it matters most, insist on a registered nurse.”

NNU’s ad campaign features radio spots, online videos and social media outreach. To watch the new videos and hear the radio ads visit www.insistonanRN.org.

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Nurses at Plymouth care center go union

February 26, 2014 by

mna-logo3-300x300Registered nurses at WestHealth Emergency Department and Urgent Care voted Feb. 13 in favor of joining the Minnesota Nurses Association, a health care facility based in Plymouth and operated by Abbott Northwestern.

In the unit of 32 nurses, 92 percent voted in favor of joining MNA in balloting conducted by the National Labor Relations Board.

Many nurses at the new Plymouth care center had been members of MNA at other health care facilities, and according to the union, “they were eager for the same opportunity to have a voice in their workplace to be able to advocate for themselves and their patients.”

MNA President Linda Hamilton welcomed the Abbott Northwestern-WestHealth nurses to the union.

“We are all stronger and patients benefit because our voice continues to grow,” said Hamilton.

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Hastings nurses plan vigil as talks with Allina stall

December 23, 2013 by

mna-logo3-300x300Nurses at Regina Medical Center in Hastings will hold a candlelight vigil tonight, keeping hope alive for a new contract with the hospital that retains the level of nursing care the Hastings community expects.

The vigil will take place at 4:30 p.m. in the parking lot at the intersection of Highways 55 and 61. Nurses also will collect contributions of money, non-perishable food or clothing for Hastings Family Service at the event.

The current contract between Regina nurses, who are members of the Minnesota Nurses Association, and the hospital will expire Dec. 31.

This is the first contract Regina nurses have attempted to bargain since Allina Health purchased Regina earlier this year, and nurses have bristled at disparities between the contract Allina is offering them and contracts at other Allina facilities in the Twin Cities Metro Area.

“I think they want to get us on the cheap,” said Jane Traynor, a Regina nurse and chair of the MNA bargaining team. “It’s an inferior offer, and we’re not second-rate nurses at Regina.”

MNA and hospital systems, including Allina, operate a joint pension plan for nurses in the seven-county Metro Area, which includes Hastings. MNA members at Allina facilities in the Metro Area also have the option of enrolling in the union’s health-insurance plan, rather than accepting Allina’s corporate plan.

Those are benefits Allina extended to nurses after taking over hospitals in Buffalo, Cambridge and River Falls, Wis., Traynor said. But Allina has so far refused to extend the same benefits to Regina nurses during ongoing contract negotiations.

Traynor, who has worked at Regina for 21 years, said she worries that if Regina nurses accept a second-rate contract, it will create a second-rate level of care for residents of the Hastings area.

“The pension and health insurance nurses have in the Metro is an excellent recruitment and retention tool to keep qualified nurses,” she said. “Because we’re so close to the Metro in Hastings, the qualified people we have, they won’t stay, and Allina won’t be able to recruit qualified people to take care of our patients here in the community.”

For that reason, Traynor said she expects to see plenty of community members at tonight’s vigil.

“Allina has made commitments to the community of Hastings,” she said. “They’ve talked about expanding services, providing more specialists, a new clinic and rebuilding our emergency department.

“If they consider the Regina nurses second rate and inferior, I question their commitment to following through on those commitments to the community.”

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HealthEast drags out negotiations with home-care nurses

July 15, 2013 by

mna-logo3-300x300HealthEast is dragging out negotiations on a first contract for nurses in its Home Care division, according to the Minnesota Nurses Association, which is seeking the public’s help in pressuring HealthEast to bargain in good faith.

The MNA, which represents about 65 nurses at HealthEast Home Care, is asking supporters to call or e-mail HealthEast CEO Kathryn Correia (651-232-2300, kgcorreia@healtheast.org) or Director of Labor Relations Mark Sorenson (651-232-5060, msorenson@healtheast.org).

The message, MNA representative Julia Stewart said, is simple: “Quit stalling and give these nurses a contract that’s fair.”

HealthEast Home Care nurses voted to form a union with MNA in April 2010. A year ago they reaffirmed that choice, voting down an attempt to decertify their union.

Despite nurses’ commitment to collective bargaining, HealthEast management has “steadfastly refused even the most typical and basic contract provisions,” Stewart said. That includes language requiring just cause for firing a nurse, and a grievance procedure ending with neutral arbitration.

In an attempt to jump-start negotiations, nurses recently offered to compromise on “several issues fundamental to their day-to-day work life,” like scheduling and workload, Stewart said. Management rejected the offer.

The two sides are meeting with a federal mediator.

By dragging out negotiations on a first contract, HealthEast is taking a page straight out of the playbook for union avoidance – and demonstrating the need for tougher labor laws. A 2009 study by Cornell University Professor Kate Bronfenbrenner found 52 percent of U.S. workers who succeeded at forming a union remained without a contract one year after their organizing election. Thirty-seven percent still lacked a contract two years after the election.

Employers face no penalty for failing to negotiate a first contract with newly organized workers. Many drag their feet as a result, hoping the longer workers wait to see results from their new union, the more likely they are to support a decertification vote – like the one MNA members fought off at HealthEast Home Care a year ago.

Management’s lethargic approach to negotiations with the new unit of home-care nurses stands in telling contrast to the HealthEast’s most recent round of negotiations with nurses at its Twin Cities hospitals, like St. Joseph’s, St. John’s and Bethesda.

Bargaining alongside other area hospital systems, HealthEast reached a three-year contract with MNA members – and did so about six months ahead of schedule. Hospital executives, Stewart said, emphasized during the negotiations that they wanted to achieve labor peace.

“This doesn’t feel like labor peace to me,” she said.

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Walter Frederickson: A tax for the people, not on the people

August 1, 2012 by

Walter Frederickson, R.N.

Earlier this spring, I stood on the steamy streets of Chicago and witnessed a revival that my union brothers and sisters in the Windy City said was a long time coming. I’d been swept into town a day earlier along with hundreds of nurses, union members and others to help National Nurses United (of which MNA is a founding member) launch what quickly became a national movement – the call for a “Robin Hood Tax” on the “Too Big to Fail” banks and Wall Street speculators who created this financial nightmare.

NNU put on a visual spectacle that afternoon, one that included hundreds of nurses dressed in bright red scrub tops, green masks and the type of pointy hats everyone associates with Robin Hood. Dozens of nationally-recognized speakers and musicians took the stage to share their support, and my union friends in Chicago told me it had been far too long since the city had seen this type of peaceful, public protest filling its streets. While I like to think our colorful costumes and pointy hats had something to do with the energy and passion that was unleashed in and around Daley Plaza, the reality is this: People of all stripes are ready to embrace an idea whose time has come.

It’s a simple concept: Putting a small “Financial Trans-action Tax” of less than one-half of one percent on the types of speculative Wall Street financial transactions that created the global economic crisis we’re still trying to recover from.

A simple idea, sure, but one that carries the support of a powerful and diverse group of people, including Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Nobel Prize-winning economists and thought leaders, religious entities and faith leaders, politicians and many more – from nurses to firefighters to AIDS activists to environmentalists to small business owners.

In the U.S., the Robin Hood Tax has the power to raise hundreds of billions of dollars every year. It can provide funding for jobs and put our union brothers and sisters back to work. It can kick start the economy and get us back on our feet. It can provide education, health care and financial support for the least among us by funding social safety net programs. And that’s just for starters!

Best of all, the Robin Hood Tax won’t affect ordinary Americans. It won’t touch our personal savings or other everyday consumer activity such as ATM withdrawals or our use of debit cards. It’s easy to enforce and tough to evade.

This is a tax on Wall Street, which created the greatest economic crisis in our nation since the Great Depression. These are the same people who have returned to record profits and bonuses while ordinary Americans, the 99 percent, continue to pay the price of the 1 percent’s self-created financial meltdown. The Robin Hood Tax is not a tax on the people. Rather, it is a tax for the people.

Take a minute to learn more at www.RobinHoodTax.org. And if you want to don a pointy hat, wear a green mask and take to the streets to let people know about this growing movement, know this – I’m with you!

– Walter Frederickson, RN, is executive director of the Minnesota Nurses Association, a union of 20,000 nursing professionals.

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Union leaders applaud Supreme Court decision upholding Affordable Care Act

June 28, 2012 by

Minnesota AFL-CIO President Shar Knutson spoke at a rally for supporters of the Affordable Care Act in 2009.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the Affordable Care Act, announced today, keeps the country moving toward a health care system that ensures affordable, high-quality coverage for all Americans, Minnesota’s union leaders said.

The court’s narrow, 5-4 decision to keep intact the landmark 2010 law, known as “Obamacare,” drew cheers from workers, retirees, students and other groups whose access to health care and prescription drugs has increased as a result of the Affordable Care Act.

Shar Knutson, president of the 300,000-member Minnesota AFL-CIO, called it a “great day for working Americans” and said the decision “clears the way for millions of people to have the access to the affordable, high quality health care that had previously been denied.”

Knutson added: “Minnesota’s union members worked hard to make this law a reality, and we are pleased the court affirmed its constitutionality. Now that this issue has been settled, we are hopeful our elected leaders will come together to craft policies that get middle class Americans back to work.”

Knutson and other supporters of the Affordable Care Act pointed to several benefits of the law that Minnesotans will continue to enjoy as a result of the court ruling.

• Seniors with Medicare coverage are saving money on prescription drugs as a result of the new health care law. Minnesota’s seniors already have saved millions since the law passed, according to statistics from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

• Insurance companies may not deny coverage to people with pre-existing medical conditions, a provision that has made coverage accessible for hundreds of Minnesotans.

• Thousands of young adults, up to age 26, are able to stay on their parents’ insurance plans as they transition into the workforce. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services statistics show that 35,000 Minnesotans have taken advantage of this provision of the Affordable Care Act.

“Seniors will continue to be spared from having to choose between paying for prescription drugs and putting food on the table,” Knutson said. “Parents can rest easier knowing their children are covered. Bankruptcies due to health care costs will soon become a thing of the past.”

SEIU Healthcare Minnesota President Julie Schnell, whose union represents thousands of workers in hospitals and care centers statewide, said the decision rejects the cynical, partisan idea that “we are all on our own” when it comes to our health.

“SEIU Healthcare Minnesota’s nurses, doctors, and caregivers know firsthand there’s no room for such extreme politics in the overall governance of our health care system,” Schnell said. “Justices made a decision that now is not the time to slow down the benefits of the law that is making health care more affordable.”

Health care advocates warned, however, that the ruling will not stop opponents of the Affordable Care Act from seeking to dismantle it in Congress. The House of Representatives, in fact, is scheduled to vote on repealing the law next month.

“Today is a tremendous victory for seniors, their children, and their grandchildren,” said Edward Coyle, director of the 4 million-member Alliance for Retired Americans. “But we cannot rest on our laurels. In the 2012 elections we cannot let politicians roll back the progress we have made.”

Others warned that more work remains in order to achieve a health care system that works for all Americans. Linda Hamilton, president of the Minnesota Nurses Association, called the Affordable Care Act “an important first step,” but noted that an estimated 250,000 Minnesotans remain uninsured.

“As nurses, we don’t want to see a single patient suffering because he or she doesn’t have adequate and affordable health care coverage,” Hamilton said. “We need Medicare for all, and it’s our mission as nurses to keep this country moving toward that goal.”

Many unions will join a public celebration of the Supreme Court decision upholding the Affordable Care Act tomorrow in Minneapolis. The celebration is set to begin at 11 a.m. in Government Plaza. Click here for details.

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Nurses call for ‘Robin Hood Tax’ on Wall Street transactions

June 19, 2012 by

Registered nurses Elayne Best (left) and Carol Diemert join the call for a “Robin Hood Tax” outside J.P. Morgan’s Minneapolis offices.

Dressed as modern-day members of the band of Merry Men, union nurses fanned out across downtown Minneapolis today, doling out bottles of water and a prescription for healing what ails the American economy.

The nurses’ solution? A “Robin Hood Tax” on Wall Street transactions.

The plan would place a small sales tax – less than half of 1 percent – on trades of stocks, bonds, derivatives and currencies. Revenues would help reverse declining public support for schools, health care and infrastructure repair and development – and put an estimated 9 million Americans back to work.

Linda Hamilton, president of the 20,000-member Minnesota Nurses Association, called it a “tax for the people, not on the people.”

Hamilton’s union organized the Robin Hood-themed demonstration – many nurses wore pointed, green hats and masks – to coincide with similar actions in 15 other U.S. cities.

The MNA and its parent union, National Nurses United, began calling on lawmakers to “take from Wall Street and give to Main Street” last year. Since then they have been joined by dozens of other public-health, civic and advocacy organizations, as well as prominent economists and celebrities.

The Robin Hood Tax is aimed at high-volume trading, which today makes up a majority of all trades. Experts say the tax will help place limits on the reckless short-term speculation that threatens financial stability.

“Wall Street’s reckless speculation and risky deals caused our economy’s most devastating crash since the Great Depression, forcing millions of Americans to lose their jobs, their homes and their pensions,” said Jean Ross, a MNA member and co-president of NNU. “Three years later, Americans on Main Street still struggle to recover from a crisis we didn’t create. This is the way to start to turn it around.”

In Minneapolis, nurses rallied outside the offices of J.P. Morgan Chase, the financial giant that recently announced it had lost more than $2 billion by gambling on credit derivatives.

MNA staff representative Linda Lange and registered nurse Bob Michaelson hand out water and fliers downtown Minneapolis.

It is that type of risky behavior, MNA member Bob Michaelson said, that a “Robin Hood Tax” would help curtail. A former accountant, Michaelson switched careers 10 years ago. He entered the medical field and has worked as a registered nurse at Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis for the last year.

When he saw his union’s plan for combating Wall Street greed, Michaelson, who calls himself a “recovering corporate tax accountant,” knew he had to get involved.

“The ‘Robin Hood Tax’ makes sense because of the volume of transactions that we have on Wall Street that do not generate income for the common good,” Michaelson said. “It’s the Wall Street banking firms that profit from all these trades.”

Nurses don’t need a background in economics to know the U.S. economy isn’t working for middle class families, Michaelson added. After all, Robin Hood didn’t have his MBA.

“Nurses are concerned about the daily lives of everybody,” Michaelson said. “People look to us for good judgment on things.”

MNA President Hamilton put it this way: “People are suffering, and nurses take care of people. Nurses are coming up with solutions.”

For more information on the “Robin Hood Tax,” go to www.robinhoodtax.org.

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