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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Allina doctors mark one year since union vote with call for progress in talks

December 12, 2024 by

Dr. Cora Walsh, who practices at Allina’s clinic in West St. Paul, spoke during a press conference outside Abbott Northwestern.

Unionized doctors in the Allina Health system are frustrated with the slow pace of contract negotiations and management’s failure to address concerns about ongoing lab-processing delays.

That frustration that boiled over in a press conference outside Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis on Nov. 16. Doctors publicly called out members of Allina’s board of directors for failing to respond to their letters – sent to each board member individually – warning about the lab delays and their serious impact on patient care.

Not one board member responded, Dr. Matt Hoffman, a family clinician at Allina’s Vadnais Heights facility, said.

“What we hear from that is that the board of directors does not seem to care or feel accountable to the communities they serve,” Hoffman said. “They certainly don’t seem to care or feel accountable to the health care providers who depend on them.”

The press event marked one year since 600 physicians at Allina clinics across the region voted to form the largest private-sector doctors’ union in the country, joining the Doctors Council, an affiliate of the Service Employees (SEIU) union.

They were the second group of Allina doctors to unionize, following a vote at Mercy-Unity in the north metro that brought together about 150 hospital doctors. The two groups are bargaining first contracts with Allina separately.

Members of both bargaining units, wearing their white lab coats, joined the event in Minneapolis. They described shared concerns about the pace of bargaining and the continued corporatization of their health care facilities.

“There are some days where I feel like Allina’s representatives are showing up and really being thoughtful (in bargaining), and there are some days where it feels like there are deliberate delays,” Dr. Jess Boland, who works in Mercy-Unity’s intensive-care unit, said.

Dr. Kristin Sanders-Gendreau, a pediatrician in Allina’s Maplewood clinic with 30-plus years of experience, said that Allina executives were “squandering a great opportunity to join with us to make the careful corrections needed in health care to realign and bring the healing relationship between clinician and patient back to the forefront.”

“But we need a real seat at the table in order to do so,” she added.

Dr. Kristin Sanders-Gendreau said collective bargaining is an opportunity to restore physicians’ voice within large health care systems like Allina.

The lab delays – which result from Allina’s move to outsource its clinical lab work to Quest Diagnostic, a private company, in September – are a point of contention inside – and outside – bargaining between the clinicians and Allina. Hoffman said his patients have had to wait several days for diagnoses that would previously take hours, delaying necessary care.

“Our CEO, Lisa Shannon, makes $2.7 million,” Hoffman said. “Our health care executives gave themselves 20-30% raises recently. We believe they can bring these services back.”

But doctors said Allina’s indifference to the delays and disruptions that have come with outsourcing lab work is reflective of a broader approach that prioritizes the bottom line over patient care. It’s why doctors are also seeking contract language that would ensure adequate staffing across their facilities – not just for physicians, but for all members of the care team.

“While corporate health care continues to grow, staffing shortages and cost cutting measures mean we give more of ourselves to deliver the care our patients deserve,” Dr. Cora Walsh, who practices at Allina’s clinic in West St. Paul, said. “This is why we are fighting for contract protections that will provide us with time, resources and staff to do this essential work.

“When we do this work long after the clinic day has ended or late into the evening, we struggle to provide the care our patients deserve, and we struggle to care for our own well-being.”

Boland added, “I want another 20 years out of my career, and it’s worrisome to think of doing another 20 years with the trends we’ve seen of increased administrative distance and decreasing administrative interest in the actual provision of patient care.”

Union members said some progress had been made toward a settlement, pointing to language that will create a new mentorship program and a “collaboration council” to give health care professionals a voice in Allina’s decision making. New safety provisions will protect doctors from being forced to provide care to patients who have harassed or threatened them.

But members of the bargaining teams stressed that the finish line remains far from sight.

“They need a contract,” said Senate Majority Leader Erin Murphy (D-St. Paul), a registered nurse who attended the rally. “I’m asking those on the other side of the table to stand in common cause with those who are licensed to provide care, in advocacy for Minnesotans who need care. Find a path forward for a contract … so that providers are able to practice in a way that puts patients first.”

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

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Led by nurses, coalition of MN unions to push ‘Healing Greed Agenda’ in 2024

February 9, 2024 by

John Welsh, a nurse at Unity Hospital, outlined the MNA’s 2024 legislative agenda.

Less than a year after hospital lobbyists stymied efforts to establish minimum staffing levels in Minnesota hospitals, union nurses will head back to the Capitol in 2024 with an agenda focused on safety, nurse retention and increased accountability for health systems and their highly paid executives.

The Minnesota Nurses Association calls it the “Healing Greed Agenda,” and the union has readied a broadly supported campaign to advance it when the 2024 legislative session begins Monday.

“Hospital executives think they run the show,” MNA President Chris Rubesch, a nurse at Essentia-Duluth, said during a Capitol press conference Feb. 5. “They have the money to pay more than sixty lobbyists to ensure the system stays exactly like it is. But we are here today to speak with one voice and demand change. Minnesota can do better, and we must do better!”

Leaders of several other labor organizations, including the Minnesota AFL-CIO and AFSCME Council 5, joined the press conference, pledging to work in coalition to support the campaign. And MNA leaders listed several DFL lawmakers who are working with the coalition to usher the proposed policy measures through the Legislature.

Those measures include:

• Increased protections for nurses who raise concerns about patient safety and inadequate staffing in their hospitals, and greater legal accountability for hospital executives when their staffing decisions lead to adverse events. MNA pointed to several examples of hospitals allegedly retaliating against nurses for calling out unsafe staffing in their units.

• An enhanced student-loan forgiveness program, with more funding and expanded eligibility, designed to recruit and retain hospital nurses, as well as new protections against violence in hospitals – another factor driving nurses away from the bedside. Nurses’ proposed violence prevention measures include trauma-informed care and de-escalation strategies.

• Increased regulation of nonprofit hospitals’ finances and operations, including a cap on executive pay and new requirements that hospitals give public notice of planned service cuts and consolidations. Nurses also want to see increased scrutiny of hospitals’ debt-collection tactics and how the non-profit institutions are meeting requirements that, in lieu of paying taxes, they invest in charity care and public health.

Nationwide polling results, released by Gallup in January, showed that nurses are the most trusted profession among Americans, with 77% of respondents agreeing that they are “honest and ethical.” It was the 22nd consecutive year in which nurses had the highest rating of any profession.

MNA President Chris Rubesch spoke during the Capitol press conference Feb. 5.

At the press conference. Sandra Feist (D-New Brighton) said lawmakers should have the same trust in nurses’ assessment of how corporate greed is impacting patient care in Minnesota hospitals.

“As lawmakers, we need to trust nurses when they tell us that they face retaliation for speaking up in defense of safe patient care,” Feist said. “We need to trust nurses when they tell us that violence is rising in their hospitals for patients and workers due to slashed staff levels and resources. And we need to trust nurses when they tell us that there is a crisis in our hospitals.”

But the “Healing Greed Agenda” is also notable for what isn’t included: the hospital staffing mandates that nurses hoped would become law a year ago.

The “Keeping Nurses at the Bedside Act” advanced through several legislative committees in 2023. The measure would have required hospitals to create labor-management committees to determine appropriate staffing in their wards, but support among lawmakers dwindled after Mayo Clinic threatened to withhold investments in its Rochester campus if the measure passed.

“Hospital CEOs have created a crisis in our hospitals that is driving nurses from the bedside and putting safe patient care at risk,” Shiori Konda-Muhammad, a vice president of MNA, said. “Now, they’re doing everything in their power to keep nurses from speaking up and taking action to demand better for patients and workers.”

Feist and many other DFL lawmakers continue to support the “Keeping Nurses at the Bedside Act,” but she said advocates decided to prioritize the anti-retaliation measure during this shortened legislative session because “it is pure policy,” while the staffing law would be more appropriately considered during a budget session.

Konda-Muhammad, meanwhile, said MNA members will continue to advocate for minimum staffing requirements in their bargaining units – and they shouldn’t fear retaliation from management when they do it.

“We nurses will continue to fight for patients,” she said. “Now, we need lawmakers to have our backs and stand up to corporate bullies in our health care system so we can carry on that fight.”

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Allina Health clinicians file for union election

August 11, 2023 by

Doctors and advanced practice providers (APPs) at Allina Health primary and urgent-care clinics filed for a union election this week, seeking to become the nation’s largest union of private-sector clinicians.

The election would cover about 550 clinicians working in over 50 facilities across the region, according to organizers with Doctors Council SEIU, Local 10MD.

Physicians and APPs, who are not physicians but perform many of the same duties, said in a press release issued today that they are unionizing to gain more say over their working conditions, which right now are dragging down “patient care, professional practice and personal well-being.”

“As health care providers, we are committed to delivering the highest quality care to our patients, but we cannot do that when we are overworked, understaffed and unsupported,” Dr. Matt Hoffman, a physician at Allina’s Vadnais Heights clinic, said. “By forming a union with Doctors Council SEIU, we can better advocate for the resources and support we need to provide safe, effective and compassionate care to our patients.”

The decision to unionize, according to organizers, came after months of discussions among Allina health care providers about common concerns like safety, moral injury and eroding professional agency. Dr. Katherine Oyster, who practices family medicine in Cottage Grove, said the goal is a more collaborative, sustainable health system.

“Voting to unionize gives us in primary and urgent care the opportunity to, en bloc, work collaboratively with Allina leadership to re-center our patients as the focus of our work,” Oyster said. “It would give us a seat at the table where practice-changing decisions are made so we can properly advocate for the needs of our patients. It gives us an opportunity to decrease provider burnout/moral injury with the ultimate goal of keeping us happily providing care with Allina for many years to come.”

If the National Labor Relations Board grants their petition for an election, Allina primary and urgent-care clinicians will become the second group that includes Allina physicians to vote on union representation this year.

Mercy Hospital physicians voted in March to join the Doctors Council, but Allina challenged the eligibility of some employees for the bargaining unit. The NLRB has yet to rule on the appeal.

Meanwhile, nearly 800 frontline workers across Allina’s hospital operations in the Twin Cities – lab technicians, nursing assistants, dietary aides, mental health workers and dozens of other classifications – have joined SEIU Healthcare Minnesota and Iowa in the last two years. And nurses at Mercy Hospital’s sexual assault unit recently filed for a union election with the Minnesota Nurses Association.

In addition to its track record of rocky labor relations, Allina has come under scrutiny after a New York Times investigation revealed that the provider routinely denied non-emergency care to patients with higher levels of medical debt, raising ethics concerns.

Among their reasons for seeking a union, Allina clinicians cited “moral injury caused by the pressure to prioritize productivity and profit over patient needs and values and from a lack of support and resources to provide high-quality care.” The list also included:

  • Patient safety concerns due to understaffing and inadequate resources.
  • Limited input and decision-making power in matters affecting patient care, provider safety and professional autonomy.
  • The erosion of the clinician-led model of care and the threat of corporate influence on medical decision-making.

Doctors Council SEIU, which represents thousands of health care providers across the U.S., said Allina clinicians plan to hold a press conference at 2 p.m. Wednesday outside Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis.

“We believe that every health care provider deserves a safe and supportive workplace where they can provide the best possible care to their patients,” said Dr. Frances Quee, president of Doctors Council SEIU. “By joining together in a union, these health care providers can have the power and resources they need to make real improvements in their workplace and for their patients.”

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Minnesota nurses call off strike, claim ‘historic victory’ in contract campaign

December 1, 2022 by

Hundreds of nurses marched for a fair contract in downtown Minneapolis Nov. 2.

Members of the Minnesota Nurses Association called off a planned three-week strike Dec. 6 after reaching tentative agreements on new contracts covering 15,000 nurses at seven hospital systems in the Twin Cities and Duluth areas.

The proposed three-year contracts, if ratified, would raise metro nurses’ wages by 18% and, according to the union, would give nurses “unprecedented” say in how staffing levels are set in their hospital units.

Union nurses had vowed to strike if hospitals did not agree to address chronic understaffing, seeking compensation increases to keep nurses at the bedside and contract language to ensure nurses have a voice in staffing decisions that affect patient care and workplace safety.

They got both, according to MNA President Mary Turner, a nurse in the North Memorial hospital ICU. She called the tentative agreements a “historic win for nurses and patients.”

“For years, hospital executives have been pushing nurses out of the profession by under-staffing our units and undervaluing our nurses,” Turner said. “This tentative agreement will help to keep nurses at the bedside, where we will keep fighting to oppose the corporate health care policies which threaten our hospital systems and the care our patients deserve.”

A profession in crisis

MNA members held firm to their patient-centered demands through bargaining that dragged on for nine months. They stood together after their previous contracts expired over the summer and through a three-day strike in September, the largest private-sector nurses strike in U.S. history.

After voting in November to strike for a second time, nurses said the stakes were too high to settle for anything less than contracts that address the crisis of care in their facilities, citing unsustainable conditions that risk becoming the “new normal” for staff, patients and communities.

“Time is up,” Abbott Northwestern nurse Angela Becchetti said. “You need to put staffing on the table. You need to protect your nurses. Ultimately, we’re here to protect our patients.”

A three-week strike over the holidays would have forced hospitals, already reliant on highly-compensated “traveling” nurses to cover staffing shortfalls, to hire even more as scabs.

“They are paying those nurses an obscene amount of money when all we want is staffing,” Becchetti said. “Put that money that you are paying nurses to work during a strike into staffing, and you won’t be having a strike. If you fix staffing, you will help retain your nurses.”

Unlike the wage increases, which the union hailed as its largest in two decades, staffing gains made by nurses in bargaining vary by tentative agreement, according to MNA.

The union said language in some proposed contracts would prevent management from reducing staff levels without reaching a “consensus” with nurses on the decision. Other language would protect nurses from discipline if they raise concerns about unsafe assignments, or identify specific outcomes that would trigger labor-management staffing reviews.

Nurses also won increases in pay for preceptors, who help train new nurses, and for charge nurses. Several tentative agreements also included new workplace safety protections.

Since negotiations with the hospitals began last spring, Minnesota nurses have framed their contract campaign as a fight to save the profession.

Hospitals across the U.S. are struggling to attract and retain bedside nurses – a trend local nurses say began before the COVID-19 pandemic. Hospital executives looking to pad their bottom lines brushed aside nurses’ documented reports of unsafe staffing levels, which soared by 300% between 2014 and 2021.

Nurses took the lobby of the US Bank corporate offices, calling out the company’s vice chair of consumer and business banking, Tim Welsh, vice chair of the Allina Health board.

Nurses say short-staffed hospital units are more susceptible to adverse events that put their patients ­– and their nusing licenses – at risk. A report issued by the Minnesota Department of Health in August backed up those claims, showing a 33% increase in adverse events in Minnesota hospitals from 2020 to 2021.

Trischa Ochsner, a nurse at Minneapolis Children’s Hospital, said an autumn surge in pediatric respiratory illnesses, coupled with her hospital’s “dire” staffing situation, has created a crisis of care with “no end in sight.” Some families, she said, are forced to wait hours for bed space to open.

“While our leadership gets to remain nameless in an office or working from home or on a golf course, we keep coming back day after day to the same horrific staffing,” Ochsner said. “And at the negotiation table their answers remain unchanged. They do not want nurses involved in the decision-making process, yet their decisions are leading to the decline and failure of a system.”

Frustration with hospital CEO’s – and the executives who populate their nonprofit boards – boiled over in November, when hundreds of MNA members marched through downtown Minneapolis, calling out board members and their employers for driving a corporate approach to health care.

The labor community stood shoulder to shoulder with nurses throughout their contract campaign, St. Paul Regional Labor Federation President Kera Peterson said.

“Our federation and our affiliate unions were fully prepared to be on the picket line with nurses who stuck together for the contract they deserve – and their patients deserve,” Peterson said.

Staffing campaign heads to Capitol

Although they avoided a strike, nurses insisted their fight to put patients over profits was not over. They pledged to be at the Capitol this winter to lobby in support of legislation that would require Minnesota hospitals to set limits on the number of patients a nurse in each of its units can care for, set by staffing committees with equal participation from management and caregivers.

“With new staffing language and fair wage increases, nurses are empowered to continue the fight to protect care in our communities,” MNA Vice President Chris Rubesch said.

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Hospital nurses in Twin Cities, Duluth vote to authorize strike

August 16, 2022 by

Members of the Minnesota Nurses Association announce plans to take a strike vote.

Nurses at 15 Minnesota hospitals voted yesterday to authorize a strike, after union negotiators accused health care executives of refusing to bargain contracts that protect the safety of their patients and address the crisis facing their profession.

“What we are being forced to do is totally against every ethical principal that we have,” Minnesota Nurses Association (MNA) President Mary Turner said, choking back tears during a press conference announcing the strike vote. “But we have no choice.”

A strike could put as many as 15,000 nurses on the picket line at 12 hospitals in the Twin Cities and three in Duluth. According to the MNA, it would be one of the largest nursing strikes in U.S. history, and the first time Twin Cities and Twin Ports nurses went on strike together.

Bargaining units are legally obligated to give hospitals 10 days’ notice before any work stoppage.

MNA members have been in bargaining with the hospital systems – Allina Health, M-Health Fairview, Children’s, HealthPartners and North Memorial in the Twin Cities – since March. They have focused their contract campaign on improving patient care by investing in measures to keep hospital nurses at the bedside.

It’s the first round of talks since COVID-19 shocked the health care landscape, and MNA members – in the media, at the Capitol and via workplace actions – have been sounding the alarm about the toll staffing shortfalls are taking on patient care and staff morale.

A report issued by the Minnesota Department of Health earlier this month showed a 33% increase in adverse events in Minnesota hospitals from 2020 to 2021. Union leaders pinned the blame on short staffing and retention issues, noting MNA members’ own reports of unsafe staffing concerns have increased 300% since 2014.

“Our management, our leaders have failed,” said Amy McGlone, a nurse and member of the Children’s Hospital bargaining team. “They have failed us nurses, as well as the patients and families who come through our doors for care… What is happening in our hospitals is not safe and not sustainable.”

As the crisis continues to deepen, even more nurses are considering giving up on the profession or moving to positions away from the bedside, studies suggest.

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the Illinois Economic Policy Institute (ILEPI) issued a report in June that found 51% of surveyed nurses considered leaving the profession within the next year, and they cited short staffing and moral distress as the driving factors. That constitutes a “public health crisis,” Turner said, and it is a direct consequence of “corporate health care policies pursued by our hospital executives with million-dollar salaries.”

“Our management, our leaders have failed,” says Amy McGlone, a nurse and member of the Children’s Hospital bargaining team.

“Our integrity dictates we demand the kind of care that we would want for ourselves, our families and our loved ones – for every single patient that crosses our threshold,” said Meghan Matteson, an acute rehab nurse at Fairview Riverside.

“The best care possible is not receiving emergent care in a hallway. The best care possible is not having to wait hours for a higher level of care – sometimes days. The best care possible is not having nurses with more patients than we can care for safely. Unfortunately, this is our current reality.”

To turn the tide in their profession, Minnesota nurses are seeking new contracts that include wage increases and a seat at the table in decisions about staffing levels in their units.

They also want paid family leave, after many health care workers zeroed out their paid time off while isolating, quarantining or caring for family members affected by the pandemic. At least one hospital system, according to a nurse at the bargaining table, has responded to the request for paid family leave by suggesting nurses buy their own short-term disability insurance.

“Fairview has taken advantage of our goodwill during this pandemic and has highly normalized this chaotic staffing situation that we are currently in,” HealthEast nurse Katie Donner said. “We’ve risked our lives and the health of our families to care for our community. Our community recognizes us, so why won’t Fairview?”

The community may get an opportunity to show its support for nurses on the picket line soon, if the strike vote – which drew support from a “supermajority” of nurses who cast ballots – doesn’t prompt hospital executives to get serious about the union’s demands.

“We don’t take this decision lightly,” Turner said. “All 15,000 nurses want to be at the bedside, but we have been driven to this. We have tried to put forward proposals that would bring back nurses to the bedside, but they are not interested. For the safety of our patients, we need to take this action.”

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