MN nurses make contract gains despite headwinds

July 24, 2025 by

Nurses picket outside United and Children’s hospitals in St. Paul during their 2025 contract campaign.

Members of the Minnesota Nurses Association who work at 11 hospitals in the Twin Cities area voted this month to ratify new union contracts that will provide some stability as health systems navigate historic federal funding cuts in President Donald Trump’s tax-cut bill.

Metro nurses settled with their hospitals after a marathon bargaining session that ended July 3, as Republicans in Congress were falling in line behind a bill expected to slash over $1 trillion from Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, both critical sources of revenue for hospitals.

The timing was no coincidence, according to Fairview Southdale nurse Rachel Andersen, a member of her bargaining unit’s negotiations team and vice president of National Nurses United.

“When we found out that awful bill was passed, it was like the rug was pulled from under us,” she said. “We had to pivot, to figure out where do we go from here and what’s in our nurses’ best interests.”

Still, the contracts include several gains for metro nurses, including 10% raises over the next three years, new tools to address workplace violence and requirements that hospitals provide coverage for nurses when they go on breaks, which will become mandatory under a new state law.

Beginning Jan. 1, employers must allow employees scheduled for six or more consecutive hours a break of at least 30 minutes. Currently, employees working eight or more consecutive hours must be permitted”sufficient time to eat a meal.”

It’s not the strict staffing minimums that MNA members have been lobbying for over the last two decades, but forcing hospitals to build break nurses into their staffing will help address burnout, Andersen said.

“It’s going to be such a relief because one of our biggest points of burnout is when we work 8-, 10-, 12-hour shifts but the hospital does not have any procedures for how we’re going to get our breaks,” she said. “In the ICU, I have to take four patients who are on life support to give my co-worker a break, and obviously that is not a safe situation. Then I have to find another nurse to do the same thing when it’s my turn.

“Now we’ll have nurses scheduled to come in and provide us with those breaks, so you can eat your lunch and rest and get off your feet.”

Nothing came easy for MNA members in this round of negotiations, but Andersen said union members’ willingness to show support for their bargaining team – at informational picketing June 4 and, later that month, in a strike-authorization vote – put pressure on the hospitals to compromise.

“It took eight or nine sessions for them to come to the table with the intent to productively bargain,” Andersen said. “After our informational picket, the next day we got more dates to bargain. After our strike vote, that was the first time they passed a meaningful economic package to us.”

MNA President Chris Rubesch said the union isn’t giving up on the fight for staffing minimums that ensure safe patient care. He noted that this was the first round of bargaining in which MNA members voted safe staffing as their No. 1 priority, over wages.

“We’ve been fighting an uphill battle,” he said. “The campaign may be over for now in the Metro, but the fight for safe staffing and patient care is far from over.”

This article appeared in The Union Advocate’s August 2025 issue.

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

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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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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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Allina cancer center nurses vote to unionize after management shrugs off safety concerns

February 29, 2024 by

Registered nurses at the Allina Health Cancer Institute voted yesterday to form a union, joining together to push back against changes that, nurses say, have put patient safety – and their professional licenses – at risk.

The bargaining unit brings together 21 nurses at AHCI facilities on three Allina hospital campuses, United in St. Paul, Abbott Northwestern in Minneapolis and Mercy in Coon Rapids.

Nurses voted 17-2 in favor of joining the Minnesota Nurses Association, the union of 22,000 health care professionals. Nicole Novak, an oncology infusion nurse AHCI’s Minneapolis facility, called it “a huge victory” in nurses’ fight for patient safety.

“With all these budget cuts, it feels like the priority has been taken off of patient safety and on how we can help Allina financially,” she said in a video posted on social media to announce the election results.

Allina Health launched its cancer services facilities in 2021.

Since then, AHCI nurses “have helped grow these clinics and developed lasting relationships” with fellow care team members, patients and their families, Lisa Fox said. But the St. Paul-based oncology nurse described a downside to AHCI’s growth.

“We have seen growth lead to unclear policies and procedures that could threaten the health and safety of our patients, along with our licenses and our livelihoods,” Fox said. “Inadequate patient-nurse ratios have led to burnout that many other health care workers are all too familiar with.”

AHCI nurses said they got serious about forming a union after management brushed aside their concerns about abrupt changes to the workflow in AHCI facilities resulting from consolidations across the Allina hospital system.

According to nurses, Allina began routing non-oncology patients – including pregnant people – to AHCI facilities for care after executives closed Abbott Northwestern’s inpatient infusion center. AHCI oncology nurses like Kate Spitzer worried they lacked the guidance, training and equipment to safely care for the new patients.

“When we brought those concerns to management, we were told they were building the plane as they were flying it, and that we’d be failing forward together,” Spitzer said.

AHCI nurses filed for a union election with the National Labor Relations Board on Jan. 24.

When negotiations on a first contract begin, the new union members intend to advocate for fairer schedules and safe nurse-to-patient ratios, as well as policies that protect and value nurses’ professional judgment.

“We want our patients to be safe,” Spitzer said. “We want our licenses to be safe. We want to have a good work-life balance. We want to continue to do the work that we’re so passionate about.”

AHCI nurses are the second group of Allina Health workers to form a union with MNA in the last year, joining the system’s sexual assault nurse examiner (SANE) employees, who formed a union in September 2023.

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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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Union members bristle at Allina plans for more hospital cuts

October 27, 2023 by

Nurses and other health care workers took to the streets outside three Allina Health hospitals Oct. 26, protesting the provider’s plan to cut services and reduce nurse and nurse-aid staffing by as much as 30% in some units, according to their unions.

“We believe this has nothing to do with the betterment of patient care and everything to do with the bottom line,” Mercy Hospital nurse Venessa Soldo-Jones said during a press conference on the picket line outside United Hospital in St. Paul. “Nurses are not in this business for profit.”

Two unions, the Minnesota Nurses Association and SEIU Healthcare Minnesota and Iowa, organized the informational picketing at United, Mercy and Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis.

Union members decried Allina for shutting down United’s adolescent mental health unit and Abbott Northwestern’s infusion care center, and they railed against another round of benchmarking – a process in which the system aligns its staffing levels with comparable hospitals across the country – in the works at their facilities.

Health care workers said the process almost certainly will lead to lower staffing and higher workloads in many hospital units – outcomes Allina should be trying to avoid in an already tight labor market, SEIU Healthcare Vice President Brenda Hilbrich said.

SEIU’s 5,000 members who work for Allina are “worn out” from “four years of short staffing,” Hillbrich said. But instead of providing a “soft landing” from the pandemic, Allina “has decided it needs to run productivity tests, benchmarking and other evaluations to justify and normalize the continued short staffing.”

Allina hospital nurses, meanwhile, have been sounding the alarm about short staffing – and its impact on safety and patient care – for over a decade.

United nurse Ali Marcanti said Allina’s plan for more benchmarking is especially troubling in the wake of an annual report, issued last month by the Minnesota Department of Health, that documented 572 adverse events in the state’s hospitals in 2022, the second consecutive year in which adverse events increased. Twenty-one resulted in patient deaths, the highest total since 2006.

“Direct caregiver cuts are seen as an appropriate way to save money, but they always lead to increased patient injury and mortality,” Marcanti said. “There are preventable patient injuries and deaths happening right now in Minnesota – in this hospital – because of chronic understaffing and subsequent failure to rescue.”

Although the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted health systems in 2022, MDH also acknowledged workforce shortages as a factor that contributed to the increase in adverse events last year. “Staffing shortages both limit the number of hands available to assist with patient care needs, such as repositioning and mobility, and create backups in transfers of care across facilities,” the MDH said.

Health care workers don’t want to see pandemic-level staffing become the new normal, Abbott Northwestern nurse Jessica Sherlock said. But that’s exactly what they fear Allina has in mind with this round of benchmarking.

“The pressure that these changes impose threatens to exacerbate our existing staffing shortages, pushing us all closer to the brink of quitting because of the moral injury that we take on every day,” Sherlock said. “Furthermore, we’re deeply troubled that these staffing changes could jeopardize our nursing licenses.”

Union members asked supporters – including elected officials – to contact members of the Allina Health Board of Directors and ask them to put patients before profits by backing away from the plan for more benchmarking.

“Stand by our side and hold Allina Health accountable for what appears to be a race to the bottom in Minnesota health care,” Sherlock said.

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Minnesota unions praise historic legislative session

May 24, 2023 by

Gov. Tim Walz spoke to supporters before signing 12 budget bills into law.

In a historically productive legislative session that ended on time Monday, labor-endorsed lawmakers delivered on nearly all their campaign promises, from investments in public infrastructure and schools to expansion of family-supporting benefits, union rights and workplace protections.

Union activists and leaders were among hundreds who celebrated the session’s accomplishments today on the Capitol grounds, as Gov. Tim Walz held a signing ceremony for 12 budget bills that will fund state government for the next two years.

Walz likened the newly approved budget to the “Minnesota Miracle” of 1971, when the state drew nationwide acclaim for investing in public education.

“If this is ‘Minnesota Miracle 2.0,’ the difference between then and now is … we’re leaving no one behind,” Walz said.

Labor leaders praised Walz and DFL legislators for rising to the occasion created by a projected budget surplus that swelled to $17.5 billion – thanks, in part, to one-time federal stimulus dollars that Republicans blocked the state from allocating one year ago.

After winning all three levers of power – with support from union volunteers – during the 2022 election, DFLers invested the surplus in infrastructure projects and jobs, schools, nursing homes and targeted tax relief for working families, including an expanded child tax credit that will return up to $1,750 per child to lower-income families.

Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, former director of the Minnesota Children’s Defense Fund, said the budget is “deeply rooted in equity and decades in the making.” She credited organizers and activists who have devoted years to fighting for policies that will soon become law, like earned sick and safe time and paid family leave.

“We have played the long game,” Flanagan said. “And we won.”

Children and families will also benefit from $2.26 billion in new funding for Minnesota’s public schools over the next biennium. The 10.5% increase will help school districts cover rising costs – and recruit and retain educators and other employees. And the budget allocates $600 million to hire and retain child care teachers.

Walz and DFL lawmakers focused on issues that matter to workers and families, Minnesota AFL-CIO President Bernie Burnham said, noting that their work stands in contrast to Republican-controlled chambers in other states that have sought to ban abortion, weaken child-labor laws and meddle in school curriculum.

“While other states are putting 14- and 15-year-olds to work on assembly lines, Minnesota is making sure parents have the time and resources to care for and sustain their families; while other states ban books in our schools and libraries, Minnesota is making sure no student goes hungry at school; and while other states make it harder to vote, Minnesota is expanding our Democracy to make sure every eligible voter has the freedom to make their voice heard,” Burnham said.

Public works, transportation and other infrastructure will see historic investments as a result of the session, putting members of unions like the Laborers to work for years to come.
Education Minnesota members praised a 10.5% increase in school funding.
SEIU Local 284 celebrated extension of unemployment benefits to hourly school employees.

Walz is also expected to sign a $2.3 billion infrastructure deal that contains a mix of borrowing – a so-called “bonding” bill – and cash investments. It would be the first bonding bill the state has passed since 2020.

Sen. Sandy Pappas, the lead author, said the measure “will create thousands of well-paying union jobs and ensure businesses have the infrastructure they need to build in Minnesota for years to come.”

On the Capitol grounds today, Walz gave a shout to people in hard hats throughout the crowd. “All of these good union jobs have built the middle class and built Minnesota,” he said. “It is going to continue that way.”

In addition to historic investments approved this session, Minnesota lawmakers took up several policy changes long sought by union members, including an extension of unemployment benefits to hourly school employees, a ban on private prisons and a new Nursing Home Workforce Standards Board with the authority to set standards like pay and benefits.

Lawmakers expanded and strengthened union rights, enshrining public-sector workers’ ability to bargain on non-economic issues like safe staffing and class sizes, giving workers in the newly legalized recreational cannabis industry a path to collective bargaining and banning “captive audience meetings,” in which workers are forced to listen to their bosses’ religious, political or anti-union views.

Funds allocated this session will also bolster the state’s film industry tax credit, raise pay for home care and nursing home workers and strengthen public pensions.

A measure to address hospital staffing shortfalls, however, fell short of the Minnesota Nurses Association’s expectations. The bill established new safety protections and recruitment bonuses for health care workers, but it left out language that would have would have required hospitals to create labor-management committees to determine appropriate staffing in their wards.

Support for a safe staffing law dwindled after Mayo Clinic threatened to withhold investments in its Rochester campus if it passed.

“I hope Minnesotans know how hard nurses fought for your care and safety,” MNA President Mary Turner said. “And I hope corporate executives and our public officials know that our fight is not over to put patients before profits in our health care system.”

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AFSCME members picket Carter’s State of the City speech

April 19, 2023 by

Members of AFSCME locals 1842 and 2508 picketed outside the Oxford Rec Center.

Clerical and technical workers staged informational picketing outside Mayor Melvin Carter’s State of the City address April 18, putting their frustration over a slow-moving round of contract negotiations on full public display.

“We have felt disrespected at the table,” Como Park horticulturist Bryn Fleming said. “Management has shown up late while we’ve been present. It’s disappointing that this is moving so slowly.”

Fleming is a chief steward with Local 1842 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), representing the city’s technical workers. With the clerical union, AFSCME Local 2508, the unions represent about 1,000 workers in talks that began in December.

AFSCME members’ previous, two-year contracts expired New Year’s Eve, and after six mostly fruitless bargaining sessions, the unions will enter mediation with the city May 8.

Union members’ top priorities in bargaining include 6% annual wage increases, affordable health benefits and safety on the job.

AFSCME members staff the city’s offices, libraries, rec centers and other facilities. Many who work in public-facing positions have described an alarming increase in threatening and violent behavior that leaves them feeling unsafe and understaffed, Fleming said.

“Folks in libraries have experienced assault, verbal abuse,” she said. “For folks in rec centers, it’s the same thing. Safety is a big concern, and we’re really trying to have stronger language on that in our contract. We have seen some movement, but we’d really like to have better collaboration.”

The city’s demands, meanwhile, have included elimination of AFSCME members’ promotional rights, which give union members a first shot at interviewing for certain job openings. Union members also have balked at a proposal to eliminate grievances over civil service violations and, instead, shift the process to a commission controlled by the city.

Those are non-starters for AFSCME’s bargaining team, Local 2508 President Jen Guertin said.

“We are the lowest-paid union members in the city,” she said. “For us to be able to promote up to a higher-wage job, that right to take a test and go to the top of a list for an interview, that’s our career path.”

Members of three unions – the Tri-Council – who work in St. Paul’s parks, public works and water departments ratified a new, three-year contract in March that will raise wages by up to 26%. But they took the city to the brink of a strike to get a deal done.

“We’re not there yet,” Guertin said. “We’re going to try mediation, and I’m hoping for the best but preparing for the worst.”

With a mediator involved, Guertin and Fleming said, talks stand a better chance of starting on time and ending when they stop being productive, if nothing else.

“We would set the meeting to start at 5 p.m., and management wouldn’t come into the meeting until 5:30 or 5:45 – on the regular,” Guertin said. “Then we would pass an offer across the table, and they’d leave us sitting there for six or seven hours before coming back to say we can’t get anything done. What’s the point?”

By picketing the State of the City, union members hoped to put Carter on notice that they’re holding him accountable for the city’s lack of urgency.

“When we say things like we’re scared to go to work or we feel unsafe, we’d like to see somebody do something about that,” Fleming said. “And when we say we can’t pay our bills, we’d like to see somebody pay attention to that.

“I would love to feel like the mayor actually respects the work that we do and respects how difficult it can be.”

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

Mental health workers strike: ‘Allina does not respect us in the slightest’

October 6, 2022 by

Mental Health workers on strike at Abbott Northwestern hold a rally on the picket line.

Mental health workers at two Twin Cities hospitals wrapped up a three-day strike Wednesday, with union members rallying on the picket line outside Abbott Northwestern and vowing not to be bullied in contract negotiations with Allina Health.

“It has been quite evident that Allina does not respect us in the slightest,” said Jordan Cich, a senior mental health coordinator at Abbott and member of the union’s bargaining team.

The strike impacted over 130 workers at Abbott and Unity Hospital in Fridley, who unionized with SEIU Healthcare Minnesota and Iowa one year ago to bargain for better wages and safer working conditions.

Union members called a strike for the second time since talks began last winter, in part, because Allina has refused to outline their benefits – like health insurance, paid time off and leaves of absence – in the proposed contract. Union Vice President Brenda Hilbrich, a veteran negotiator, called it an extremely unusual approach.

“The employer has taken a very surprising position on not including those things in our contract,” Hilbrich said. “And we are not going to settle a contract without those items included.”

The strike authorization vote drew 98% support, as Allina’s delay tactics at the bargaining table have only added to longstanding frustrations over shortstaffing, safety and lack of respect from their employer, Cich said.

“In January, members of our bargaining team were voicing our concerns about staffing and violence in the workplace, and all Allina replied was, ‘We don’t want to hear any more of your sob stories,’” she recalled.

As they did during a one-day strike last May, Allina workers were poised to walk out this week at the same time as 350 mental health workers at M Health Fairview, who also unionized with SEIU Healthcare last year.

But Fairview workers postponed their strike after productive bargaining sessions last week, and after a 12-hour bargaining session Monday, the bargaining team reached a tentative agreement with the employer on a first union contract.

If ratified, union members at Fairview will see average wage increases around 6% immediately, with another 2.75% increase in March. Other highlights include additional paid time off and “initial grievance procedures to address staffing concerns,” according to the union.

Throughout their union drive and in negotiations, mental health workers have pointed to a shared interest being treated and compensated as professionals. Staffing issues persist, union members have said, because providing mental health care takes a steep toll on workers’ own mental and emotional well being – and sometimes their physical health, too.

Fairview psych associate Jenny Webster, who has 20 years of experience at Riverside Hospital, said winning a first contract is a step toward stabilizing care in her facility.

“Because of our efforts, we reached the best deal possible for our important work, and I am proud of what we accomplished,” said Webster. “So many people have experienced mental health issues themselves or to a loved one, especially during the pandemic. Raising wages and getting a first contract will mean better care for our patients.”

Now, it’s up to Allina Health to get serious about doing the same for mental health staff and patients, Cich said.

“We want to have enough staff to support not only our patients, but each other as well,” she said. “What we do every day can be very dangerous. We deserve to be protected at work, respected at work and compensated for the work that we do.”

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