Nursing home workers see Fight for $15 as vital to quality care

April 15, 2016 by
Golden Living Center workers Rhoda Brown (L) and Tsge Abraham rally for a fair contract outside the company's Lakeridge site in Roseville.

Golden Living Center workers Rhoda Brown (L) and Tsge Abraham rally for a fair contract outside the company’s Roseville facility.

On the same day over 100 Twin Cities fast-food workers went on strike, area nursing home workers took up the “Fight for $15” as well, rallying outside a Roseville care center for a contract that includes fair wages.

Employees of Golden Living Center welcomed nursing-home residents, striking fast-food workers and other supporters to an informational picket line outside GSL’s Lakeridge site in Roseville yesterday.

About 350 members of SEIU Healthcare Minnesota are in contract negotiations with the company, which operates nursing homes across the state. Tim Sorenson, a 25-year employee and member of the union’s negotiating team, said workers want GSL to put a recent influx of state funding for nursing homes where lawmakers intended the money to go – into workers’ paychecks.

“It’s getting harder to find people who want to do this work for the pay we get,” Sorenson said. “Yet our work is very important. We take care of the most vulnerable people among us, our seniors.”

In Minnesota, certified nursing assistants’ median hourly wage is $12.22, and one-third rely on public assistance. It’s a major reason turnover rates for nursing assistants exceeded 50 percent in 2012 and are expected to climb – an alarming trend in an industry expected to see an uptick in demand as baby boomers retire.

“Too many people I work with want to go to other jobs where there’s better pay instead of staying in this job to take care of our seniors,” Sorenson said.

Tim Sorenson speaks at the rally outside GLC's Lakeridge home.

Tim Sorenson speaks at the rally outside GLC’s Lakeridge home.

Sorenson and other GSL workers were among SEIU members in more than 40 cities nationwide who stood up for fair wages and quality care at nursing homes. The timing of the nationwide day of action – on the same day fast-food workers in a record 320 cities went on strike – is more proof that the “Fight for $15” is catching on among low-wage workers in all sectors of the economy.

“No matter if you’re in health care or maintenance or whatever, we all need to be there for each other,” Sorenson said. “That helps you get what you’re after in the long run.”

GSL workers’ current union contract is set to expire May 1.

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Union volunteers provide Clinton, Sanders with boots on the ground in Minnesota

March 1, 2016 by
Left: Laborers President Terry O'Sullivan rallies a crowd of Hillary Clinton volunteers. Right: Bernie Sanders thanks members of the Minnesota Nurses Association for their support.

Left: Laborers President Terry O’Sullivan rallies a crowd of Hillary Clinton volunteers in Little Canada. Right: Bernie Sanders thanks members of the Minnesota Nurses Association for their support.

 

Energized by the prospect of keeping a pro-labor president in the White House, union volunteers in Minnesota are hitting the streets, working the phones and planning a major presence at tonight’s precinct caucuses, one of 14 Super Tuesday nominating contests nationwide.

[Click here to learn how to participate in the caucus process. Click here to learn where you caucus.]

While their enthusiasm may be shared, not all union activists agree when it comes to the best candidate for the job.

Members of AFSCME, the Carpenters, LIUNA, the Painters, the Pipe Trades, the Service Employees and other unions rallied in support of Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton in Little Canada on Saturday, with nearly 100 volunteers fanning out to knock on doors across the metro area.

 

AFSCME Council 5 volunteers hit the streets for Hillary Clinton.
SEIU volunteers map out a door-knocking route.
Members of IUPAT get a primer in door-knocking.
Carpenters cheer a speech by U.S. Rep. Tim Walz at the Clinton rally.
Union members rally in support of Hillary Clinton at the IUPAT hall in Little Canada.
LIUNA General President Terry O’Sullivan

 

Although Clinton has drawn an overwhelming majority of union endorsements, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders has garnered support from National Nurses United and the Communication Workers of America, and both unions have mobilized their own network of volunteers in advance of tonight’s caucuses.

CWA members have been holding phone banks for weeks, and members of the Minnesota Nurses Association spent the days running up to tonight’s caucuses riding the “Bernie Bus” across the state, urging people to caucus for Sanders.

Differences in style and substance

Clinton’s union supporters point to their candidate’s extensive resume as a public servant, as well as her results-oriented approach. Sanders’ backers tout the senator’s independence and his fiery, populist message.

SEIU President Mary Kay Henry (R) knocks doors in support of Hillary Clinton with Local 284 member Nate Mathias and SEIU Healthcare MN member Robin Pikala (L).

SEIU President Mary Kay Henry (R) knocks doors in support of Hillary Clinton with Local 284 member Nate Mathias and SEIU Healthcare MN member Robin Pikala (L).

Nate Mathias, a pre-kindergarten teacher from Plymouth and member of SEIU Local 284, said he initially gravitated toward Sanders. But on Saturday, he knocked doors on St. Paul’s east side with SEIU President Mary Kay Henry, rounding up support for Clinton.

“I love a lot of the things Bernie is saying, but Hillary Clinton is a bit more of a pragmatist,” Mathias said. “I just think she has more of the experience and political savvy we need in a candidate.”

Henry, the SEIU’s highest-ranking elected officer, said Clinton met with rank-and-file members in seeking the union’s endorsement last year. “Members said, ‘She gets us, she’s tough and she fights,’” Henry said. “She understands the agenda we think matters most to working people.”

Policy differences, too, have steered unions into the Clinton or Sanders camp.

Sanders greets nurses in St. Paul.

Sanders greets nurses in St. Paul.

At a private reception with Sanders in St. Paul Feb. 12, many nurses said Sanders won them over with his support for expanding Medicare to cover everyone – and taxing Wall Street to pay for it.

“From the beginning, Bernie made total sense to me,” said United Hospital nurse Jennifer Michelson, who traveled to Iowa to volunteer for the Sanders campaign earlier this winter. “I like that he’s challenging the power structure of Wall Street, and I like that he wants to get profit out of health care.”

Energy policy, meanwhile, marks a substantive difference for many Building Trades unions, who draw work from pipelines and other energy-infrastructure projects.

Speaking at the rally in Little Canada, LIUNA President Terry O’Sullivan praised Clinton’s commitment to an “all-of-the-above energy strategy that works for us and works for our economy.”

High stakes

Despite their differences, union members on both sides agreed the stakes are high in 2016, and they hoped early enthusiasm among volunteers would carry over into the fall.

“Regardless of who our candidate is, if we don’t win we’re going to see a rollback of help for working families,” Mathias said. “We’re going to go back to policies that foster inequality and don’t do enough to help working people. We can’t afford that.”

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Ellison to U of M researchers: Use collective action to reverse dwindling federal support

November 13, 2015 by
U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison meets with researchers at the U of M - Twin Cities.

U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison meets with researchers at the U of M – Twin Cities.

 

Frontline researchers alerted U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison to the impacts of dwindling federal and institutional support for their work in a meeting at the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities yesterday.

Ellison, a DFLer whose 5th District includes the Twin Cities campus, pledged to continue supporting research funding in Congress, and he praised U of M faculty, who are in the process of organizing a union, for taking collective action to raise awareness of the issue.

Rep. Keith Ellison pledges to share with his colleagues in the state's congressional delegation an open letter from U of M researchers.

Rep. Keith Ellison pledges to share with his colleagues in the state’s congressional delegation an open letter from U of M researchers.

“Your perspective is unique,” Ellison told faculty. “Your process is hands-on. And you’ve got to be able to handle that process in a way that is meaningful for people making policy decisions.”

Ellison met with academics on the same day they released results of a recent survey of U of M researchers, “The State of Research Funding and Support at the University of Minnesota.” Distributed over the summer, the survey drew 342 responses, which revealed several common threads.

• As federal support for research decreases, U of M researchers are spending more time chasing funding, and their research suffers as a result.

Overall spending on university-based research across federal agencies fell $21 billion, or 13 percent, from 2005 to 2015. The share of the federal budget dedicated to research, at 12 percent in 1965, is less than 4 percent today.

Jerry Cohen, a professor of horticultural science, pointed to a national survey that found academic researchers spend, on average, 43 percent of their day navigating the bureaucracy of federal grant funding.

“We are throwing good ideas away,” Cohen said. “It challenges our ability as a nation to remain a premier scientific-research country on the planet.”

• Lack of federal funding and institutional support is driving talented researchers out of the academic field.

“I personally know of faculty who have left academia because of the giant pressure put on them to find funding,” post-doctoral associate Geoffrey Rojas said.

• The U of M is failing to provide adequate support for researchers competing for federal funds, and the U is not being transparent when it comes to administrative costs taken out of research grants.

Just 40 percent of survey respondents said they feel the university “adequately supports and values their research,” the same amount that feel they are given “adequate time in the workweek” to meet the demands of their positions.

Meanwhile, just 1 in 7 researchers at the U feel their employer is being transparent about how it uses “overhead rates” taken out of federal grants to cover facility and administrative costs, according to the survey.

“One of the reasons we’re organizing a union is precisely because of these issues,” geography professor Bruce Braun said. A union, he added, would give U of M faculty a better voice in shared governance at the U, and it would empower researchers to “advocate for the kind of federal funding we need at the university and that the public deserves.”

Tenure-line and contingent faculty at the Twin Cities campus are organizing with MN Academics United, an affiliate of Service Employees International Union Local 284.

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Home care workers, clients not backing down from anti-union group’s legal challenge

October 21, 2015 by
Cortney Phillips, a home care worker from Annandale, speaks to media after a court hearing challenging her collective bargaining rights.

Cortney Phillips, a home care worker from Annandale, speaks to media after listening to oral arguments in a federal court case challenging her collective bargaining rights.

A week ago, Francis Hall made history as the first known home care worker in Minnesota to take a paid vacation day. Today, Hall stood outside the federal courthouse in St. Paul and condemned the well funded, extremist groups suing to deny her that benefit – and take away her newly formed union.

“We’ve come too far,” Hall said. “The home care industry is too important to not stand up and fight back.”

Hall was among a handful of home care workers who observed oral arguments today in a pair of court cases challenging their right to organize a union and negotiate with the state for better wages and working conditions.

Francis Hall is the first known home care worker to use paid time off.

Francis Hall is the first known home care worker to use paid time off.

Home care workers voted to join SEIU Healthcare Minnesota last year, after Gov. Mark Dayton approved a measure expanding collective bargaining rights to home care workers paid with state subsidies. Home care workers negotiated and ratified a contract with the state that went into effect July 1, extending higher wage floors, paid time off and other benefits to more than 26,000 workers statewide.

But legal challenges have pestered the home care workers’ campaign, which became a target of the Virginia-based, anti-union National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation.

A federal judge in Minneapolis twice rejected legal challenges to the Minnesota home care workers’ union. Now the foundation, funded by millionaires and billionaires, is bankrolling a lawsuit filed by nine home care workers who argue being covered by the union contract amounts to forced association – and a violation of their First Amendment rights.

During oral arguments today, according to Workday Minnesota, a lawyer for the State of Minnesota countered that home care workers are not required to pay dues, making it impossible for the plaintiffs to claim they are harmed by the union contract.

After the hearings, workers said the absurdity of the plaintiffs’ position lays bare the National Right to Work Foundation’s agenda. And it’s not about improving workers’ lives or the home care industry.

“The industry deserves more value,” Cortney Phillips, a home care worker from Annandale, said. “Our union is ready to provide that. And joining the union is completely voluntary.”

The National Right to Work Foundation and its deep-pocketed donors, Phillips added, want to reverse the gains home care workers have made through collective bargaining. Losing their union, she said, “would be bad for clients and providers, and it could push us back into the shadows.”

“I see this court case as a direct attack on women and people of color,” Deb Howze said.

Deb Howze, a home care worker from Minneapolis, added that women and people of color make up a majority of home care workers in Minnesota. “I see this court case as a direct attack,” she said.

Several home care recipients joined union workers inside the hearings to show their support for the union, including Nikki Villavicencio of Maplewood. “We won’t ever let them stop us from fighting for quality care,” she said.

The National Right to Work Foundation’s lawsuit not only threatens to undermine home care workers’ progress, but the progress teachers, nurses and other workers have made through collective bargaining as well.

“The same group that continues to attack home care workers … will simply come after teachers and nurses next,” Education Minnesota Secretary-Treasurer Rodney Rowe said.

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Law judge rules North Memorial violated labor law, orders hospital to reinstate fired worker

September 8, 2015 by

NLRBNorth Memorial Medical Center illegally fired one worker and unlawfully attempted to block others from participating in a campaign to fight staffing cuts and protect patient safety at the Robbinsdale hospital, an administrative law judge ruled Friday.

Acting on behalf of the National Labor Relations Board, Judge Christine Dibble upheld charges of unfair labor practices filed by two unions, the Minnesota Nurses Association and SEIU Healthcare Minnesota, and she ordered North Memorial to reinstate Melvin Anderson, an SEIU member fired after joining informational picketing outside the hospital in June 2014, with back pay.

“By giving him his job back and paying back pay for the time they took from him, this ruling shows that workers can stand up for what is right for patients and workers and not have to fear for their job,” SEIU Healthcare Minnesota President Jamie Gulley said. “Melvin, and all of the members of SEIU and MNA who continue to stand up for patient safety, should take pride that this ruling only reinforces their fight.”

Members of the two unions staged informational picketing June 26, 2014, after hospital management moved unilaterally to cut staffing among nurses, dietary aides, housekeepers and other support workers. The cuts, workers said, made it more difficult for them to provide the quality of care North Memorial’s patients deserve.

Union nurses and health care workers picketed outside North Memorial June 26.

Union nurses and health care workers picketed outside North Memorial June 26.

Management took action to block union organizers and officers from talking with members in the days before informational picketing, calling security guards to escort two union representatives off the property and forcing an off-duty nurse to change out of a union t-shirt.

Those actions, Dibble ruled, amount to an unlawful infringement on workers’ right to engage in “protected, concerted activity” regarding the terms and conditions of their employment, as enshrined in the National Labor Relations Act.

“We are pleased that the Board has vindicated our rights to represent our union and recognized the injustice of the employer’s attempt to harass and intimidate legitimate union activity,” MNA representative Joe McMahon said.

Specifically, the ruling confirmed that workers are entitled to have conversations with union staff or stewards in public areas – like a hospital’s cafeteria – free from intimidation or surveillance. Employers may not deny union representatives access to their property unless they are being disruptive, and employers may not prohibit union members or representatives from displaying union logos.

In addition to reinstating Anderson with back pay, the ruling requires North Memorial to post on its bulletin boards that it has committed the unfair labor practices and will halt them immediately.

North Memorial may file an exception to Dibble’s ruling. If no timely exception is filed, her findings become the NLRB’s official decision.

Read the full ruling here.

Read the Union Advocate’s report on the safe staffing campaign at North Memorial.

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Ellison joins home care worker on the job, reaffirms support of Fight for $15

August 31, 2015 by
U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison (L) chats with Clara Nakumbe and her sons Siran and Shmel Bogan (R).

U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison (L) chats with Clara Nakumbe and her sons Siran and Shmel Bogan (R).

Clara Nakumbe is fighting for $15 an hour, but the Minneapolis resident doesn’t work in a fast-food restaurant or behind the scenes at the airport. She works in her own home, providing round-the-clock care for her son Siran, who lives with a severe form of multiple sclerosis.

It’s work that earns Nakumbe $11 per hour, thanks to a new contract between the State of Minnesota and home care workers, members of SEIU Healthcare Minnesota, that went into effect this summer.

Nakumbe was an early supporter of the union drive that led to that historic first contract. Now, she’s among a growing number of home care workers nationwide raising their voices as part of the “Fight for $15.”

“Just because we’re doing this doesn’t mean we don’t have bills,” Nakumbe told U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison during a visit at her kitchen table today. “People need decent wages because they still have responsibilities.”

Ellison, a DFLer from Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District, visited Nakumbe’s north Minneapolis home as part of an event organized by SEIU to expose lawmakers to the challenges home care workers face on a daily basis.

He asked several questions of Clara, Siran’s brother Shmel Bogan and Siran himself, who could offer only “yes” or “no” as answers. The conversation ranged from Siran’s life before his diagnosis to the family’s daily routine.

“What do you think about the home care workers getting $15 an hour?” Ellison asked Siran.

“He said yes!” Clara laughed.

web.homecare-ellison32Although Social Security benefits help, Nakumbe said her income remains far below what she was earning at the job she left in order to keep Siran out of a nursing home – a decision that not only keeps Siran close to family, but saves the state money as well. She said she supports the Fight for $15 movement for the same reasons she supported the union drive four years ago.

“We fought for the union in order to have a voice,” she said. “If more of us come together collectively, we can do more than we can individually.”

Ellison said seeing home care work firsthand reinforced his belief that both home care workers and clients deserve better than wages that keep workers at or below the poverty line.

“If we pay this work fairly, it means we value all members of our community,” Ellison said. “We’re all one injury or one illness away from needing the care you all provide for Siran.

“If his home care worker is paid the right way, then he’ll be taken care of properly. But if you’re paying (home care workers) not even enough to stay out of poverty, how can you expect them to continue to do the work?”

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Unity Hospital workers go union after voting under new NLRB rules

July 15, 2015 by
Screen Shot 2015-07-13 at 6.41.48 PM

(photo courtesy SEIU Healthcare MN)

About 350 workers at Unity Hospital in Fridley voted yesterday to join SEIU Healthcare Minnesota, the union announced today. The new bargaining unit includes nursing assistants, dietary aides, environmental services aides, patient care technicians and other positions.

Over 59 percent of workers voted in favor of forming a union. It was the first major election in the region conducted under new rules established by the National Labor Relations Board in April, according to SEIU.

Part of an effort to modernize and streamline union organizing elections, the NLRB’s new rules allow workers’ petitions for elections to be filed online, consolidate the post-election appeals process and require equal access to voter contact lists for management and the union.

Management has long exploited the NLRB appeals process to drag out organizing elections, hoping to kill pro-union momentum, and business groups are challenging the NLRB rule changes in court.

Barb Shoemaker, a patient care tech from Anoka, said the process was fair for both Unity Hospital and its workers, who wanted to take an up-or-down vote on whether to form their union and move on with the results.

“With the changes in the union election rules, we were able to have a vote on whether we wanted to join SEIU without overwhelming interference,” Shoemaker said. “Even with the new rules, they tried to scare people out of voting yes and even attempted to stop people from engaging in protected union activity, but I am glad that under new NLRB guidelines we didn’t have to wait weeks longer to have our vote. By voting yes to form our union, our voice will finally be heard.”

The new unit will now begin bargaining their first contract with Unity, an Allina-owned hospital. Tania Logacz, a nursing assistant from Coon Rapids, said better patient care is at the top of Unity workers’ list of priorities.

“Care giving is getting tougher, but management only considers the total number of patients when setting staffing ratios, not the acuity of care needed,” Logacz said. “This has led to many more employee injuries and staff are being burnt out.

“By voting to form a union, we showed that we the employees do count and we’re going to look out for patients’ safety and our own safety.”

The election victory was a decade in the making for several pro-union workers, including Kathy Sodman, a health unit coordinator from Ramsey.

“As a long-time employee, I always have hoped that Unity was as dedicated to my future as much as I am dedicated to Unity’s,” she said. “But the reality is that management views us as easily expendable even through all my years of hard work for the hospital.

“I’ve been part of previous attempts over the past 10 years to organize a union at Unity and today we finally succeeded, and we will be heard!”

SEIU Healthcare Minnesota unites more than 42,000 health care and long-term care workers in hospitals, clinics, nursing homes and home care throughout the state of Minnesota.

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Protesters to Best Buy: ‘Get out of the way so we can have justice’

June 9, 2015 by
Protesters demonstrate outside Best Buy's annual shareholder meeting.

Protesters demonstrate outside Best Buy’s annual shareholder meeting.

 

RICHFIELD – Inside and outside of Best Buy’s annual shareholders meeting today, Minnesotans called on the corporation to stop using its political clout to block policies that improve working families’ lives.

That includes proposed legislation in Minnesota that would provide workers and their families with the stability and security they need to ensure a healthy work-life balance – policies opposed by lobbying groups Best Buy helps fund.

Best Buy plays “an important role in the Chamber of Commerce and other business associations that have been opposing legislation that supports workers’ rights to take care of their families,” Veronica Mendez Moore, an organizer with the Twin Cities worker Center CTUL, told about 100 demonstrators at a rally outside the shareholders meeting.

CTUL, which has been supporting janitors’ campaign to improve wages and working conditions maintained by cleaning contractors that service big-box retailers, organized the protest with faith groups, labor unions and progressive organizations working to build support at the Capitol for basic worker benefits and protections.

The Working Parents Act, introduced by House DFLers last session and backed by labor, stalled after drawing swift opposition from the Chamber of Commerce and the Minnesota Retailer’s Association, another Best Buy-led lobbying outfit. The bill pulled together initiatives seeking to crack down on employers who commit wage theft, require fairness in employee scheduling and guarantee workers access to earned sick time and paid family leave.

Leticia Zuniga describes what happened as a delegation of workers and their supporters met with Best Buy executives during the shareholder meeting.

Leticia Zuniga describes what happened as a delegation of workers and their supporters met with Best Buy executives during the shareholder meeting.

Too many of the jobs created during the current economic recovery don’t provide those benefits, janitor Hilario DeLeon told the crowd through a translator.

“Where I work we have no benefits at all,” DeLeon said. “We want to be able to have vacation. We want to be able to have paid sick days.”

DeLeon has cleaned the Target in downtown Minneapolis for seven years, and he said conditions deteriorate as contractors, looking to offer big-box retailers the lowest bid, seek new ways to cut costs. If Best Buy won’t agree to hold contractors to higher standards, he said, the company should at least stop using its clout at the Capitol to oppose raising the floor for everyone.

“We know that Best Buy has been getting in the way of our efforts,” DeLeon said. “We want Best Buy to get out of the way so we … can have justice.”

As protesters rallied outside, a delegation of activists gained access to Best Buy’s shareholder meeting by holding stock in the company or acting as a supportive shareholder’s proxy. Leticia Zuniga, a janitor and CTUL member who cleans Herberger’s, said a three Best Buy executives met with the delegation privately as well.

“We talked a lot about the problems there are in this industry: the rampant wage theft, workers not getting paid on time or with pay stubs, not knowing what hours they’re getting paid for,” Zuniga said. “We asked Best Buy to sign a responsible contractor policy, and they said they’d get back to us in a month.”

Ironically, the janitors who will clean up after today’s shareholders meeting are union members who enjoy many of the benefits workers inside Best Buy’s stores are fighting to win.

Ricardo Chavez, a member of the Service Employees International Union who works inside the corporate headquarters, joined the protest. He earns a fair wage with good benefits, predictable scheduling and access to paid sick days.

“But I know my brothers and sisters that work cleaning Best Buy’s stores right next door don’t have access to any of these benefits,” Chavez said. “Thousands of workers all over the state do not have access to these benefits, and all of us deserve them.”

Indeed, about 1 million workers in Minnesota do not have access to paid sick and safe time to care for themselves or their family members, TakeAction Minnesota Director Dan McGrath said, yet policies requiring employers to provide sick days are generally popular among voters.

“These corporations are created for people to make money,” Pastor Doug Mork of Cross of Glory Lutheran Church said. “They shouldn’t be cutting back our democratic voice.”

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It’s official: Dayton signs Minnesota home care workers’ contract into law

May 22, 2015 by
Pro-union home health care workers celebrated the results of their organizing election last August.

Pro-union home health care workers celebrated the results of their organizing election last August.

In a victory for 27,000 home health care workers across Minnesota, Gov. Mark Dayton today gave final approval to a historic first union contract that will dramatically improve working conditions in the industry when it takes effect July 1.

Dayton’s signature on the Omnibus Health and Human Services bill, passed by the Legislature with bipartisan support, made the contract official. It’s the first new union contract with the State of Minnesota in decades, according to SEIU Healthcare Minnesota, the union representing home care workers.

For workers, the contract means the wage floor in the industry will jump from $9 to $11 by 2016. The contract also includes paid time off – five days per year for full-time workers – plus increased training opportunities and grievance and arbitration procedures.

The contract represents a victory not only for workers, but for the seniors and people with disabilities they serve. Clients joined workers in supporting the union drive – a process that took several years and involved changing state law – and together, they cheered the governor’s final signature today.

“Invisible No More” was the slogan of home care workers’ organizing campaign. Nikki Villavicencio, a home care recipient from Maplewood, said the new contract provides more than just wages and benefits; it shows the state values the freedom home care workers provide thousands of Minnesotans who choose to stay in their homes.

Nicole Villavicencio (L) talked about why they support their home health care providers’ efforts to join SEIU Healthcare Minnesota during the lobbying effort two years ago.

Nicole Villavicencio (L) offered her support to home care providers organizing s to join SEIU Healthcare Minnesota as the campaign kicked off two years ago.

“This contract will mean a better life for workers, but also for families across the state like mine,” Villavicencio said. “My family will benefit from the increased stability that will come with a higher pay floor, paid time off, new training funds and the other benefits that this contract will provide the workers who care for us.”

The contract will also help reduce turnover among workers the industry by cutting down on wage theft. Sadie Hawkins, a home care worker from White Bear Lake, is in the middle of a fight to get the wages she’s owed – a fight the new contract will help her win.

“The grievance process will give those of us who have gone through wage theft a clear way to get the pay we are due for the work we have done – without going to smalls claims or another unpredictable process,” Hawkins said. “I worked for Forest Lake home care and my agency failed to pay me for a month of my work, but I couldn’t stop working because my client needed support. Two months later and I’m still waiting on my money.”

Although membership in the bargaining unit is voluntary, the contract will cover all home care workers serving clients in so-called “self-directed care” programs, which are supported with public funds. The new Health and Human Service bill appropriates $16.227 million toward the home care contract over two years, and its economic impact will be double that because of federal Medicaid matching, SEIU Healthcare Minnesota said.

The contract elevates standards in an industry marred by low wages, part-time schedules and few benefits, and it’s a welcome change, said home care worker Alberta McCurdy of Minneapolis.

“I currently make $9 an hour and this wage increase will help me pay my bills and pay my rent,” she said.

“I’m so excited to get paid time off after working for all these years without it,” Christine Hale, a home care worker and mother of three from Crosby, said. “The last time I had a surgery I had to go back to work right away because I was the only provider for my family – and it was really hard.”

Negotiations between SEIU Healthcare Minnesota and the state began after workers voted decisively to form a union in August 2014. The two sides reached a tentative agreement in January, and over 95 percent of voting members ratified the agreement.

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Allina hospital workers ratify contract establishing $15 minimum wage

April 17, 2015 by
web.Allina3-26.picket1

Workers picketed outside United Hospital in St. Paul last month.

Capping a week that saw fast food workers, bank tellers, students and other workers across the Twin Cities mobilize for higher wages, SEIU Healthcare Minnesota announced today that members have ratified a new contract with Allina that establishes a $15 minimum wage at seven Twin Cities hospitals.

Allina backed out of metro-wide negotiations between the union and hospital systems that resulted in a new, three-year contract for 3,000 workers in March. In informational picketing at several Allina hospitals March 25-26, workers said Allina was insisting on language that would allow hospitals to outsource their work to non-union subcontractors.

The contract with Allina, according to a press release by the union, provides employment security protections to prevent subcontracting.

It also includes health and safety protections for workers, wage increases in each year of the contract for all members, an increase in Allina’s contribution towards workers’ pension plan and a 25 percent increase in the amount of tuition reimbursement available to workers annually.

The new contract with Allina means 99.5 percent of SEIU Healthcare Minnesota members working in 16 Twin Cities hospitals will earn $15 per hour or more, according to the union.

Allina workers had pushed for contract provisions that would minimize the potential for hospitals to be caught short-staffed, pointing to over 1,000 staffing emergencies – defined by Allina as any time a staff member works more than 120 hours in a two-week pay period – resulting from staff cuts in recent years.

Vivian Straumann, a Licensed Practical Nurse at United Hospital in St. Paul, pledged to continue the fight for safe staffing.

“This contract is a step forward for every union member, but there is a lot more that we need to do to improve patient care in our hospitals,” Straumann said. “We will not stop raising the issue of staffing levels until we are satisfied that we have the right number of people to keep ourselves, our patients and our hospitals safe. Staffing levels are directly linked to our patient’s health and our ability as frontline workers to deliver the highest quality of care possible. ”

Click here to read the full release from SEIU Healthcare Minnesota.

The new contract covers over 3,000 Allina hospital workers, including nursing assistants; Environmental Services staff; cooks and dietary staff; Licensed Practical Nurses; X-ray, surgical, and sterile processing technicians and other workers at eight Allina hospitals, including Abbott-Northwestern, Buffalo, Mercy, Owatonna, St. Francis, United, Unity, and Phillips Eye Institute.

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