Five Days Ahead of December 11 Strike Date, Nurses Settle Hospital Contracts Bargaining Committees Recommend ‘Yes’ Vote, Citing ‘Historic’ Gains
[UPDATE: The Minnesota Nurses Association announced December 14 that members voted to ratify the agreements. I hope to post updated story in the next day or to to minneapolisunions.org]
SAINT PAUL — As the Labor Review went to press December 8, 15,000 members of the Minnesota Nurses Association were scheduled to vote over three days on proposed contract settlements with hospitals in the Twin Cities and Duluth-Superior.
Nurse bargaining teams were recommending “yes” votes on the proposed agreements.
MNA planned to announce results of the voting December 14.
(For updates to this story, visit minneapolisunions.org).
In announcing the tentative agreements December 6, the MNA called off a 20-day Unfair Labor Practice strike which the union previously planned to begin December 11.
“This tentative agreement is a historic win for nurses and patients at the bedside,” said Mary C. Turner, ICU nurse at North Memorial Hospital and president of the Minnesota Nurses Association. “For years, hospital executives have been pushing nurses out of the profession by under-staffing our units and under-valuing our nurses. This tentative agreement will help to keep nurses at the bedside, where we will keep fighting to oppose the corporate healthcare policies which threaten our hospital systems and the care our patients deserve.”
In addition to significant wage increases, the agreements provide nurses with a long-sought goal: a role for nurses in how hospitals set staffing levels.
The agreements cover 15 hospitals run by seven different hospital systems: Allina Health, Children’s Minnesota, Essentia Health, HealthPartners, M Health Fairview, North Memorial, and St. Luke’s.
In a statement, MNA said: “If approved by nurse members, the new contracts would include unprecedented language won by MNA nurses to address chronic understaffing in our hospitals for the first time in history… Staffing changes won by MNA nurses in the tentative agreements will give nurses a say in how staffing levels are set and to ensure changes to staffing levels benefit nurses and patients at the bedside.”
The staffing changes won by nurses will vary by each tentative agreement with each hospital system.
The union also reported: “In addition to the staffing language won by nurses, the tentative agreements for new contracts include historic pay raises of 18 percent over three years for nurses in the Twin Cities, and 17 percent for nurses in the Twin Ports, with pay retroactive to the previous contract’s expiration. These wage increases represent the largest won by MNA nurses in over two decades.”
As nurses streamed into a Bloomington hotel November 30 to cast strike votes, Southdale ICU nurse Ericka Helling — a nurse since 1998 — greeted everyone and asked if they had any questions.
One young nurse she welcomed said, “I’ve only been a RN for a month.”
“No one can work this hard for the rest of their career, they can’t,” Helling said.
Helling explained the reasons driving the strike vote: “You need better support and you need to be able to stay in this profession for 25 years.”
“What I think is awesome is there are still nurses who care enough,” Helling said.