Thousands of nurses are set to begin an open-ended strike July 8 at multiple healthcare facilities in Minnesota and Wisconsin.
Seven things to know:
1. The strike involves Minnesota Nurses Association members in Duluth, Minn., and Superior, Wis. In Duluth, acute care hospital nurses will strike at Essentia Health’s St. Mary’s Duluth Hospital, Miller-Dwan Hospital, St. Mary’s- Superior Hospital and Aspirus Health St. Luke’s Hospital, according to a union news release. Nurses and healthcare workers at Essentia Health’s 1st Street, 2nd Street, 3rd Street clinics in Duluth and its Superior clinics, along with their colleagues at Duluth’s Miller Hill Ambulatory Surgery Center and Solvay Hospice House, will also go on strike.
2.Union members authorized a strike earlier in June and issued a 10-day notice to hospitals June 27. Nurses have been in negotiations with the four hospitals since March while other healthcare workers have been bargaining for more than a year, according to the union.
3. In their release, MNA representatives said members seek enforceable staffing levels that ensure quality care, confirmed work agreements, reduced workplace injuries and violence, improved retention, and reduced healthcare costs. Moreover, they contend that Essentia and St. Luke’s have bargained in bad faith.
“It has become clear to us that regardless of how often we meet, neither Essentia Health nor Aspirus St. Luke’s executives are interested in actually bargaining,” Chris Rubesch, RN, president of the Minnesota Nurses Association and negotiating team member, said in the union release. “No nurse wants to walk off the job, but these employers have left us with no other option.”
4. In a statement shared with Becker’s, Aspirus St. Luke’s disputed the union’s claims regarding bad-faith bargaining and said that during negotiations, management has presented “a fair and responsible proposal to MNA and we have been very clear that we cannot accept fixed staffing ratios that put patient care at risk or radical economic proposals that threaten the financial stability of our organization.”
5. Essentia Health also shared a statement with Becker’s, saying the Duluth-based health system has focused on making progress during negotiations and consistently encouraged the union to join them for additional bargaining opportunities before the contract’s June 30 expiration.
“This was a wholly avoidable outcome,” Rhonda Kazik, DNP, RN, chief nurse executive at Essentia, said in the system’s statement. “For the benefit of our patients and Twin Ports colleagues, Essentia Health has taken a good faith and solutions-oriented approach to these negotiations.”
6. Both Essentia and Aspirus St. Luke’s emphasized that they are prepared to provide care during the strike and remain ready to negotiate a fair contract for workers.
7. While MNA members at 16 hospitals across seven hospital systems voted to authorize a strike earlier in June, along with their advanced practice provider colleagues at 69 Essentia facilities and others at six of Essentia’s clinic, hospice and surgery facilities, no strike is planned for the other facilities in the Twin Cities metropolitan area.
Essentia, which has contested the union’s proposed APP bargaining unit as contrary to the National Labor Relations Board’s Health Care Rule, said June 30 it has received formal notice of the MNA’s intent to bring hundreds of APPs in northern Minnesota out on strike beginning July 10.
