Workday Magazine (https://workdaymagazine.org/author/michael-moore/page/9/)
By moving forward with plans to close nine facilities in Minnesota and eastern Wisconsin, HealthPartners is turning its back on local communities at the worst possible time, clinic workers say.
“My brothers and sisters and their families hope lawmakers come back to the table, sit down, roll their sleeves up and do whatever is required to get this bonding bill passed … so we don’t have to tell our families we lost our jobs.”
On a day when working people in over 25 cities across the U.S. joined a union-backed Strike for Black Lives, nursing home workers at Cerenity Humboldt Care Center in St. Paul staged a 24-hour strike, demanding a contract that reflects their essential work.
For decades, hourly school employees in Minnesota have been fighting to change a state law that restricts their access to unemployment insurance benefits, but to no avail.
MNA is urging state and local lawmakers to make face coverings mandatory in public places, calling it a “necessary measure to protect the public and stave off a resurgence of the vicious COVID-19 virus that has ravaged this state.”
“To workers who have contracted COVID, this is for you,” Minnesota Nurses Association President Mary Turner said, opening the candlelight vigil as the sun set in St. Paul.
Efforts to halt the spread of COVID-19 are creating immediate economic hardship for many working families.
MNA plans to continue its collection drive each day through Sunday, from noon to 2 p.m., at 345 Randolph Ave.
Yesterday the state’s highest-ranking labor leaders sent Gov. Tim Walz and legislative leaders a to-do list of policy changes necessary, they say, to protect working people on the front lines of the pandemic response and those likely to suffer most from its impact on Minnesota’s economy.
St. Paul educators set out last May to bargain a contract in the public good. When they went on strike this week, the public was right there standing with them.