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Nearly 1,000 members of SEIU Healthcare Minnesota and supporters walked an informational picket line on March 25 at Abbott Northwestern Hospital, calling for safer staffing levels.
“I’m here for our patients’ quality care as well as for health and safety for my co-workers,” said one of the picketers, Kalsang Dickey, Richfield, who has worked as a nursing assistant at Abbott Northwestern for 15 years.
SEIU Healthcare Minnesota also staged informational pickets on Thursday, March 26 at Mercy Hospital in Coon Rapids and United Hospital in St. Paul in which another 1,000 workers and supporters marched.
Contract negotiations are underway for about 3,000 hospital workers at Abbott Northwestern and seven other hospitals owned by Allina Health: Buffalo, Mercy, Owatonna, St. Francis, United, Unity, and Phillips Eye Institute. The workers’ contract expired February 28.
“Allina has cut staff at every hospital in the last three years, but we are still working the same or more hours and it means we are constantly understaffed,” Dickey said. “It’s hard for us to take care of patients.”
Dickey works in the Mother Baby Center at Abbott Northwestern and said sometimes only one nursing assistant is scheduled for the night shift. “If we have more nursing assistants, we can do a better job taking care of our patients’ needs.”
SEIU Healthcare members also raised concerns about Allina proposals to subcontract hospital jobs and the impact on workers and patients.
“If Allina executives subcontract hospital jobs like Dietary and Environmental Services to the lowest bidder, I think there will be higher turnover, less training, lower standards, and all of that will harm patient care,” warned Dawn Akkaya, SEIU Healthcare member who for 16 years has worked as nursing assistant and patient assistant coordinator at Abbott Northwestern. “We want to work with Allina to invest in our healthcare workforce, not drive a race to the bottom.”
Pay is also an issue in the negotiations, said Dickey, who said she needs to take on extra shifts to make ends meet for her family with two wage-earners and three kids.
“This hospital is our second home,” Dickey said, and her co-workers are like brothers and sisters. “We are standing up for our rights. We want to make this family better,” she said, so that the hospital workers can provide quality care for patients.
Members of the Minnesota Nurses Association walked along the informational picket-line with SEIU Healthcare members, including James Davies, RN, Minneapolis, who has worked 31 years at Abbott Northwestern. “We’re here as MNA members to support our fellow union members at the hospital,” Davies said.
MNA President, Linda Hamilton and the Executive Director, Rose Roach spoke at the rallies, as well as Jean Ross, RN, Co-President of the 185,000-member National Nurses United, who affirmed, “Your fight is our fight. We all do better when we all stand together. Standing up beside you as fellow healthcare workers, they cannot win.”
The workers received strong support from other unions as well. Chet Jorgenson, President of the President of the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees walked the picket line and Meiissa Wenzel, President of MAPE Local 301, told the rally crowd that she was a patient at United Hospital.
“This hospital saved my life. I am here because of you. Thank you for being there for everybody in that building who needs you. Your brothers and sisters in other unions support you. We’re in this together. It’s not just you and me, it’s all of us working together to save lives, to help Minnesotans live healthier and happier lives.”
Jamie Gulley, President of SEIU Healthcare Minnesota, pointed out the irony of the impasse with Allina at Abbott Northwestern Hospital. “SEIU workers voted in 1939 to do a sit-down strike at Northwestern Hospital nearly 80 years ago and we’ve been union ever since. This is the oldest union hospital in the United States and we have never had to go on strike here as SEIU.”
Gulley contrasted that history with Allina’s current bargaining strategy to “take our jobs, our pensions and our wages” while failing to provide “the staff and resources to get the job done right for the patients.”
This year, Allina Health System has been the lone hold-out, as other area HMOs have reached agreements with SEIU Healthcare Minnesota. It was not always so. Two contracts ago, when Richard Pettingill was President and CEO, the agreement bargained with SEIU was hailed as a healthcare industry model and featured a “Stragegic Alliance” between union employees and the company.
Vivian Strauman, a Licensed Practical Nurse (LPN) at United for the past 35 years and member of the union’s current negotiating team, reflected on the quality of care the alliance fostered and the recent change in the climate at Allina facilities.
“Under the Strategic Alliance, working together with administration would provide the best care for our patients because we were jointly encouraging the best ideas ands when we saw things that were’t working, we (employees) could submit ideas and work on them together. But as time went on and we changed administrative people, that was not in their idea of how to work with a union.”
Stauman and 10-year Abbott Northwestern Surgical Support Specialist Emily Martin agreed that Allina had stepped back from the “Administrative Alliance” philosophy in the previous contract and has completely abandoned it for an adversarial stance toward the union in the current talks.
On the picket line, an exasperated Martin said, “My union brothers and sisters are out here today trying to get the attention of Allina Health executives to let them know what is going on in our hospitals. We have let them know face-to-face. We have let them know through emails, we have let them know through meetings, but they don’t seem to hear us. So now we’re out here trying to get as much attention as we can for the very serious issues that we face in the workplace every day that are being ignored.
Allina did not respond to a Workday Minnesota request for a statement or interview to present the company’s position and views.