Members of SEIU Healthcare Minnesota & Iowa who work for Essentia Health in Deer River, Minn., have spent the holiday season on the picket line demanding competitive wages that keep up with the cost of living. Photo courtesy of SEIU Healthcare Minnesota & Iowa.
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For more than a month, workers at Essentia Health’s hospital in Deer River, Minn., have been on what is considered to be the longest open-ended unfair labor practice strike in their union’s history in over 40 years. They have been showing up on picket lines in northern Minnesota’s wintry conditions, in snow and negative temperatures, and will continue with a rally in Duluth on January 15.
“I have never been on strike before,” says Sarah Jo Roberts, who has worked as a surgical technologist for Essentia since 2004. “I have never experienced such disagreement between two parties. They definitely want to show their power in not giving in and letting the union win the strike and getting what we’re asking for.”
SEIU Healthcare Minnesota & Iowa represents around 70 members at the hospital, including surgical technologists, sterile processing technologists, radiology technologists, licensed practical nurses and nursing assistants, food service, laundry, and maintenance workers. The union’s contract with Essentia ended in September and negotiations have been going on since August. The union has filed several unfair labor practice charges against Essentia Deer River for refusing to bargain. According to a press release from the union, “Essentia has refused to engage and set bargaining dates with the mediator. Instead of actually doing their job, Essentia leaders only spoke through the media to demand workers vote once again on their subpar proposals.”
The Deer River workers say they are striking because they are the lowest paid out of all of the Essentia facilities. They are demanding competitive wages in order to keep up with the cost of living. “They’re telling people that what they’re offering is comparable and consistent with 20 other contracts that have been ratified this year, but what they’re not telling you is that those other contracts were already at competitive wages, and we are so far below that,” says Roberts, who works part-time for $31.62 an hour. According to the union, some workers make as little as $16 an hour.
Essentia’s proposal has included a 3% raise for the first year, 2.75% for the second year, and 2.25% for the third. “But when you do the math for each individual position and what step they’re at it doesn’t come up to 3.5%, so we asked them, where are you getting your math?” Roberts says. Her pay would only see a raise of 8 cents per hour.
SEIU organizer Kayla Schwankl, who used to work as a surgical tech like Roberts, said that Essentia had offered a proposal in October with a pay cut for some workers. “We gave them a chance to fix it, and they didn’t, so basically we had to counter our own proposal so we could keep the ball rolling, and at that point, we figured the best way to get to an agreement was to bring in a mediator.”
Although the mediator was brought in, the union says there’s been no effort from management to come back to the bargaining table with another offer since the strike began on December 9. Instead of offering more mediation, Schwankl says that Essentia wanted the workers to vote on their previous proposal. On Tuesday, January 7, workers held an in-person vote on the proposal, and around 90% voted to reject it.
Schwankl says that Essentia has been lying to the public about what SEIU is doing. “They’re saying that SEIU is not coming to the table, not giving them bargaining dates, or not talking to the mediator, and that’s all incorrect,” she says. “We’ve been reaching out to our mediator, and we have provided dates to them now twice, and they still haven’t given us a date to meet.”
Essentia Health is a nonprofit organization based in Duluth. According to the Star Tribune, CEO David Herman is one of the highest paid healthcare executives in the state and has received over a million dollars in bonus pay.
In addition to the refusal to come back to the bargaining table, Schwankl says that Essentia hired a lawyer who has behaved in a condescending manner. “He treats us like we’re children, like he was trying to scold us for standing up for our rights,” she says.
Essentia has also been pushing cross facility cooperation, meaning that workers from one facility would temporarily work at a different location. Roberts says that they do not agree with this part of the proposal because of the wage disparities at the different locations as well as the potential to encourage animosity between the various unions representing workers at Essentia. Workday Magazine reached out to Essentia for a comment but did not receive a response.
Workers at Essentia’s St. Mary’s hospital in Duluth are represented by the United Steelworkers and have been supporting the Deer River workers. There are Essentia hospitals across the state, as well as some in North Dakota and one in Wisconsin. Workers at other Essentia hospitals have been unionizing, following a growing trend of labor organizing in healthcare.
“With the pandemic, a lot of people were laid off, and we were forced to work on these skeleton crews and you got all this work done with so very little,” says Roberts. “They know we can do it, but you would maybe get a different perspective if you were actually working in those departments on a daily basis.”
Roberts says she hopes they can reach a contract soon. “I love every part of what I do, and I love caring for patients,” she says. “That’s what keeps me doing what I do for a living.”