Strike Canceled as Minnesota Hospitals and Nurses Agree on a Deal

Strike Canceled as Minnesota Hospitals and Nurses Agree on a Deal the Minnesota Nurses Association (MNA) has announced that a tentative deal has been reached with several Minnesota health systems, averting a planned strike by nurses that was due to begin.

Approximately 15,000 nurses were due to walk out for about three weeks across 15 Twin Cities and Twin Ports hospitals, including those run by Allina Health and Children’s Minnesota. For most locations, the strike was supposed to end on December 31, while for others, open-ended strikes had been planned.

If the strike had taken place as planned, it would have been the second in just a couple of months. In September, nurses went on a three-day strike, which the association hailed as the largest nurses’ strike in the private sector in the country’s history.

The agreement was reached after nine grueling months of negotiations and nearly half a year of work for nurses with no active contract.

The outlined three-year agreement calls for unprecedented pay increases of 17% to 18% over the course of its duration and greater efforts to address understaffing in hospitals. Nurses in Twin Ports or Duluth areas would receive a 7% increase in the first year, with 6% and 4% jumps following in the next two years of the contract. The deal for nurses in the Minneapolis and St. Paul region is similar, with the only difference being a 5% increase in the third year.

The collectively-agreed pay increases, according to MNA, are the biggest it has obtained in more than 20 years and include compensation going back to the expiration of the previous contract.

The agreement also includes pay raises for nursing preceptors and charge nurses, who play key roles in the education and supervision of new nurses. These initiatives, according to the association, will assist health systems in retaining nurses at a time when many of them are walking out of their jobs at hospitals.

The association also stated that the contract includes stipulations to ensure nurses aren’t penalized for raising concerns and expressing their opinions regarding different assignments. It also calls for reviews of staffing levels tied to patient and nurse well-being

“This tentative agreement is a historic win for nurses and patients at the bedside,” Mary C. Turner, a registered nurse, and president of the MNA, stated. “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.”

Nurses have now settled the contract dispute with 15 of the 16 hospitals involved.

The truce between the nurses and Minnesota hospitals comes just a couple of weeks after a similar cease-fire between Kaiser Permanente and over 20,000 of its nurse staff – that deal included a 22.5% pay raise over four years.