Health care support workers began an open-ended unfair labor practices strike at Essentia Health’s Deer River hospital and nursing home on Dec. 9, 2024. Photo courtesy SEIU Healthcare Minnesota & Iowa.
Take a seat in the Break Room, our weekly roundup of labor news in Minnesota and beyond. This week: Strike at Essentia’s Deer River hospital enters second month; fired Minnesota Nurses Association executive director sues union for racial discrimination; Duluth snowplow drivers and utility workers call off strike; SEIU rejoins the AFL-CIO; and Trump will get NLRB majority two years early.
Essentia strike enters second month
Some 70 nursing assistants, cooks, phlebotomists and other support workers at Essentia Health’s Deer River hospital rejected the health system’s latest offer on Tuesday, continuing their unfair labor practices strike that began on Dec. 9.
It’s now the longest unfair labor practices strike in 40 years for SEIU Healthcare Minnesota and Iowa, which represents nearly 50,000 workers, and there are no negotiations planned to bring it to a close.
At the heart of the dispute is pay. Workers at the Deer River hospital and nursing home say they’re paid far less than their peers at other Essentia Health facilities. They proposed bringing their pay in line with workers at other facilities in the first year of a three-year contract, followed by 4% raises in each of the following two years.
Union leaders say Essentia’s best offer has been a 3.5% increase on average — not across the board — in the first year. That means more senior workers would receive a pittance.
Sarah Jo Roberts, a surgical technologist with 18 years of experience, said her hourly pay would rise just 8 cents, from $31.62 an hour under the Essentia proposal. Other workers would see as little as 4 cents an hour.
“It was a slap in the face,” Roberts said.
Essentia’s offer also included 2.75% increases across the board in the second year, and 2.25% increases in the third.
Roberts said she and her colleague found the offer particularly galling given that the health system’s executives have received massive bonuses in recent years. Essentia Health CEO David Herman received $1 million bonuses in 2022 and 2023, pushing his total compensation above $3 million and making him one of the highest paid health care executives in the state.
Essentia has seen a wave of union campaigns in the past year, with hundreds of workers voting to unionize across dozens of facilities.
A spokesman for Essentia Health shared a statement saying their offers have been competitive and consistent with more than 20 agreements ratified with other Essentia Health unions.
“We have a responsibility to our colleagues, patients and community to ensure high-quality, sustainable care in our region,” Essentia Health said in a statement.
Roberts said the pay and understaffing at Deer River fuels high turnover, leading to burnout among workers who may be stretched across multiple roles at the small facility.
“We’re getting burnt out and we’ve just had enough,” she said.
Prolonged strikes without pay can be financially painful for workers, but Roberts said SEIU has been able to cover a majority of their lost wages through its strike fund. She said she knows of jusst half a dozen workers of the 70 members in the bargaining unit who have crossed the picket line.
Roberts says she’s been drawing inspiration from her parents, whom she remembers striking in the 1980s when she was little.
“It was not easy but they continued to fight,” she said. “And they won.”
Minnesota Nurses Association faces racial discrimination lawsuit
Former Minnesota Nurses Association Executive Director Karlton Scott filed a lawsuit against the union and its first vice president, alleging he was wrongfully terminated after a rival for the executive director job and his supporters targeted Scott with a racist rumor campaign falsely accusing him of sexual impropriety.
Scott was forced out a year ago, less than a week after a reform-minded majority took over the union’s board of directors and held an emergency meeting to replace him with Elaina Hane. She subsequently fired four other union managers, including the only other non-white senior managers.
Scott had only been at the helm of the union for a year, although he had spent years at the union previously, rising from an organizer in 2013 to director of organizing in 2019. He was the first Black executive director of the union and had a “stellar, unblemished record of exceptional achievement,” according to his lawsuit, filed in state court last month.
The union, which represents some 22,000 nurses, filed its response to the lawsuit on Tuesday, denying wrongdoing.
The internal strife comes as the union begins negotiations on its biggest contracts with the state’s largest health systems, and faces the threat of more decertification campaigns supported by the National Right to Work Foundation.
This week, nurses at Mayo Clinic’s Fairmont hospital voted to oust the Minnesota Nurses Association, adding to the hundreds of nurses who have already cut ties with the union in recent years.
500 Duluth city workers call off strike threat
The union representing some 500 Duluth city workers including snowplow drivers and maintenance workers reached a tentative agreement with city administrators on Monday, averting a potential strike, the Star Tribune reported.
The workers, who are unionized with AFSCME Local 66, voted to authorize a strike in December for the first time in 17 years after months of negotiations.
Details of the agreement were not released beyond the union saying it includes meaningful market adjustments, improvements to workloads and commitments to address staffing shortages. The union was seeking 8% labor market adjustments, in line with what police and fire received in recent years, according to the Star Tribune.
Workers are expected to vote on the agreement on Jan. 14.
SEIU rejoins AFL-CIO after two-decade-old split
The Services Employees International Union announced it would rejoin the AFL-CIO on Wednesday after the two powerful labor groups split nearly 20 years ago.
With nearly 2 million members, SEIU is the second largest union in the country. AFL-CIO will now represent nearly 15 million workers. The reunion is more than two years in the making and comes as the labor movement is strategizing on how to handle a second Trump term and its expected hostilities toward new union campaigns, cuts to federal workers and crackdowns on undocumented immigrants.
“It is damn past time for unions for all,” said SEIU International President April Verrett, speaking at a roundtable discussion Thursday in Austin, Texas, Michigan Advance reported.
Trump to get early NLRB advantage
President-elect Trump will get to pick an extra member of the National Labor Relations Board, which oversees private-sector unions, after Democrats failed to confirm the renomination of Lauren McFerran, who was reappointed by Trump in 2020.
Had she been confirmed by the Senate, a Democratic majority on the board would have been secured until 2026.
That news landed a month ago, but was revived this week by U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna when he blamed the loss on Democratic incompetence. While independent Sen. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema opposed the nomination along with Republicans, Khanna claimed Senate Democrats had a narrow window when they could have pushed through her nomination while a few key senators were away.
“But we delayed the vote (for what I’m hearing described as “no reason”) until Vance and Manchin returned, deadlocking the vote at 49-49,” Khanna tweeted. “We then failed to get word to Vice President Harris quickly enough to come and deliver the tie-breaking vote.”
Khanna’s account seemed to be another example supporting progressives’ accusations that Democrats are unwilling or unable to fight for their stated values. But his thread may have revealed his own incompetence.
U.S. Sen. John Fetterman’s Deputy Chief of Staff Tré Easton said Khanna’s timeline of incompetence doesn’t add up, and that “the votes were never there to get this done.”
Khanna also referenced a senator “Roberts” being absent for the vote even though there is no Sen. Roberts.
Khanna later tweeted that he believes U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer did “everything he could to get McFerran confirmed.”