Nurses picket in front of Allina’s United Hospital and Children’s Minnesota in St. Paul on Sept. 12, 2022, the first day of a three-day strike at 15 hospitals across the Twin Cities and Duluth area. Photo by Max Nesterak/Minnesota Reformer.
Take a seat in the Break Room, our weekly round-up of labor news in Minnesota and beyond. This week: Allina’s close corporate ties; Minnesota’s first Workplace Rights Week; leaders of both national teachers unions to visit Minnesota; attorney general seeks court oversight of Rainbow dissolution; and 45,000 port workers prepare to strike.
Nurses union criticizes Allina’s financial ties
The increasing influence of financiers and corporate consultants on one of Minnesota’s largest nonprofit health care systems is compromising patient care and burning out workers, according to a new report from the Minnesota Nurses Association.
The union, which represents some 22,000 nurses, released the report on Thursday during a summit of the “most influential CEOs, visionaries and policymakers in health care” at the Four Seasons in Minneapolis.
“One set of voices are conspicuously absent from the gilded boardrooms behind me … patients and bedside caregivers,” said MNA President Chris Rubesch at a news conference.
The summit was hosted by multinational investment bank Piper Sandler, which has significant business in the health care industry advising on mergers and acquisitions and underwriting bonds for health systems. For example, the bank earned $5.2 million in fees from underwriting more than $1 billion in bonds for Allina Health since 2007, according to the union’s report.
Piper Sandler President Deb Schoneman is also chair of Allina Health’s Board of Directors. More than half of Allina’s 22 board members work in finance, insurance or real estate, while just four have experience caring for patients, according to the union’s report. That’s a significant change from 25 years ago, when most of Allina’s board had direct care experience.
The union’s report points to several recent Allina initiatives that it says are driven by profit-seeking and are hurting workers and patients, including outsourcing thousands of jobs to for-profit entities, partnering with an investment firm to provide “hospital-at-home” services and cutting staffing levels.
“The patient falls, the medication errors, the nurses trembling with low blood sugar and fatigue because they get no break in a 12-and-a-half hour shift. Myself and my nurse colleagues know that this is a race to the bottom when it comes to patient care,” said Allina Health nurse Rachael Ballard during a news conference.
An Allina spokeswoman shared a statement in response to the report, saying the health system is facing significant financial challenges like other organizations across the country.
“Maintaining our health care delivery system well into the future will require change and innovation. What will not change is our commitment to providing safe, high-quality care,” the statement said.
Allina, which operates more than 12 hospitals and 80 clinics, faced widespread criticism last year after a New York Times investigation revealed the system maintained a policy of denying non-emergency care to patients with more than $4,500 in debt. Allina later stopped the practice.
Allina has also faced a wave of unionization efforts in recent years from unhappy workers. Even doctors, traditionally above the fray of labor strife, have unionized at Allina hospitals and clinics, saying they feel exploited and pressured to cut corners because of profit-driven quotas set by executives in faraway offices.
Rubesch, the nurses union president, said the report shows nurses need legislation giving them a greater say in staffing levels. The nurses union came close to winning more power in state law in 2023, but the bill fell apart after Mayo Clinic threatened to move billions in future investments out of state if it became law.
The Minnesota Hospital Association announced earlier this year that nurse staffing is rebounding post-pandemic, with vacancies falling, but noted just 2 in 5 nurses are choosing to work more than 32 hours a week. The hospital group also reported the average pay for registered nurses saw its biggest jump in a decade, rising 6.7% to nearly $95,000 in 2023. Those raises were driven in large part by a massive strike by some 15,000 nurses.
Minnesota’s first-ever workplace rights week
Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan and Department of Labor and Industry Commissioner Nicole Blissenbach (right) tour a commercial laundry in St. Paul on Sept. 25, 2024, to highlight new workplace safety laws. Courtesy photo.
Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan and Department of Labor and Industry Commissioner Nicole Blissenbach visited workers at a commercial laundry service in St. Paul on Wednesday to highlight the state’s new worker protections.
The visit to Health Systems Cooperative Laundries was part of Minnesota’s first-ever “Workplace Rights Week,” during which DLI staff plan to visit more than 1,000 worksites to educate workers and employers about their rights and responsibilities.
Democrats in control of state government passed a laundry list of worker-friendly laws in 2023, including paid sick leave; a paid family leave program; a ban on noncompete agreements; and, a nation-leading nursing home workforce standards board.
Teachers union and Democrats push for more school funding
National Education Association President Becky Pringle, leader of the largest labor union in the country, will visit public schools in St. Paul and Minneapolis on Monday along with Democratic lawmakers to promote increasing federal funding for public schools.
The visits are part of “walk-ins” — in which supporters gather outside schools before walking in together — organized across the country by the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools.
Monday marks the expiration of federal pandemic aid for schools, which has boosted their school funding by $200 billion over the past three years. Democrats have introduced two bills — the Keep Our PACT Act and the IDEA Full Funding Act — to increase federal aid over the next decade to fund special education and supplementary education services for low-performing and low-income students.
Pringle will visit Lucey Craft Laney Elementary School in north Minneapolis with U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar before heading to Hazel Park Preparatory Academy in St. Paul for a news conference with U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum and school district leaders.
Pringle and Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, the country’s other major teachers union, will also be in St. Paul on Tuesday for a watch party of the vice presidential debate with the state teachers union to support Gov. Tim Walz, a former union teacher.
Attorney General asks for court oversight of Rainbow Health closure
Former workers at Rainbow Health, which provided health and social services to LGBTQ people in Minneapolis, applauded Attorney General Keith Ellison for seeking court oversight over the nonprofit’s dissolution.
In July, Rainbow Health’s leaders announced its immediate closure because of “insurmountable financial challenges” and laid off around 60 workers unionized with SEIU Healthcare Minnesota & Iowa. Workers decried the abrupt closure and its impact on patients, many of whom were low-income and receiving ongoing services for HIV.
Ellison’s office filed a petition on Wednesday asking the Hennepin County District Court to supervise the dissolution of Rainbow Health, which means the court may direct the distribution of assets.
“It not only minimizes the risk of separate disputes about who gets what, it can give the employees the best shot to potentially get paid,” Ellison said in a statement.
Union workers, whose contract entitled them to 30-days notice of layoffs, have asked for a month of pay plus two weeks’ severance and compensation for unused paid time off. That would cost nearly $500,000, according to Ellison’s petition, which also notes Rainbow Health’s attorney said the organization may not have sufficient funds to cover its debts and obligations.
45,000 port workers prepare to strike
Some 45,000 union dockworkers at ports along the East and Gulf Coasts plan to strike on Tuesday, a first for the International Longshoremen’s Association since 1977, the Associated Press reported.
The strike threatens to disrupt trade at as many as three dozen ports — from Maine to Texas — that handle nearly half the shipping cargo in and out of the country. Retailers have reportedly stocked up on goods in anticipation of a strike, but a prolonged work stoppage could lead to shortages of everything from chocolate to industrial parts. Military cargo and oil tankers would not be affected, CNN reported.
The union and the ports have been at an impasse for months over wages and rules on automation, although neither side would discuss pay levels. The New York Times reported longshoreman earn $39 per hour and are seeking $5-per-hour raises in each year of the six-year contract.
On Thursday, the U.S. Maritime Association, which represents the ports and shipping lines, filed an unfair labor practices charge against the union, accusing it of refusing to bargain. A union spokesman called it a “publicity stunt.”