Minneapolis, MN – On March 1, workers held pickets at three Allina Hospitals in the Twin Cities metro area. The pickets were held at Allina’s Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis, Mercy Hospital in Coon Rapids, and Unity Hospital in Fridley. Coon Rapids and Fridley are suburbs of Minneapolis. The pickets were part of a fight for first contracts for a large collection of groups who recently organized and joined the Service Employees International Union, Healthcare Minnesota and Iowa (SEIU HMNIA).

The first group to join the union, and who have been bargaining the longest, was 220 laboratory assistants, technicians, and scientists from Allina’s Central Lab attached to Abbott Northwestern Hospital. They were joined at the pickets by other newly-organized groups like physical and occupational therapists at Abbott Northwestern, as well as long time members at the hospital picketing in support of the new union members.

SEIU HCMNIA has represented workers at Abbott Northwestern since they organized in 1934, forming the first hospital union in the United States. SEIU HCMNIA had represented around 1000 workers at the hospital before the wave of new organized started in Allina, and now represents around 1400 workers there after several new groups have joined in the last year and a half.

Workers say they have been organizing for many reasons, but one major motivator is that Allina has severely cut their PTO banks twice over the last two years even as folks worked extra shifts and put their lives in danger to keep the hospitals open throughout the pandemic.

After the lab workers joined the union at Abbott Northwestern, workers across the Allina system began joining in a large wave of organizing in the system, which increased numbers of SEIU HCMNIA-represented workers from around 4000 to around 5500 members. Nearly all of the workers are still fighting for a first contract. The most recent group to join was 365 service and maintenance workers at Unity Hospital, who also held pickets along with workers from the lab onsite and mental health workers who also joined recently. At Mercy Hospital pickets were held by newly-organized lab workers and mental health workers.

Barb Shoemaker, a patient care technician at Unity Hospital who was involved in organizing to join the union, states, “At Unity we organized for several reasons. We joined the union to fight for the safety of our patients and for our staff safety, as well as patient staff ratios. Our benefits keep getting taken away by management. So, we came together and picketed to show management that we are willing to fight for what is right.”

The different groups of workers are at very different stages of bargaining, with some lab workers 14 months into their fight for a first contract, and others just beginning the process. The mental health workers at Mercy, Unity and Abbott Northwestern have all held multiple one-day strikes together over the last year. The new union members understand that their fight is together as workers at Allina and if they want to win good first contracts they need to organize together to force Allina to meet their demands.

The new SEIU members will continue to fight for the contract they deserve and say they are not ready to settle for what the boss is currently offering.  The 4000 longtime members of SEIU are currently under contract until 2024, when they will be bargaining next contracts across the entire system.

#MinneapolisMN #SEIU #SEIUHealthcareMinnesota

The election filing includes all non-management employees throughout Minnesota, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota and Nebraska. Many of the workers provide direct care including abortion services, and others work in education, outreach and office services, and other types of work. The workers requested voluntary recognition from Planned Parenthood management, which Planned Parenthood has since stated they will not do. Because Planned Parenthood declined to voluntarily recognize, the workers will go forward with a union election.

At 10 a.m., May 26, some of the workers from the organizing committee on the union drive announced their election filing publicly through a press conference on Zoom, streamed live in the union’s social media. As Planned Parenthood and abortion rights face serious challenges in times ahead, the workers felt like now more than ever, they need a legally binding voice in decisions to better meet the challenges ahead and protect themselves. They also pointed to serious pay disparities between workers performing the same work and a lack of an ability to know what others are being paid for their same jobs.

Sage Shemroske, a health center associate at the Uptown Minneapolis location of Planned Parenthood, told Fight Back!, “I am excited to go forward and win our election and show the boss that they don’t dictate our lives,” and went on to say, “I want to see my union work as a tool we have to feel less exploited under capitalism and not be alone in the struggles we face as workers.”

When asked what forming a union means to them, Shemroske stated, “Trust in your fellow workers to not feel isolated. When you are feeling exploited, you are not alone and not feeling too low and grief-laden to fight back,” and, “Yesterday I was talking to a coworker and asked her concerns. She asked what cons [to unionizing] were. I said, there are none. When you are working as a collective and making space for the needs and wants of your coworkers there is no downside.”

No date is set yet, but the workers are requesting a vote in early July as part of their election filing, which would be in keeping with the NLRB’s standard timelines.

#StPaulMN #PeoplesStruggles #SEIU #SEIUHealthcareMinnesota

Minneapolis, MN – At 6 a.m. Tuesday, May 24, mental health workers at three Minneapolis area hospitals walked off the job and went on a one-day strike. All three groups of workers organized and formed unions with SEIU Healthcare Minnesota and Iowa (SEIU HCMN&IA) since September of 2021. Now they are fighting for their first contracts. They decided to do a joint one-day strike to show management that they are serious and united and will fight to win real improvements in their first union contract.

Strike lines were up at three hospitals including Abbott Northwestern Hospital and Unity Hospital, which are part of the Allina Health system, and Fairview Riverside, which is part of the M Health Fairview system. The largest of the three groups are around 350 psych associates and psych aides at Fairview Riverside. At Abbott Northwestern and Unity Hospitals the groups involved included around 120 mental health coordinators. Picket lines were up at all three hospitals from 6 to 11 a.m.

Then at noon the SEIU HCMN&IA members from all three locations converged on Fairview Riverside where they picketed together and held a rally along with holding a barbeque to music played by one of the workers who is a DJ. The event was lively and energetic with loud chanting and high spirits all around.

According to Brian Mcintosh, who is one of the striking Fairview Riverside psych techs, some of the union members’ demands include raises. Mcintosh says that there are people working there who have been there for over 20 years who have not gotten over $25 an hour but now they are having to train new people who are getting paid around that rate without the long-term workers getting raises for their longevity. He said that they would like better employee retention. He said they want a pension, a good wage and a better chance to support their families after everything they have to deal with at work.

Mcintosh was one of the first workers to start talking to his coworkers about forming a union. He said that the union drive started in the basement of his (now deceased) friend’s house. After a series of particularly horrible shifts, they decided it was finally time to do something about it so they started looking at unions to join and decided that SEIU HCMN&IA was the right fit for them.

SEIU HCMN&IA already represented over 1000 workers in the M Health Fairview System with many of those workers located at Fairview Riverside. They started meeting with organizers at the Global Market in Minneapolis and talked to their coworkers, built an organizing committee and eventually got more than 65% of their coworkers to sign cards, filed for a union election and won overwhelmingly. Then they began negotiating their first contract.

After months of bargaining without management listening, they decided to go on this one-day strike to show management that they are serious. Before the strike, the workers held a series of actions including a march on the boss as well as delivering a cake decorated with a petition printed on the cake in frosting with the signatures of their coworkers demanding a good contract. When those things weren’t enough, they took a strike vote and walked off the job.

Mcintosh said, “There’s many reasons why we are on strike today. Let’s start with health and safety. We just had some testimonies of one of our staff members having some cracked ribs from work and they had to use their PTO when they were out with the cracked ribs because they are in between two patients. We had another story where a staff member was fighting her husband in the middle of the night in her sleep because of PTSD from patients attacking her. We have one of the most assaulted jobs in America, per state records.”

Mcintosh continued, “All we are asking for is simple health and safety to get better and for us to have an economic chance to fill our gas tanks and our refrigerators and come to work.” He went on to say, “We’ve got to keep on fighting until we get what we want! If we don’t get what we want we are going to shut it down just like we did today. That’s our message to them, that’s our message to us, and we aren’t going to get anything unless we work hard and fight for it.”

The mental health workers at all three hospitals say they plan to go forward and continue bargaining and keep building up their fight from here until they win what they deserve.

#MinneapolisMN #PeoplesStruggles #SEIU #strike #SEIUHealthcareMinnesota #Strikes

Minneapolis, MN – On Tuesday May 24, over 500 mental health workers will walk off the jobs at three hospitals in the Minneapolis metro area. The striking groups include mental health coordinators and psych techs, along with other job classes that perform mental health work.

All three of the groups have organized and joined SEIU Healthcare Minnesota and Iowa (SEIU HCMNIA) in the last eight months and are fighting for their first contract. They work at Allina Health’s Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis, Allina Health’s Unity Hospital in the Twin Cities suburb of Fridley, and MHealth Fairview Riverside Hospital in Minneapolis.

While they work for three different hospitals, each with their own separate contract negotiations, the mental health workers are coordinating across the three locations and two health systems as they see the fight for a first contract with real improvements to working conditions and for safety in their jobs as a shared fight throughout the hospital industry.

During the COVID-19 pandemic they have seen a massive uptick in demand for mental health services and in the level of care needed. At the same time, hospital management has not increased staffing levels to meet the need. Instead, management cut benefits and instituted speed-ups which make it much harder for the workers to perform their job duties, manage their own lives in a healthy way, and make it harder to retain qualified staff.

The hospitals received millions in COVID Relief Funds, which ultimately did improve patient care or conditions for workers. The workers say that when they have raised the issue of safety and respect for their voices, management has not been willing to make and of the improvements needed and has instead responded by having pizza parties.

As a result, the mental health workers formed unions. They joined SEIU HCMNIA, Minnesota’s largest healthcare union. In the same eight-month period, nine other groups of hospital workers from the Allina and Fairview MHealth systems also formed unions with SEIUHCMNIA, amounting to around 1250 new union members from the two hospital systems. All of the new groups are currently in bargaining of their first union contracts with these two systems.

Workers at MHealth Fairview Riverside say that in their most recent round of bargaining, they laid out proposals around scheduling, vacation, holiday and sick time, and safety, along with their wage proposal. They are fighting for a wage scale that would take their job experience into account. They say that this would end what they called a “long time wage suppression” in their work.

Management has not responded throughout bargaining to the workers’ proposals to address safety on the job and declined to respond in bargaining to their wage scale proposals. So as a result, the workers are going on a one-day strike to show they employer that they are organized and ready to do whatever it takes for safety and for respect.

Chris Nohner, a psych associate at MHealth Fairview Riverside said, “We are here today because mental health is in a deepening crisis in the Twin Cities. In the last year more than 400 workers at two different organizations, MHealth Fairview and Allina Health, have voted to unionize. We did this in order to have a seat at the table to address the failures that have been caused by the underfunding and the lack of respect for this work by those in charge.”

Nohner went on to say. “Now, as we are in the middle of Mental Health Awareness month, Minnesotans continue to face unprecedented challenges, causing mental health issues to surge. We are losing staff because of the low pay, lack of respect, and dangerous working conditions we face. At the same time hospital systems are closing facilities, CEOs and executives are making millions while frontline staff wages aren’t even keeping up with inflation. The results from that vote were clear. In a nearly unanimous vote, the groups at both hospitals voted yes to hold this walkout strike. This work is too important to be ignored and undervalued. Our patients deserve the stability that comes with staff who are supported by their employer to give the best care possible.”

The workers will walk off the job on Tuesday, May 24, with picket lines starting at all three hospitals at 6 a.m. on Tuesday. They will picket their facilities until 11 a.m. At noon, a large unity rally will be held at MHealth Fairview Riverside Hospital, where around 350 of the workers are employed.

#MinneapolisMN #PeoplesStruggles #SEIU #SEIUHealthcareMinnesota #Strikes

Coon Rapids, MN – As SEIU Healthcare Minnesota members picketed on Wednesday, April 28 in front of Allina’s Mercy Hospital in Coon Rapids Minnesota, they gathered up the crowd that included supporters from other unions and the community for a rally. At the rally, SEIU announced they were filing a 10-day strike notice, for a strike to begin on May 10, at all eight Allina hospitals, where SEIU represents over 4000 members.

SEIU members have held informational pickets each Wednesday in recent weeks at Allina Hospitals around the Twin Cities metro area. So far, pickets have been held at Abbot Northwestern Hospital, Saint Francis Hospital, United Hospital and Mercy Hospital.

The union members have met with Allina management ten times for bargaining sessions since January and management is still offering no raises at all in the first year of the new contract. This comes on top of a year in which essential healthcare workers have faced extreme difficulties, stress and life-threatening danger to provide healthcare for the community. Allina reportedly offered bonuses, in some cases bonuses that rival the yearly pay of some of the lower paid Allina workers, to management.

The union says its members are ready to strike if no deal is reached before the May 10 strike notice goes into effect.

#CoonRapidsMN #Healthcare #PeoplesStruggles #SEIU #strike #SEIUHealthcareMinnesota #Strikes #Allina

Minneapolis, MN – On April 7 in Minneapolis, around 500 SEIU Healthcare Minnesota members who work at Allina’s Abbott Northwestern Hospital picketed for around three hours. They have been bargaining for their next contract and have now authorized a strike across all eight Allina Hospitals by an overwhelming majority. The union members are demanding pay increases and financial recognition for working as essential workers through a global pandemic.

Allina is one of the largest and most successful hospital chains in Minnesota. In 2020, it gave large bonuses – some of them rivaling a full year’s pay for the lowest-paid Allina workers – to members of their management team. Yet Allina is offering 0% in raises to their workers in the first year of the upcoming contract.

The union appeared ready to strike if needed, and could be heard loudly chanting “What do we want? Fair contract!” and “If we don’t get it? Shut it down!” along the Chicago Avenue side of Abbott Northwestern Hospital, to honks and cheers from passing motorists.

The union says that they will hold similar pickets every Wednesday at a different Allina Hospital until Allina takes them seriously at the bargaining table and offers them a contract the members are willing to accept.

The next two pickets are scheduled to take place on Wednesday, April 14 at Allina St. Francis Hospital in Shakopee and Wednesday, April 21 at Allina’s United Hospital in Saint Paul.

#MinneapolisMN #SEIU #PeoplesStruggles #strike #SEIUHealthcareMinnesota #AllinaHospitals #AbbottNorthwesternHospital

Minneapolis, MN – Around 200 technical workers from Allina’s Abbot Northwestern and Saint Francis Hospitals began a two-day strike at 6 a.m. on Monday, October 5. The workers on strike include diagnostic imaging technicians, medical lab technicians, surgical technicians and others.

The techs are demanding to be paid and receive benefits to stay home and quarantine if needed due to COVID-19 exposure. They work in medical settings where being exposed at work is a serious everyday risk and they deserve to be able to quarantine without loss of pay and benefits, especially given the nature of their jobs, but currently Allina does not guarantee them that right to be able to quarantine while maintaining their physical and economic health.

They are also fighting for increased pay and benefits that would reflect their value to Allina and would bring them up to a level closer to what Allina pays unionized techs in their same positions at other hospitals. This group joined SEIU Healthcare MN around ten years ago and Allina has still not brought them up to parity with other unionized tech groups represented at their hospitals by the same union.

Judy Grock, CT tech at Abbot Northwestern said, “All frontline healthcare workers should get the pay and protections we need to keep ourselves and our patients safe.”

#MinneapolisMN #PeoplesStruggles #strike #SEIUHealthcareMinnesota #Strikes

Minneapolis, MN – About 800 people blocked a major bridge here, Nov. 17 in a march demanding jobs. Police declared the protest to be an unlawful assembly and arrested 11 people who sat down in an act of civil disobedience. The 10th Avenue Bridge, which spans the Mississippi River, was closed for about an hour.

Speaking on the bridge, Pastor Paul Slack demanded Congress pass a job bill that addresses unemployment, particularly the massive unemployment that exists in the African American community.

“Minnesotans know better than almost anyone how much crumbling bridges and infrastructure can cost a community. We must fix Minnesota’s infrastructure and we must use these jobs to fix the economic inequality in our state – with 22% African-American unemployment we have one of the worst racial job gaps in the country. We are marching to demand that our leaders pass a jobs bill that will put people back to work repairing our infrastructure and providing vital public services, not kill even more jobs with devastating budget cuts,” said Tee McClenty, Executive Vice President of SEIU HealthCare Minnesota.

After the protest on the bridge, demonstrators marched to People’s Plaza, the home of Occupy Minnesota for another rally.

Kim Defranco of the Minnesota Coalition for a People’s Bailout told the crowd, “Make no mistake, the 1% wants us to go back to our foreclosed homes, unemployment lines, to our jobs and shut up! So they can continue their stealing from us. We tell the 1%, it's too late. We will not go back! We are awake and united and we will continue this fight until we get justice.”

Deb Konechne, of the Events Committee of OccupyMN urged people at the rally to join encampment at Peoples Plaza, where people have held a 24-hour presence since Oct. 7.

#MinneapolisMN #MinneaoplisMN #CapitalismAndEconomy #SEIU #OccupyMN #OccupyWallStreet #SEIUHealthcareMinnesota #MinnesotansForAFairEconomy #OccupyMinneapolis