A 22-hour stretch of negotiations between the Minnesota Nurses Association and Allina Health ended early Saturday morning without an agreement, and so failed to avert a nurses’ strike set to begin Monday. This pending worker strike comes only after several months of back and forth over talks of a new debate over whether or not the nurses can keep their union-backed health insurance.
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Allina wants its nurses to switch from their separate union-only health plans to its corporate plan that covers all other employees.
Nurses are walking picket lines at five Minnesota hospitals in a strike over health insurance, workplace safety and staffing.
MNA nurses on strike from each facility will be “ready and available” to return in case of a medical emergency, the union announced in a statement Sunday. While Allina officials have criticized the previous plan as expensive, the new plan would imply that nurses would pay lower premiums, but would have higher deductibles and out-of-pocket expenses. In addition, at least 350 of their own nurses have agreed to continue working despite the strike.
“I am so proud of the courageous nurses who serve you on your negotiations team – they fought, they yelled, they calculated, they cried, ” Roach said. They were joined by supporters from other unions.
As planned, nurses went on strike at exactly 7 a.m.
Kari Weets, left, St. Paul, a labor and delivery nurse in the Mother Baby Center at United Hospital, walks on the sidewalk in front of United Hospital with her nephew, Jackson Barber, her niece, Taylor Barber, and her sister Kristi Barber, on the right, in St. Paul Monday, Sept. 5, 2016.
Talks with federal mediators produced no agreements on, of all things, health insurance for the nurses. Angela Becchetti, an Abbott nurse who took part in the union bargaining committee, said it was not enough for Allina to know that nurses had offered to “eventually” end their two remaining healthcare plans, according to a report by Star Tribune.
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They’re calling the strike “open-ended”, so they’re not sure how long it will last. The last strike in June, which lasted for a week, cost Allina Health $20 million.
