Meanwhile, the union representing the nurses, the Minnesota Nurses Association, said it had formed a patient security task force that would send striking nurses at the hospitals in case of emergencies.
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The strike follows a 22-hour negotiation session that stretched from Friday into Saturday morning but failed to produce an agreement between the Minnesota Nurses Association and Minneapolis-based Allina.
Allina wants to move the nurses onto its corporate health plan, instead of the union-backed health plans, which Allina says are expensive.
Around 4,800 nurses from five Minnesota hospitals are scheduled to go on strike on Labor Day at 7 am on account of disputes over staffing levels, health insurance, and workplace safety.
Allina says it has brought in around 1,500 temporary nurses, and that it plans to operate the affected hospitals at normal capacity during the strike.
The five hospitals affected are: Abbott Northwestern Hospital, Mercy Hospital, Phillips Eye Institute, United Hospital and Unity Hospital. They have hired about 1,500 traveling nurses to replace those walking the picket lines. The union has filed more than a dozen claims with the National Labor Relations Board – the arbiter of good faith in negotiations – arguing that Allina has tried to create an impasse by refusing to budge on its health insurance demands.
They devised a plan that allows them to be on strike and care for emergencies at the same time.
MNA and Allina continue to disagree on nurses’ health insurance, which has been a central point of conflict since contract negotiations began in February.
The union wants to keep it’s health plan, funded by the hospital…
“Nurses care for their patients, even beyond the bedside”, Angela Becchetti, a nurse at Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis, said in a news release.
The company also says, they are “extremely disappointed” that the union has rejected all of their offers.
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Both sides have negotiated during the week end and enlisted the help of federal mediators. The last big open-ended nurses’ strikes in the Twin Cities lasted 23 days in 2001 and 38 days in 1984. The first was in June and lasted one week.
