15,000 MN nurses to take strike authorization vote
St Paul, MN – On November 20, the Minnesota Nurses Association (MNA) livestreamed their announcement that around 15,000 Minnesota nurses in hospitals across the state will hold a strike authorization vote. The vote to authorize another strike came after their three-day strike in September. Since then, they have been unable to obtain a contract offer that meets the nurses’ demands.
The announcement was made by MNA President Mary Turner, who is an RN in the intensive care unit at North Memorial Hospital in Robbinsdale, an inner suburb of Minneapolis. Turner said, “We have been at the bargaining table for eight long months. When we came back from our three-day strike in September, the nurses and our bargaining teams, we were all hopeful that our hospital executives would finally be ready to bargain in good faith. At North [Memorial] have met at the bargaining table 27 times since this all started back in March, including nine meetings since the strike ended. So we have been diligently at the table the whole time but while nurses have done everything we can to reach an agreement at the bargaining table, hospital executives have instead pursued unfair labor practices against our union.”
Turner went on to announce, “I am here to tell you that that is not going to work. What it has done is caused us to lose faith in the bargaining process. And because of that, that is why we are here today to announce that our 15,000 nurses who are at the bargaining table will vote again on November 30 to authorize another possible strike at 15 hospitals in the Twin Cities and Twin Ports areas. Our hospital leaders have failed. They have failed us, they have failed the community, they have failed to solve the crisis conditions in our hospitals and they have failed to settle a fair contract with us.”
If the nurses vote to authorize a strike, that does not set a strike in motion. What it does do is authorize the bargaining team to call a strike. It is unclear at this time when that strike would occur and if it would be an open-ended strike or one of limited duration.