5 days ago
Pickets at 13 Minnesota hospitals as contracts expire for thousands of Twin Cities nurses
Pickets at 13 Minnesota hospitals as contracts expire for thousands of Twin Cities nurses originally appeared on Bring Me The News.
More than 15,000 nurses at hospitals in the Twin Cities and 2,600 nurses at hospitals in Duluth have been negotiating a new contract that has yet to come to fruition, and the deadlock is resulting in an "informational picket" outside 13 hospitals in Minnesota on Wednesday.
Contracts for Twin Cities nurses expired last week and those for nurses in Duluth are set to expire on June 30. The Minnesota Nurses Association (MNA) has announced that workers will participate in a picket amid concerns that hospitals are operating at unsafe staffing levels that compromise patient care and push many nurses to leave the profession.
"Nurses are doing everything they can to keep patients safe, but we are being stretched beyond our limits," Chris Rubesch, a nurse and president of the MNA, said in May. "Patients are facing longer waits, and overworked staff are facing dangerous conditions."
Additionally, nurses fear for their physical safety at current staffing levels. Healthcare workers are five times more likely to be injured by an assault on the job than the average American worker, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. That report also shows that healthcare workers saw a steady rise in the rate of nonfatal workplace violence from 2011 to 2018.
A 2002 study reported that in hospitals with a high patient-to-nurse ratio, each extra patient assigned to a nurse is associated with a 7% increase in the likelihood of death within 30 days of admission, per Minnesota Public Radio.
Additionally, that study showed that the stress of each new patient assigned to those nurses was associated with a significant increase in the risk of burnout.
The current staffing levels "prioritize maximizing revenue rather than protecting patients," the union claims.
"MNA nurses are sounding the alarm: hospital executives are treating staffing like a budget line, not a life-or-death issue," the MNA said in a statement. "On June 4, the public will see what solidarity looks like and what happens when nurses step up to protect their patients."
In a statement to Bring Me The News, Allina Health reiterated that there will be no disruption to patient care during the picket, adding, "Now, more than ever, negotiations must reflect the reality of rising costs, declining reimbursements and uncertainty around programs like Medicaid. We remain focused on a responsible contract agreement that ensures we can maintain access to care and the high-quality services people depend on."
The pickets will take place at 11 Twin Cities hospitals, including Children's Minnesota/United Hospital at 33 Smith Ave. N in St. Paul and, later in the day, at Fairview Southdale Hospital at 6401 France Ave. S in Edina.
In Duluth, nurses will hold informational pickets at Essentia and Aspirus St. Luke's hospitals.
"The nurses' union is expending considerable energy on events such as this when that energy would be better spent at the negotiating table, completing these talks," says Paul Omodt of Omodt & Associates, a PR company that specializes in crisis management and represents several of the hospitals involved in the negotiations.
"There are important topics left to discuss and we remain ready to negotiate in good faith. We encourage the nurses' union to bring forth all the counterproposals that are due to move these talks forward."
The MNA's action is separate but in step with a picket that took place at four Allina clinics on Tuesday morning among unionized doctors, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants.
This group unionized in October 2023, forming the largest private-sector doctors' union in the country with roughly 600 members at Allina clinics in Minnesota and Wisconsin. It is still at the table, negotiating for the group's first contract.
The contract negotiations have slowed, with a significant point of friction being that primary care physicians are looking to be compensated for administrative work that includes paperwork and responding to patient emails, the Star Tribune reports.
A representative for Allina tells Bring Me The News that it is negotiating in good faith with the Doctors Council SEIU and seeks "to reach responsible agreements that maintain competitive pay and benefits for our providers while ensuring that we can sustain our caring mission during these extremely uncertain economic times."
Allina has proposed cutting compensation for union members, while the system reported $5.8 billion in revenue in 2024, the Minnesota Reformer reports.
Wednesday's informational picket is not a strike or work stoppage inside the hospitals. All participating nurses are picketing during their off-hours, per the story was originally reported by Bring Me The News on Jun 3, 2025, where it first appeared.
