Three Philadelphia-based hospitals are reportedly up for sale, according to an email notice from Los Angeles-based investment bank Xnergy, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported Dec. 19.
The names of three hospitals are not confirmed. And the notice, which was obtained by the publication, did not name an owner of the hospitals. However, it did describe the hospitals’ owner as one that has acute care facilities with an average of 136 beds.
Three Philadelphia-area hospitals fit the bed parameters in the notice: Bristol-based Lower Bucks Hospital, Philadelphia-based Roxborough Memorial Hospital, and Norristown-based Suburban Community Hospital. All three are owned by Ontario, Calif.-based Prime Healthcare Services, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
Roxborough and Lower Bucks were acquired by Prime in 2012, with Suburban acquired by Prime’s nonprofit affiliate Prime Healthcare Foundation in 2016. The hospitals have also seen significant annual operating loss over the last five years with a 43% combined inpatient volume drop, from 3,795 discharges in 2018 to 2,250 discharges in 2022, the publication shared.
Members of the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses & Allied Professionals at both Suburban and Lower Bucks are also set to launch five-day strikes Dec. 22 due to ongoing labor contract negotiations for things like increased wages and important benefits, a union spokesperson told Becker’s.
“Prime Healthcare’s mission is to always do what’s best for our communities and patients, however, we do not comment on strategic merger and acquisition initiatives,” Elizabeth Nikels, vice president of communications and public relations for Prime Healthcare, said in an email response to Becker’s regarding the sale.
Starbucks is softening its stance toward unionization after years of pushing back.
Why it matters:
It’s a potentially huge shift for the chain and a signal of the staying power of the labor movement that surged in the wake of the pandemic.
“They know this isn’t going away,” said Nick Setyan, an equity analyst at Wedbush who covers Starbucks. He called the company’s new posture “capitulation.”
Setyan said recent worker walkouts were a turning point. Also, at least five more stores this month voted to unionize.
Zoom out:
Union organizing efforts have been a public relations headache for Starbucks since at least 2021 when a store in Buffalo became the first to vote for a union. Meanwhile, pressure from labor regulators isn’t slowing.
Zoom in:
Starbucks’ strategy shift began in March whenLaxman Narasimhan took the CEO reins from founder Howard Schultz, who had repeatedly clashed with workers over unionizing. The new CEO spoke of the need to care for customer-facing staff, per Reuters.
It’s accelerated over the past week — last Friday, Starbucks vice president Sara Kelly sent a letter to Workers United (the union that reps workers), saying the company wanted to restart bargaining.
The union has yet to bargain a contract. Starbucks now says it wants an agreement by next year.
On Wednesday, the company released an audit on its labor relations practices that was commissioned by Starbucks — after a shareholder vote forced its hand — and conducted by a former management-side lawyer.
Though the report asserted Starbucks didn’t have an “anti-union playbook,” it did find the company was unprepared to deal with its unionizing workforce and acknowledged that store managers made mistakes in how they handled the situation.
The report offers recommendations for improvement — including better training. Change starts with “tone from the top,” the audit says, suggesting that the company should reach agreements with the union “expeditiously.”
What happened:
Starbucks initially believed it could fend off unionization by messaging about best-in-class wages and benefits, Setyan said, noting that it’s true the chain offers better compensation than competitors.
“Internally, they felt kind of aggrieved,” he said, that workers who management perceived as well-compensated would want to organize.
For a while it seemed like the messaging campaign was working, but the Red Cup Rebellion walkout last month and a flurry of new union votes changed minds.
Starbucks has historically been very sensitive to public relations — and it became clear pushing back isn’t great for its image, Setyan said.
The other side:
Union representatives are skeptical of Starbucks’ new position.
“We are hopeful your letter is indeed the beginning of a sincere effort, and not a publicity move in the face of pressure from partners, Wall Street, shareholders, and others,” Workers United president Lynne Fox, said in a letter to Kelly last week.
What to watch:
If Starbucks’ change in tone is a sign that the company will finally come to terms with these workers, and agree to a contract, or just a shift in its public stance while it continues efforts to avoid a deal.
On Wednesday, 75K Kaiser Permanente (KP) healthcare workers in five states and Washington, DC walked off the job as part of the largest healthcare strike in US history.
The striking workers are a diverse group, based mostly in California, that includes support staff, X-ray technicians, medical assistants, and pharmacy workers. They will continue their work stoppage until Saturday morning, though union leadership is threatening an even larger strike in November if a new contract agreement is not reached by then.
Their employment contract expired on September 30th, and while negotiations have progressed on issues like shift-payment differentials and employee training investments, union leaders and KP executives remain at odds over key wage increase demands, with the unions asking for a $25 national minimum wage, and KP proposing $21.
The company has sought to minimize disruptions to patient care during the strike, bringing in temporary labor to keep critical infrastructure open, but has told its members to expect some non-urgent procedures to be rescheduled, some clinic and pharmacy operating hours to be reduced, and call center wait times to be lengthy.
The Gist: Kaiser Permanente has enjoyed solid relations with its unions for decades, making this strike a significant break from precedent,fueled by post-pandemic burnout and staffing shortages.
While KP is keeping all essential services open, care disruptions are inevitable with around one third of its total workforce on strike.
The stakes of these labor negotiations extend far beyond just KP and its employees, as union success could inspire other unionized healthcare workers to adopt similar tactics and demands. (Case in point: Employees at eleven Tenet Healthcare facilities in California represented by SEIU-UHW, one of the unions representing striking KP workers, just voted to authorize their own strike.)
While happening alongside high-profile strikes in other industries, labor unrest is a troubling trend for health systems, whose margins remain well below historical levels amid persistently high labor and supply expenses.
Picketing began Wednesday at Kaiser Permanente hospitals as some 75,000 health care workers went on strike in Virginia, California and three other states over wages and staffing shortages, marking the latest major labor unrest in the United States.
Kaiser Permanente is one of the country’s larger insurers and health care system operators, with 39 hospitals nationwide. The nonprofit company, based in Oakland, California, provides health coverage for nearly 13 million people, sending customers to clinics and hospitals it runs or contracts with to provide care.
The Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions, representing about 85,000 of the health system’s employees nationally, approved a strike for three days in California, Colorado, Oregon and Washington, and for one day in Virginia and Washington, D.C.
A cheer went up from union members outside Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles Medical Center when the strike deadline arrived before dawn.
The strikers include licensed vocational nurses, home health aides and ultrasound sonographers, as well as technicians in radiology, X-ray, surgical, pharmacy and emergency departments.
Doctors are not participating, and Kaiser says its hospitals, including emergency rooms, will remain open during the picketing. The company said it was bringing in thousands of temporary workers to fill gaps during the strike. But the strike could lead to delays in getting appointments and non-urgent procedures being rescheduled.
It comes amid unprecedented worker organizing — from strike authorizations to work stoppages — within multiple industries this year, including, transportation, entertainment and hospitality.
Wednesday’s strike is the latest one for the health care industry this year as it continues to confront burnout with the heavy workloads — problems that were exacerbated greatly by the pandemic.
Unions representing Kaiser workers in August asked for a $25 hourly minimum wage, as well as increases of 7% each year in the first two years and 6.25% each year in the two years afterward.
They say understaffing is boosting the hospital system’s profits but hurting patients, and executives have been bargaining in bad faith during negotiations.
“They’re not listening to the frontline health care workers,” said Mikki Fletchall, a licensed vocational nurse based in a Kaiser medical office in Camarillo, California. “We’re striking because of our patients. We don’t want to have to do it, but we will do it.”
Kaiser has proposed minimum hourly wages of between $21 and $23 next year depending on the location.
Since 2022, the hospital system has hired 51,000 workers and has plans to add 10,000 more people by the end of the month.
Kaiser Permanente reported $2.1 billion in net income for this year’s second quarter on more than $25 billion in operating revenue. But the company said it still was dealing with cost headwinds and challenges from inflation and labor shortages.
Kaiser executive Michelle Gaskill-Hames defended the company and said its practices, compensation and retention are better than its competitors, even as the entire sector faces the same challenges.
“Our focus, for the dollars that we bring in, are to keep them invested in value-based care,” said Gaskill-Hames, president of Kaiser Foundation Health Plan and Hospitals of Southern California and Hawaii.
She added that Kaiser only faces 7% turnover compared to the industry standard of 21%, despite the effects of the pandemic.
“I think coming out of the pandemic, health care workers have been completely burned out,” she said. “The trauma that was felt caring for so many COVID patients, and patients that died, was just difficult.”
The workers’ last contract was negotiated in 2019, before the pandemic.
Hospitals generally have struggled in recent years with high labor costs, staffing shortages and rising levels of uncompensated care, according to Rick Gundling, a senior vice president with the Healthcare Financial Management Association, a nonprofit that works with health care finance executives.
Most of their revenue is fixed, coming from government-funded programs like Medicare and Medicaid, Gundling noted. He said that means revenue growth is “only possible by increasing volumes, which is difficult even under the best of circumstances.”
Workers calling for higher wages, better working conditions and job security, especially since the end of the pandemic, have been increasingly willing to walk out on the job as employers face a greater need for workers.
The California legislature has sent Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom a bill that would increase the minimum wage for the state’s 455,000 health care workers to $25 per hour over the next decade. The governor has until Oct. 14 to decide whether to sign or veto it.
Politicians, economists, auto industry analysts and main street business owners are closely watching the UAW strike that began at midnight last Thursday. Healthcare should also pay attention, especially hospitals. medical groups and facility operators where workforce issues are mounting.
Auto manufacturing accounts for 3% of America’s GDP and employs 2.2 million including 923,000 in frontline production. It’s high-profile sector industry in the U.S. with its most prominent operators aka “the Big Three” operating globally. Some stats:
The US automakers sold an estimated 13.75 million new and 36.2 million used vehicles in 2022.
The total value of the US car and automobile manufacturing market is $104.1 billion in 2023:
9.2 million US vehicles were produced in 2021–a 4.5% increase from 2020 and 11.8% of the global total ranking only behind China in total vehicle production.
As of 2020, 91.5% of households report having access to at least one vehicle.
There were 290.8 million registered vehicles in the United States in 2022—21% of the global market.
Americans spend $698 billion annually on the combination of automobile loans and insurance.
By comparison, the healthcare services industry in the U.S.—those that operate facilities and services serving patients—employs 9 times more workers, is 29 times bigger ($104 Billion vs. $2.99 trillion/65% of total spend) and 6 times more integral in the overall economy (3% vs. 18.3% of GDP).
Surprisingly, average hourly wages are similar ($31.07 in auto manufacturing vs. $33.12 in healthcare per BLS) though the range is wider in healthcare since it encompasses licensed professionals to unskilled support roles. There are other similarities:
Each industry enjoys ubiquitous presence in American household’ discretionary. spending.
Each faces workforce issues focused on pay parity and job security.
Each is threatened by unwelcome competitors, disruptive technologies and shifting demand complicating growth strategies.
Each is dependent on capital to remain competitive.
And each faces heightened media scrutiny and vulnerability to misinformation/disinformation as special interests seek redress or non-traditional competitors seek advantage.
Ironically, the genesis of the UAW dispute is not about wages; it is about job security as electric-powered vehicles that require fewer parts and fewer laborers become the mainstay of the sector. CEO compensation and the corporate profits of the Big Three are talking points used by union leaders to galvanize sympathizer antipathy of “corporate greed” and unfair treatment of frontline workers.
But the real issue is uncertainty about the future: will auto workers have jobs and health benefits in their new normal?
In healthcare services sectors—hospitals, medical groups, post-acute care facilities, home-care et al—the scenario is similar: workers face an uncertain future but significantly more complicated. Corporate greed, CEO compensation and workforce discontent are popular targets in healthcare services media coverage but the prominence of not-for-profit organizations in healthcare services obfuscates direct comparisons to for-profit organizations which represents less than a third of the services economy. For example, CEO compensation in NFPs—a prominent target of worker attention—is accounted differently for CEOs in investor-owned operations in which stock ownership is not treated as income until in options are exercised or shares sold. Annual 990 filings by NFPs tell an incomplete story nonetheless fodder for misinformation.
The competitive landscape and regulatory scrutiny for healthcare services are also more complicated for healthcare services. Unlike auto manufacturing where electric vehicles are forcing incumbents to change, there’s no consensus about what the new normal in U.S. healthcare services will be nor a meaningful industry-wide effort to define it. Each sector is defining its own “future state” based on questionable assumptions about competitors, demand, affordability, workforce requirements and more. Imagine an environmental scan in automakers strategy that’s mute on Tesla, or mass transit, Zoom, pandemic lock-downs or energy costs?
While the outlook for U.S. automakers is guardedly favorable, per Moody’s and Fitch, for not-for-profit health services operators it’s “unsustainable” and “deteriorating.”
Nonetheless, the parallels between the current state of worker sentiment in the U.S. auto manufacturing and healthcare services sectors are instructive. Auto and healthcare workers want job security and higher pay, believing their company executives and boards but corporate profit above their interests and all else. And polls suggest the public’s increasingly sympathetic to worker issues and strikes like the UAW more frequent.
Ultimately, the UAW dispute with the Big Three will be settled. Ultimately, both sides will make concessions. Ultimately, the automakers will pass on their concession costs to their customers while continuing their transitions to electric vehicles.
In health services, operators are unable to pass thru concession costs due to reimbursement constraints that, along with supply chain cost inflation, wipe out earnings and heighten labor tension.
So, the immediate imperatives for healthcare services organizations seem clear as labor issues mount and economics erode:
Educate workers—all workers—is a priority. That includes industry trends and issues in sectors outside the organization’s current focus.
Define the future. In healthcare services, innovators will leverage technology and data to re-define including how health is defined, where it’s delivered and by whom. Investments in future-state scenario planning is urgently needed.
Address issues head-on: Forthrightness about issues like access, prices, executive compensation, affordability and more is essential to trustworthiness.
Stay tuned to the UAW strike and consider fresh approaches to labor issues. It’s not a matter of if, but when.
PS: I drive an electric car—my step into the auto industry future state. It took me 9 hours last Thursday to drive 275 miles to my son’s wedding because the infrastructure to support timely battery charges in route was non-existent. Ironically, after one of three self-charges for which I paid more than equivalent gas, I was prompted to “add a tip”. So, the transition to electric vehicles seems certain, but it will be bumpy and workers will be impacted.
The future state for healthcare is equally frought with inadequate charging stations aka “systemness” but it’s inevitable those issues will be settled. And worker job security and labor costs will be significantly impacted in the process.
Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, N.J., said it plans to temporarily cut off healthcare benefits for striking union workers, effective Sept. 1.
Hospital spokesperson Wendy Gottsegen described the move as unfortunate.
“We have said all along that no one benefits from a strike — least of all our nurses. We hope the union considers the impact a prolonged strike is having on our nurses and their families,” Ms. Gottsegen said in an Aug. 28 news release shared with Becker’s. “As of Sept. 1, RWJUH nurses must pay for their health benefits through COBRA. This hardship, in addition to the loss of wages throughout the strike, is very unfortunate and has been openly communicated to the union and the striking nurses since prior to the walkout on Aug. 4.”
The ongoing strike involves the United Steelworkers Local 4-200, which represents about 1,700 nurses at the facility.
Union members voted to authorize a strike in July. The union and hospital have been negotiating a new agreement for months, with the last bargaining session occurring Aug. 16.
During negotiations, the union has said it seeks a contract that provides safe staffing standards, living wages and quality, affordable healthcare.
Local 4-200 President Judy Danella, RN, said in a previous union release, “Our members remain deeply committed to our patients. However, we must address urgent concerns, like staffing. We need enough nurses on each shift, on each floor, so we can devote more time to each patient and keep ourselves safe on the job.”
Several nurses told TAPinto New Brunswick last week that they began preparing for the current situation ahead of the strike, taking overtime shifts and saving as much money as possible. Others told the publication they are taking part-time jobs or temporary employment elsewhere in the nursing field or adjacent roles.
“I think it’s important that you [remember] you might not get the job you want to do at that moment, but people have to do what they have to do to get it done,” Jessica Newcomb, RN, told TAPinto New Brunswick.
Meanwhile, the hospital has contracted with an agency to hire replacement nurses during the strike.
“As always, our top priority is to our patients. RWJUH is open, fully operational and completely staffed, and we remain steadfast in our commitment to deliver the highest quality and always-safe patient care,” Ms. Gottsegen said.
As of Aug. 28, no further dates for negotiations were scheduled by mediators.
Monday’s walkout of tens of thousands of nurses and ambulance staff was the largest in the NHS’s 75-year history.
Labor demonstrations have been ongoing across the past few months, as workers demand higher pay and better working conditions amid rampant national inflation and increased workloads.
Specific demands vary by union and nation within the United Kingdom. Welsh nurses called off their strike this week to review a proposal from Wales’ Labour Party-run government, while the Royal College of Nurses, the UK’s largest nursing union, has countered a nominal 5 percent pay increase proposal with demands for a five percent pay raise on top of inflation, which topped 10 percent in Britain in December.
The Gist: A glance at our neighbors across the pond shows that the US healthcare system is not the only one currently experiencing a labor crisis.
The UK’s nationalized system has also failed to shield its workers from the combined impact of COVID burnout and inflation. But the NHS, as the UK’s largest employer and perennial object of political maneuvering, is more susceptible to organized labor actions.
In contrast, American healthcare unions, which only covered 17 percent of the country’s nurses in 2021, must negotiate with local employers, whose responses to their demands vary.
While this may enhance the bargaining power of US health system leaders, it also heightensthe risk that we will fail to adequately secure our nursing workforce, a key national resource already in short supply, for the longer term.
Members of the California Nurses Association have reached a tentative agreement with Kaiser Permanente, averting a planned two-day strike by more than 21,000 registered nurses and nurse practitioners in Northern California.
Both sides announced the tentative agreement Nov. 17.
Union members at Kaiser Northern California facilities have been in negotiations since June, according to a CNA news release. Registered nurses and nurse practitioners in Northern California were set to strike Nov. 21 and Nov. 22.
The four-year tentative deal boosts wages for Northern California nurses by 22.5 percent over the life of the contract, according to a statement Oakland, Calif.-based Kaiser shared with Becker’s. Kaiser had previously proposed 21.25 percent in wage increases over four years.
“The tentative agreement is driven by the changing economy, including inflation, significant changes in the marketplace and our commitment to providing our employees with excellent pay and benefits to attract and retain the best nurses,” Kaiser’s statement says.
According to both sides, the tentative agreement also includes:
An agreement to add more than 2,000 new registered nurse and nurse practitioner positions.
Increased tuition reimbursement for nurses’ education.
The creation of a new regional equity, diversity and inclusion committee.
Language including agreement that healthcare is a human right.
“We are very pleased with this new contract, which will help us recruit new nurses and retain experienced RNs and nurse practitioners,” CNA President Cathy Kennedy, RN, said in a news release. “We not only won the biggest annual raises in 20 years, but we have also added more than 2,000 positions across our Northern California facilities. This will ensure safe staffing and better patient care.”
Ms. Kennedy also praised Kaiser’s commitment “to a workplace that is free from racism and discrimination” and the health system’s agreement “that we must fight racial and ethnic disparities in healthcare outcomes.”
“The tentative agreement honors our Northern California nurses with a market-based economic package that accounts for inflation, accelerates our investments in staffing, and addresses workplace safety, diversity and equity, remote work, and other key matters in a way that is sustainable and benefits our members and patients as well,” Kaiser’s statement reads.
Union members in Northern California will vote on approving the new four-year contract over the next few weeks. Registered nurses at Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles Medical Center also reached a tentative agreement and will vote on the deal Nov. 22.
An ICU nurse helps to prepare medicine for a covid patient in St. Cloud, Minn. Nurses in the state are planning to go on a three-day strike starting Sept. 12.
About 15,000 nurses in Minnesota walked off the job Monday to protest understaffing and overwork — marking the largest strike of private-sector nurses in U.S. history.
Slated to last three days, the strike spotlights nationwide nursing shortages exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic that often result in patients not receiving adequate care. Tensions remain high between nurses and health-care administrators across the country, and there are signs that work stoppages could spread to other states.
Minnesota nurses charge that some units go without a lead nurse on duty and that nurses fresh out of school are delegated assignments typically held by more experienced nurses, across some 16 hospitals where strikes are expected.
The nurses are demanding a role in staffing plans, changes to shift scheduling practices and higher wages.
“I can’t give my patients the care they deserve,” said Chris Rubesch, the vice president of the Minnesota Nurses Association and a nurse at Essentia Health in Duluth. “Call lights go unanswered. Patients should only be waiting for a few seconds or minutes if they’ve soiled themselves or their oxygen came unplugged or they need to go to the bathroom, but that can take 10 minutes or more. Those are things that can’t wait.”
Paul Omodt, a spokesman for the Twin Cities Hospital Group, which represents four hospital systems where nurses are striking in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, said that the nurses union did not do everything it could to avoid a strike.
“Nurses have steadfastly refused to go to mediation,” Omodt said. “Their choice is to strike. This strike is on the nurses.”
Conny Bergerson, a spokeswoman for Allina Health, another hospital system in the Twin Cities where nurses are on strike, said “rushing to a strike before exhausting all options such as engaging a neutral federal mediator does not benefit our employees, patients or the communities we serve.”
The Minnesota Nurses Association, the nurses union, said hospital administrators have continued to “refuse solutions” on understaffing and safety in contract negotiations. It said nurses have increasingly been asked to take on more patients for bedside care to make up for labor shortages, exacerbating burnout and high turnover.
Some hospitals have offered increased safety protocols for reporting security incidents in negotiations, but have not budged on other safety- and staffing-related demands.
The union has proposed new mechanisms for nurses to have a stronger say in how wards are staffed, including a committee made up of nurses and management at each hospital that would determine appropriate staffing levels. It has also proposed protections against retaliation for nurses who report understaffing. Striking nurses at some hospitals said their shifts are often short five to 10 nurses, forcing nurses to take on more patients than they can handle.
Omodt said that while there was a rise in understaffing reports during the height of covid, conditions have improved, and nurses have made contradictory claims when it comes to staffing at their hospitals since then.
In the lead-up to the strike, Minnesota hospital groups filed unfair labor practices charges against the union for refusing to go to mediation, and asked the National Labor Relations Board to block the strike for a failure to provide enough notice. The NLRB has thrown out at least some of those charges.
Hospitals facing strikes have been recruiting traveling nurses from across the region and plan to maintain staffing levels during the strike, though they are preparing for reduced operations, according to some of the hospital groups facing strike activity.
For years, hospitals in the United States have faced understaffing problems. A surge in demand and increased safety risks for nurses during the pandemic accelerated those trends. The number of health-care workers in the United States has still not recovered to its pre-pandemic levels, down 37,000 workers compared with February 2020.
At the same time, demand for health-care services has steadily increased during the pandemic, with a backlog of people who delayed care now seeking medical attention. During the covid wave that swept across the United States this summer, states such as New York and Florida reported the worst nursing shortages in decades. Research shows that patients are more likely to die because of preventable reasons when health-care providers are overworked.
Nurses, who risked their lives during the pandemic, are quitting and retiring early in droves, because of increased workloads caused by short staffing and demanding schedules that make finding child care and having a life outside of work exceedingly difficult. The understaffing crisis is pronounced in Minnesota in part because of its aging population and its record low unemployment rate.
There are some signs that nurse- and other health-care-worker strikes could spill over to other states in the coming weeks. Four thousand nurses with the Michigan Nurses Association voted earlier this month to authorize a strike related to understaffing concerns, and 7,000 health-care workers in Oregon have also authorized a work stoppage. University of Wisconsin nurses narrowly averted a strike this week. Therapists and clinicians in Hawaii and California are currently in the fourth week of what has become the longest-running mental health care strike, over inadequate staffing levels.
In Minnesota, the Minnesota Nurses Association recorded a 300 percent increase in nurses’ reports of unsafe staffing levels on their shifts since 2014, up to 7,857 reports in 2021.
Kelley Anaas, 37, a nurse who works in the ICU at Abbott Northwestern in Minneapolis said nurses in her unit have been forced to double up on patient assignments and work with lead nurses who have less than a year of experience.
“It eats away at you. If that was my family member in that bed, I wouldn’t want to leave their side,” said Anaas, adding that her workload has increased steadily over her 14 years at Abbott Northwestern.
While the nurses say their main impetus for striking is staffing levels and not pay, they are also at odds with hospitals over wages. The Minnesota Nurses Association has proposed a 30 percent pay increase over the next three years, noting inflation is at a 40-year high, while health-care groups have proposed a pay increase of 10 to 12 percent.
“The union’s wage demands remain at 29 and 30 percent increases over three years, which we’ve told them is unrealistic and unaffordable,” Omodt said, noting that the average Minnesota nurse makes $80,960 a year.
Contracts expired in May and June, and the union has been in negotiations since March.
Nurses said they are frustrated the strike is happening, but the stakes are high for them and their patients.
“We’re really sad and disappointed that it has come to a strike,” said Brianna Hnath, a nurse at North Memorial in Robbinsdale. “But we feel like this is the only thing we can do to show administration how incredibly important a strong nursing core is to a hospital. Hospitals tell us it’s our fault, but we’ve been actively involved and getting nowhere.”
Members of the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West are set to begin a weeklong strike May 9 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.
The union represents about 2,000 certified nursing assistants, surgical technicians, sterile processing technicians, transporters, environmental service workers, plant operation workers and food service technicians, according to NBC Los Angeles. Cedars-Sinai Medical Center has about 14,000 employees total.
Union members voted to authorize a strike in April. The union and hospital began negotiating a new labor contract March 21, according to NBC Los Angeles. A hospital spokesperson told the local news outlet that upon the start of negotiations, “Cedars-Sinai presented a strong economic proposal that would have continued our market leading pay by providing substantial pay increases to bargaining unit employees as early as March 27.”
The union contends that in its latest round of bargaining, Cedars-Sinai rejected proposals on PPE stockpiles, COVID-19 exposure notifications, keeping pregnant and immunocompromised workers away from COVID-19 patients and other safety measures. “We’re asking for basic workplace protections and respect for the lives and health of caregivers and patients,” an SEIU-UHW statement reads.
“We respect the rights of SEIU-UHW members to take this step,” the hospital said in a statement. “The most effective way to reach a fair agreement, however, is for both parties to stay at the bargaining table and finish negotiations.”
HENRY KOTULA 