The largest private-sector nurses strike in U.S. history, which took place recently in Minnesota, was a short one.
On September 12, thousands of nurses in the Twin Cities and Duluth walked off the job over long-simmering issues such as workplace safety, staffing levels, and concerns over salary and benefits.
The Minnesota Nurses Association, the labor organization that represents more than 22,000 healthcare professionals in the upper Midwest, said from the start that the strike would last three days. By September 15, the nurses were back at work without a new contract in hand, while the story faded from local and national front pages.
The issues that drove nurses to the picket line, however, remain firmly in place. Months before they went on strike, a Star Tribune report zeroed in on a key problem impacting hospitals: high turnover among nursing staff.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, thousands of nurses left the field, the article noted, making employee retention a “dominant concern” for both the union and hospital HR departments. A post-strike followup, however, offered an even starker look at the staffing crisis in Minnesota’s hospitals.
Rather than frame inadequate staffing in Minnesota’s hospitals as a shortage of available nurses, the union argues that “deteriorating care and working conditions are driving more nurses to leave the bedside.”
Although turnover among nurses existed before the pandemic, reporter Jeremy Olson shared this troubling insight: “Nursing vacancies doubled from 2,450 in 2019 to 5,587 in 2021, leaving 8% of jobs unfilled.”
A recent Minnesota Department of Health report cited by Olson paints an equally alarming picture of health care staffing across the state. Not only are more nurses than ever leaving the profession, but everyone from physicians to substance abuse counselors are exiting health care at increased rates.
The reasons for this include significant levels of burnout and workplace dissatisfaction, according to a survey in the report.
Rather than frame inadequate staffing in Minnesota’s hospitals as a shortage of available nurses, the union argues the real issue is “deteriorating care and working conditions are driving more nurses to leave the bedside.” More than two-thirds of all nurses surveyed by the union recently say they would like to quit.
It is important here to acknowledge that nurses have been fighting for better working conditions and workplace safety for a long time. On September 13, in the middle of this most recent strike, I went to the picket line at Abbott Northwestern Hospital in South Minneapolis.
There, I spoke with Kelley Anaas, an intensive care nurse and union organizer. Anaas said that she has been a nurse for fourteen years, and during that time, she has gone on strike four different times—always over the same issues.
It comes down to the corporatization of health care, Anaas said, with less resources going to patients while hospital administrators continually pile more onto nurses’ plates.
She also described excruciating working conditions for nurses, who she feels are being pushed into moral quandaries regarding how and when to adequately meet patients’ needs without the necessary resources or even the authority to make necessary bedside decisions.
It’s hard to see what the path forward is here. Nurses returned to work more than two weeks ago, and they still do not have a new contract. While they were on strike, local hospitals bussed in temporary, traveling nurses on coach buses to take over, perhaps lessening the overall impact of the strike.
The traveling nurses who crossed the picket line were paid exorbitantly for their labor, earning as much as $8,000 or more for five days of work. These temporary employees are not unionized either, adding to the challenges the Minnesota Nurses Association has faced this year.
Earlier in 2022, nurses who work for the Mayo Clinic in Mankato, Minnesota voted to cut ties with the union under the guidance of the anti-labor National Right to Work Foundation. A key local organizer in the push to leave the Minnesota Nurses Association was Mankato nurse Brittany Burgess. Media outlets have noted that Burgess’s stepfather is Glen Taylor, billionaire owner of the Star Tribune.
If nurses continue to work in understaffed hospitals without a contract, under conditions that push them to the brink physically, mentally, and emotionally, perhaps more of them will be swayed by anti-union messaging.
We shouldn’t jump to that conclusion yet. Hundreds of mental health workers at Allina Health and M Health Fairview in the Twin Cities plan to go on strike on October 3. [Update: Workers at M Health Fairview decided not to strike following a fourteen-hour negotiation session last Wednesday, according to M Health Fairview spokesperson Jill Yanish. Mental health workers at Allina Health did move forward with their strike on October 3.]
These frontline workers are dealing with the same types of issues as nurses, including burnout, high turnover rates, stagnating pay and benefits, and a rise in the number of patients in crisis—all while the number of available beds has shrunk.
And they are going on strike in part because they can, having joined SEIU’s healthcare union in 2021. They’ve been working without a contract since then. “Striking does not benefit anyone,” an Allina statement said in response to the pending walkout.
The nurses and mental health employees who work for Allina would likely say that it’s the overcrowded, understaffed hospitals that don’t benefit anyone, and harm many more.