St. Luke’s Nurses Ratify Contract
8 Sep
As expected, St. Luke’s Nurses in Duluth overwhelmingly ratified their new contract with the hospital today, approving the three-year agreement by a 96 percent margin. The agreement was reached last week after a 17-hour negotiating session with hospital executives and covers roughly 450 RNs.
Earlier today, nurses at SMDC Medical Center in Duluth reached a tentative agreement with hospital executives after almost 30 straight hours of bargaining. SMDC Nurses are expected to overwhelmingly ratify their new contract, which covers almost 1,000 RNs at the hospital, during their vote on September 10.
SMDC Nurses File 10-Day Strike Notice
3 Sep
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Media Contact: John Nemo, MNA, 651-414-2863
DULUTH, Minn. (September 3, 2010) – Nurses at SMDC/Essentia Health today delivered their formal 10-day notice of an intent to strike for 24 hours beginning at 7:00 a.m. on September 14, 2010.
“This is not a position we ever wanted to be in, but our nurses have been forced to this point,” said Steve Strand, RN, a member of the SMDC bargaining team. “Since early May, we have asked the business executives at our hospital to address the critical problem of unsafe staffing situations inside our hospital. We have asked them to include the type of language in our contract that has existed in the Twin Cities for years and now exists at St. Luke’s hospital here in Duluth. Filing the strike notice today is the next step we’ve been forced to take to try and get these executives back to the table and willing to craft a contract that puts patient safety first.”
Nearly 1,000 nurses at SMDC/Essentia Health are without a contract, and the Sept. 14 walkout would be the first one of its kind in Duluth’s nursing history.
“Nobody wants a strike, and we hope it doesn’t come to that,” Strand said. “We still have time to talk and work out a contract. The executives know what their nurses need for this contract agreement to be reached.”
In other developments, a federal mediator has called both sides back to the bargaining table at 10:00 a.m. on September 7.
“We remain hopeful we can reach a contract and we’ll continue to bargain in good faith,” Strand said. “But today was a step our members felt was necessary to take in order to put pressure on the executives at SMDC to work with us to get a contract agreement.”
Nurses at St. Luke’s Hospital reached a tentative agreement earlier this week after a marathon 17-hour negotiating session. Their new contract includes the type of safe staffing language SMDC/Essentia Nurses say is critical to ensuring their patients remain safe now and in the future.
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St. Luke’s Nurses Reach Tentative Agreement in Duluth
1 Sep
It is clear that St. Luke’s hospital is the leader in Duluth and RNs advocating for safe patient care! Early this morning the management of St. Luke’s offered an agreement we can recommend with enthusiasm to ratify. This came about in no small part thanks to our amazing and overwhelming show of unity back on August 18th.
The highlights of this agreement include:
- Joint Development and implementation of staffing plans which includes mediation for impasse resolution.
- We also were able to reach agreement on temporarily closing the unit to admissions when we are unable to safely provide care for the next admission.
- We have an agreement on how the code of conduct will work.
- Kentucky River protections continue through the course of this contract as well.
Additional highlights of the tentative agreement will be made available as soon as we can get them out. After starting at 1 p.m. on Tuesday, we negotiated through the night until 6 a.m. this morning to reach this tentative agreement.
The entire contract offer from St. Luke’s will be made available for nurses to review before our vote, pursuant to MNA bylaws. As in any contract, there are economic concerns, and we were able to reach improvements for our health insurance contribution from St. Luke’s.
Now that we have been able to win concrete improvements in contract language for our staffing, we have to make sure management continues to work with us to provide the best possible patient care. Our unity and action has been able to get us this far. We must remain united to enforce our new contract language and commitment from management.
We plan to vote to ratify our tentative agreement this Wednesday, September 8th and have a new contract. We are hoping to have our vote at the United Baptist Church at 830 E. First Street from 6:30 a.m. until 8 p.m. We will be available to answer any questions you may have that day. Also we will be getting a summary of the tentative agreement up as soon as possible. We will have the full tentative agreement available before the vote as well.
After many long negotiation sessions we feel that we were able to make concrete gains in this contract, as a negotiating committee we feel confident in recommending this contract to you for ratification.
St. Luke’s Hospital Bargaining Team
Cindy Prout, Renee Ebel, Nancy Carlson, Pam Hyopponen, Kate Donovan, Mary “Meech” Koski
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