Thousands of nurses strike at Minnesota hospitals

As many as 15,000 Minnesota nurses went on strike Monday, citing short staffing and low wage increases.

The thousands-strong strike may be the largest private-sector nurses’ strike in the nation’s history, according to a release from the Minnesota Nurses’ Association (MNA).

Nurses at 16 hospitals in Minnesota’s Twin Cities and elsewhere in the state rallied Sunday night and began the three-day strike Monday morning after months of contract negotiations with hospital executives, the union said.

The Minnesota nurses are demanding safer working conditions, better nurse retention and safer staffing systems, according to National Nurses United.

“Corporate healthcare policies in our hospitals have left nurses understaffed and overworked, while patients are overcharged, local hospitals and services are closed, and executives take home million-dollar paychecks,” said MNA’s First Vice President Chris Rubesch in a statement from the union. 

The union says hospital executives have seen huge raises to their own salaries, but have offered nurses a 4 percent average annual increase, “well below the current rate of inflation and climbing cost of living.” 

According to Minnesota’s Star Tribune, the nurses asked for nearly 30 percent pay raises over three years, and hospitals offered around 10 percent.

Research shows patient care is adversely impacted by health care worker strikes — and the affected hospitals began planning to train temp nurses to deal with the fallout of the 15,000 strikers leaving bedsides to protest, according to the Star Tribune. 

A National Nurses United poll earlier this year found nurses, two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, concerned about staffing issues and an uptick in workplace violence.

Nearly 70 percent of nurses said staffing shortages have worsened since earlier in the pandemic, and over a quarter of nurses said they had been assigned to work with a skillset they did not possess. 

As nurses leave the front lines, a new analysis indicates the U.S. could experience a labor gap of as many as 450,000 nurses by 2025.

A McKinsey & Company report released in February found 32 percent of surveyed U.S. registered nurses said they may leave direct patient care, citing staffing and pay issues.

President Biden has long acknowledged the impact of the pandemic on those in the health care profession, and nurses have asked the White House to take action on the ongoing pandemic.

In recent remarks at a Labor Day event in Pennsylvania, Biden touted his administration’s work on the American Rescue Plan as it relates to health care workers.

“Here in the state of Pennsylvania, and almost every state, didn’t have enough money to keep teachers on the payroll, to keep firefighters on the job, to keep police on the job, to keep people, nurses and docs on the job,” Biden said. “And so what’d we do? We, in fact, gave them the money to make sure they did it.”