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VIEW DETAILS OF THE SETTLEMENT AGREEMENT
The short version summary of this agreement is that all the hospitals’ takebacks and concessions are GONE, the pension is untouched and all the benefits of your current contract (including MNA Health Insurance, etc.) remain in place as they always have been. In essence your entire contract has been completely protected and preserved. We will be having an all-member vote on July 6th from 6:00 a.m. to 10 p.m. to officially ratify the contract. Voting will happen at two locations – the MNA Office in St. Paul and Park Center High School in Brooklyn Park.
In this economic climate it is literally unheard of to reach a labor agreement with ZERO concessions. By preventing the dozens of concessions that would have gutted our profession, we ARE working to keep our patients safe! For instance, we fought back against the dreaded “floating” (aka a nurse is a nurse is a nurse) language the employers wanted. We also fought back the employers wanting to take away our nurses’s right to Unit Closure. And this is not the end of the safe staffing crusade. Rather, it is the beginning! What was the public’s consciousness of the staffing issue back in February versus today? What about 20,000 MNA Nurses standing together on this issue before the MN Legislature and other entities? What about the hundreds of patients who have contacted MNA wanting to share their unsafe staffing stories with the public? We have only BEGUN to fight for safe staffing.
Our union is stronger than ever. Standing together through the past three months, showing our solidarity in ways that any other union would die for, we proved we are MNA STRONG and ready. Just because we ultimately could not get the safe staffing language we wanted in this particular contract does not mean this was a failure or that it can’t happenin the near future. The staffing issue has been something MNA nurses have been fighting for since the early 1990s. Remember this is a long road and the past 3-4 months we made MAJOR progress on the unsafe staffing issue. If we stay united and fired up about staffing, we WILL get there!
Statement from MNA Bargaining Team Member Jim Danielson, RN: “As one of the bargaining team members, this was a decision that had many facets. We have many people who depend on the hospitals and nurses to work together. With this agreement, we protect many people, both RN’s and patients. There are a variety of viewpoints and we represent nursing to ALL of them. We have professional obligations, we have emotional considerations, and financial. This was a fight, but it is not war. I, for one, do not want our patients, our nurses or our hospitals to be mortally wounded by our actions. We have other avenues to continue this fight for safe patient care that does not leave as much collateral damage. We will pursue those avenues and continue this battle into the future. Hopefully we will have an improved system 3 years from now partly due to this agreement.”
OFFICIAL STATEMENT
The registered nurses and the hospitals believe a settlement of the labor agreement at this time is in the best interests of patients and our community.
The Minnesota Nurses Association and the fourteen hospitals that have been engaged in negotiations since March have reached agreement with the assistance of the Federal Mediation andConciliation Service on the terms for new collective bargaining agreements. The contract settlement is subject to ratification by the registered nurses represented by the Union, but the Union’s negotiating committees covering all fourteen hospitals have agreed to favorably recommend the settlement for ratification.
The Minnesota Nurses Association and the hospitals have agreed to a renewed commitment to working through both parties’ staffing issues through the existing committee systems at the various hospitals.
The affected hospitals are Abbott Northwestern Hospital, Bethesda Hospital, Children’s Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota, Fairview Southdale Hospital, Mercy Hospital, North Memorial Medical Center, Park Nicollet Methodist Hospital, Phillips Eye Institute, St. John’s Hospital, St. Joseph’s Hospital, United Hospital, Unity Hospital, and the Riverside Campus of the University of Minnesota Medical Center, Fairview. This also includes a recommended ratification for the Pension Contract at St. Francis Regional Medical Center in Shakopee.