Children’s Nurses in Minneapolis: Today our nurses were abruptly escorted out of the building by security – NICU by 3:00 a.m., PICU by 5:00 a.m. In addition to this haphazard dismissal and poor reporting procedures, Children’s management saw fit to send Emergency Department nurses home between 2:00-3:00 a.m., locking down the ED doors and keeping patients out! One of our nurses showing up for work early this morning found himself locked out and a family with an ER patient also locked out and confused what to do next. Our Children’s nurse banged on the glass and pounded on the doors until someone finally heard him and let him AND the patients our hospital is supposed to be serving into the previously locked Emergency Department, which didn’t have any security or anyone else monitoring the door from the vestibule.
Yesterday the 6th and 7th floors at Kids Minneapolis were filled, but today they were sending patients home and consolidating the rest on the 8th floor.
Instructions for tomorrow (June 11): Unless you have something in writing from Children’s management telling you not to come to work, plan on showing up for work as you were scheduled. We have a contracted right to work, and phone calls from Children’s management telling us to stay home flies in the face of our contractual right to work on June 11. So unless you’ve received something in writing from management, SHOW UP FOR WORK tomorrow morning! All of us Children’s Minneapolis Nurses will be gathering between 6:30-7:00 a.m. outside the entrance and then going into work together.
Finally, we need more of you to come out and picket with us tonight outside Children’s in Minneapolis. The rain has stopped, we have ponchos even if it starts up again, and amazing solidarity has been displayed all day long on the line! We’ll be having a candlelight vigil at 9:45 pm tonight as well.
See you on the line!