MNA Bargaining Update: Wednesday, March 31st 1:00 p.m.
On March 31st, your MNA Bargaining team asked these questions of Allina management. Management has not answered any of these questions. The MNA Bargaining Team is anxiously awaiting answers.
Questions to Allina management:
Can you identify, specifically and in detail, how the proposals you put forward support patient safety and patient advocacy? We have heard you using these terms, and want to understand them as you use them. We need to know how gutting our contract – and the contract is agreed to jointly by you and us – helps support patient safety and patient advocacy.
What studies and benchmarking have you researched to support your proposal for on-call for every nurse and other changes to call, other than a maniacal need for flexibility?
In the last session you used the words “THE RIGHT NURSE, FOR THE RIGHT PATIENT, AT THE RIGHT TIME”. In your own words, please define your understanding of the” THE RIGHT NURSE, FOR THE RIGHT PATIENT, AT THE RIGHT TIME”.
In your guiding principles and mission statement you describe a commitment to financial responsibility. In your own words…. What does that mean to you and how do you see this affecting patient care?
Please share with us what you see as the similarities between safe patient care and car building as you alluded to in your Employee Negotiations Update?
How do life and death situations in hospitals compare to making cars?
How are patient lives related to production lines?
What are the similarities between Toyota and Allina?
Speaking from personal experience, Julie Anne, can you tell us your understanding of why your nurses, refuse to work charge and assume charge duties?
Do you see any possibility of an increase in mistakes being made due to the unpredictability of a nurse’s schedule? By unpredictability we are referring to.. 1) Floating to unfamiliar areas. 2) Mandatory call for all nurses possibly causing lack of sleep, disruption in home life causing stress 3) Unpredictable start times 30 minutes before start of shifts. How do you see this as benefiting the patients by putting our work force at risk?
Were you going to outline specific proposals on your attachment E, or did you just want us to find this one and figure this out for ourselves?
Why did you in your discussion last week OMIT concessions on Overtime, Double Time, and scheduling benefits? Was there a reason for this? Did you intend for the nurses to find out on their own? Also, would you put in your own words how this would support RN retention and recruitment? Or do these proposals just support the bottom line?
Your proposal to ELIMINATE the nurse’s choice to decrease his/her FTE is in direct conflict with your proposal for range work agreements 0.4 to 0.8 FTE. Can you clarify these two proposals for us?
You have argued vociferously that you need “flexibility” in the past 2 sessions. Could you please describe in broader terms exactly what your difficulties are in flexibility? Could it be that the employer is seeking to take back the flexibility that the nurses have worked so hard to obtain over the years?
We have two questions for Terry Graner and Jeff Wicklander. Could you describe to us in your own words – so we can describe it to the nurses we represent- How do these proposals “hardwire excellence”? How do these proposals support the forces of magnetism?
Just to clarify: You say that you want the “right nurse, at the right time, in the right place”. We are bemused, because this is what we are hearing all across town. Jeff, in your own words could you tell us, what is amiss with the current situation? These are not rhetorical questions; we just want to properly inform our Registered Nurses.
Currently, Allina Health System is one of the top in the Nation. The development of contract language over the past 25 years has created a system which gave us Magnet status at Abbott and United, Beacon Awards, Top Cardiac Centers, and shortened length of stays. We have excellence in care delivery and cost efficiency as evidenced by cash flow; so much that we were visited by Hilary Clinton as a national leader. Your changes in the work floating rules will affect the care delivery. Evidence indicates floating will increase the length of stay and decrease staff satisfaction. How will you ensure the work rules changes you propose will support the excellent quality care that Allina is known for?