FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Shannon Cunningham
651-269-1418
Shannon.Cunningham@mnnurses.org
(St. Paul) – June 27, 2025 –Nurses and other healthcare workers at multiple Duluth and Superior healthcare facilities will be the first to begin a ULP Strike to demand their hospitals engage in Fair Negotiations, stop committing unfair labor practices, and to work with nurses to advocate for patients.
Hospital acute care nurses at Essentia Health’s St. Mary’s Duluth Hospital, Miller-Dwan Hospital and St. Mary’s- Superior Hospital, and Aspirus Health St. Luke’s Hospital will be beginning their ULP Strike to demand their hospitals engage in Fair Negotiations, stop committing unfair labor practices, and to work with nurses to advocate for patients on Tuesday, July 8 at 7:00 a.m. Nurses and healthcare workers bargaining their first contracts at Essentia Health’s 1st Street, 2nd Street, 3rd Street, and Superior clinics, along with their colleagues at Miller Hill Ambulatory Surgery Center and Solvay Hospice House are also announcing that they will begin their ULP strike at this same time.
All striking MNA members issued a 10-day notice to hospitals on Friday.
Nurses at the four hospitals have been bargaining since March while many other healthcare workers have been bargaining for over a year. They are advocating for enforceable staffing levels that ensure quality care, confirmed work agreements, reduced workplace injuries and violence, improved retention, and lower healthcare costs.
The Minnesota Nurses Association has filed dozens of Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) charges against Essentia Health, Aspirus St. Luke’s and other hospitals statewide since negotiations began three months ago. Essentia Health alone has had more than two dozen of those ULPs filed against them. The charges center on three major categories: denying access to union representatives, surveillance of protected activity, and bad faith bargaining. The NLRB has already found merit on several of these charges for Essentia, making it clear employer obstruction is most severe in Duluth facilities.
“Despite spending another eight hours attempting to negotiate with Essentia and St. Luke’s, they continue to bargain in bad faith and not address the ULPs nurses have already filed. It has become clear to us that regardless of how often we meet, neither Essentia Health nor Aspirus St. Luke’s executives are interested in actually bargaining,” said Chris Rubesch, RN, Negotiating Team member for Essentia Health and President of the Minnesota Nurses Association. “No nurse wants to walk off the job, but these employers have left us with no other option.”
Statewide Breakdown:
In all, Registered Nurses at 16 hospitals across seven hospital systems voted to authorize a strike, along with their Advanced Practice Provider colleagues at 69 Essentia facilities and others at six of Essentia’s clinic, hospice and surgery facilities. In total, four hospitals and six Essentia clinics, hospice and surgery facilities will be striking on July 8. Due to the way contracts are written, some hospitals are counted together as one bargaining unit. The strike authorization is still in effect for the other facilities in the Twin Cities metro and for the Essentia Advanced Practice Providers.
What’s next?
Nurses at striking hospitals issued a 10-day notice, allowing time for hospitals to arrange patient care coverage. The goal remains to reach an agreement to avoid disruptions. But nurses are prepared to launch their ULP Strike and to protest hospitals’ bad faith bargaining and other ULPs, and demand hospitals begin meeting in good faith so nurses can address issues around safe staffing and workplace protections. Duluth nurses do not take this step lightly, but after months of obstruction, they are united in action.