Duluth, MN – July 25, 2025 – On Tuesday, clinic nurses, surgery center nurses, healthcare workers at Solvay Hospice House, and Advanced Practice Providers (APPs) with the Minnesota Nurses Association (MNA) concluded a powerful strike across Essentia Health facilities that involved nearly 700 frontline workers. The two-week strike by nurses and healthcare workers and 13-day strike by APPs brought statewide attention to Essentia’s unfair labor practices, including unlawful intimidation, surveillance, and clear attempts to bust the union.
Yet, even after the strike’s end, Essentia is continuing to keep on travel nurses, when former striking healthcare workers are available and want to return to work.
Healthcare workers at clinics across the Essentia system are learning as they return to work that Essentia Health will continue to employ travel nurses through the weekend before allowing former striking healthcare workers to return. So far, 70 healthcare workers have reported to MNA that they are being locked out of their roles at all four Essentia clinics and Solvay Hospice House.
This decision is disheartening for caregivers who are ready and eager to return to their patients. These are professionals who took a stand to demand Essentia follow the law in the bargaining process and to ensure their rights were not being violated. Being kept out now only delays resolution.
Nurses and healthcare workers stood united and forced the employer back to the table. Clinic nurses, Ambulatory Surgery Center nurses, and healthcare workers at Solvay Hospice House made real progress and secured future bargaining dates, showing the strength of MNA’s collective voice. APPs remain committed to a fair contract that respects their vital role and continue calling out Essentia’s stall tactics. With the NLRB unable to act due to vacancies, Essentia’s appeal is exploiting a broken system to avoid accountability.
We urge Essentia to choose collaboration over division. Rebuilding trust begins with bringing workers back.
“Healthcare workers negotiating first contracts made progress by bringing Essentia back to the table, but choosing to lock them out now sends the wrong signal” said Chris Rubesch, RN and MNA President. “It undermines the progress we’ve made and continues to foster distrust at a time when we should be working towards a solution. Our members deserve better—and so do their patients.”
The Minnesota Nurses Association calls on community members, elected officials, and fellow healthcare workers to stand with these workers. The fight for safe staffing and ethical treatment of healthcare workers is far from over. A healthcare system that respects its caregivers keeps patients safer, and every caregiver deserves a voice in shaping the system.
