HealthEast Home Care Nurses Vote to join Minnesota Nurses Association (Page 145)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Media Contact: John Nemo, 651-414-2863 or john.nemo@mnnurses.org

HealthEast Home Care Nurses Vote to join Minnesota Nurses Association

ST. PAUL (April 1, 2010) – Registered Nurses working for HealthEast Home Care voted today to formally organize and join the Minnesota Nurses Association (MNA).

“It is a great day for the Home Care nurses here at HealthEast,” said Kelly Rogalsky, one of 55 RNs working in HealthEast’s Home Care program. “We’re excited to join MNA and have formal union representation. We look forward to bargaining with our employer for a contract that ensures the well-being and safety of our patients and allows us to give our patients the best quality of care possible.”

HealthEast’s Home Care program provides at-home care and nursing for patients across the Twin Cities.

“We’re very excited to welcome the HealthEast Home Care nurses to our association,” said MNA President Linda Hamilton, RN. “For more than 105 years, great nurses like those from HealthEast have helped make the Minnesota Nurses Association a leader in nursing practice, education and patient safety.”

Founded in 1905, the Minnesota Nurses Association represents more than 20,000 nurses across the state. More than 12,000 MNA RNs in the Twin Cities are in the midst of contract bargaining with six different Twin Cities hospital systems, including HealthEast.

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.
… Read more about: Allina Bargaining UPDATE (March 31) from MNA  »

This morning MNA met with representatives from Allina to continue bargaining. MNA asked three clear questions related to Allina’s proposals:

  • Why put every nurse on call?
  • How does gutting our contract ensure patient safety?
  • How does the employers’ maniacal need for “flexibility” enhance safe patient care?

Allina officials did not respond to MNA with any clear answers to the questions above.

Feel free to print and share this flyer that summarizes today’s negotiations with other Nurses in your unit! We’ll also paste it below:


… Read more about: Allina Bargaining Update (March 31)  »

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) just released its initial findings from its 2008 National Sample Survey of Registered Nurses.

You can view the entire report online, but below are some of the more interesting tidbits we found. (Note: This report is published every four years, so it mostly compares 2004 to 2008.)

RN Population

  • U.S. RN population grew from 2.9 – 3.1 million  (increase of 5.3%)
  • 84.8 percent (2.6 million) of RNs are employed in nursing (highest since 1977)

Age