Nurses at one of Minnesota’s largest hospitals have a new contract that makes significant improvements in compensation and working conditions conditions that will help recruit and retain nurses at the busy urban Level 1 Trauma facility.

Hennepin County Medical Center nurses overwhelmingly voted in favor of a new three-year contract in June.

“It was time for us to enrich our contract and provide some of the benefits enjoyed by the other metro hospitals,” said HCMC Co-Chair Michele Will, RN. “I think we made steps in that direction.  We were able to secure education money for all nurses and increase the number of weekends off for nurses with ten years of seniority who work every other weekend. The nurses I have spoken to are very appreciative of these new benefits.”

Highlights include:

• Additional health and safety language;
• A standardized staffing process;
• Moving toward absolute parity with other Metro hospitals, including up to 3 percent wage increases in the first year;
• Locked-in insurance percentage for the life of the contract;
• Short-term and long-term disability insurance paid by the hospital;
• Education reimbursements for the first time.

“As a newer unit, we’re building on each contract,” said HCMC MNA Nurses Co-Chair Meg Ploog, RN. “We’re adding major improvements each time we bargain.”

HCMC organized with MNA in 2006.

Members say they’re happy to be part of MNA.

“I feel like we’re more protected with a contract,” said Sharon Jestus, RN. “We’re more vulnerable without a contract.”

“Get involved,” said RN Jimmy McMurray, who started filling out Concern for Safe Staffing forms when he saw that staffing levels on his floor were not allowing nurses to provide adequate care to patients. His actions showed other nurses that they could speak up and cause change. “If we don’t stand up for what’s right, no one will.”

Nurses at Fairview Lakes Medical Center in Wyoming, MN, are fighting for contract advancements to protect patients, recruit and retain exceptional nurses, and to stop management efforts to take back hard-fought compensation and benefits.

Negotiations officially began in June, with management proposing to deny health insurance coverage and other benefits to almost a dozen nurses who work half time,  increase mandatory low-need days by 50 percent, and continue inequitable pay differentials between clinic and hospital nurses.

“These proposals are offensive and unrealistic,” said Fairview Lakes MNA Co-Chair Sandie Anderson, RN. “Management is treating nurses as second-class citizens.”

Nurses are asking management to make a commitment to patients to ensure there will be adequate staff to care for them and to personally explain to patients if staffing falls below planned-for levels. Additionally, nurses are asking for improvements to wages and benefits. Sadly, management has failed to make efforts to advance patient safety or to provide nurses with a more secure economic future.

Nurses are calling on Fairview Lakes to:

• Protect patients;
• Address inequities between nurses who perform the same work;
• Retain nurses;
• Protect the future of nursing.

“Fairview should not try to increase profits on the backs of nurses,” Fairview Lakes Co-Chair Susan Kreitz, RN, said. “We are asking Fairview Lakes to put patients and the nurses who care for them first. That means addressing inequities including an unfair pay differential between clinic and hospital nurses.”

Nurses are speaking out about the unequal compensation of clinic and hospital nurses in a new video. The video highlights the high level of care clinic nurses provide to their patients and why clinic nursing is not of lower value than hospital nursing at Fairview Lakes.