Biggest Nurse strike in US History: coming soon

[Lacrimi de Chiciură]

http://www.kare11.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=849473


ST. PAUL, Minn. -- It could be the largest strike by nurses in United States history. 12-thousand nurses at 13 Twin Cities hospitals are considering whether to walk off the job in the weeks to come.
...
Abbott Northwestern nurse Laurie Bahr said, "The public should watch what's happening here because everything we're doing we're doing for them."

They say their main issue is staffing. Olson said, "You're just short staffed and you're taking care of four, five or six patients sometimes. Yeah, difficult."
...
John Nemo of MNA (Minnesota Nurses Association) said, "The nurses have had a pension in place since 1962 and the hospitals have been proposing to cut that by a third."
...
Nurses vote on May 19th on whether to ratify a contract or strike.

If there is a strike, more than 12,000 nurses could walk off the job as soon as June 1st.
It sounds like the management is pretty stubborn, so the strike will likely go forward. We should keep an eye on this and other labor rumblings going on in the US. If organized properly this may be a flash point for further class struggle.

[Stand Your Ground]

I hope to see this happen.

[chimx]

My fiancee is a union nurse and it is usually pretty rare for them to decide to strike, especially for any serious length of time, because of the immediate medical complications that arise. Patients are at risk of dying when this happens, which is why informational pickets or temporary pickets are far more common. That will be pretty amazing if the members vote to strike.

[chimx]

I hope to see this happen.

You remind me of this trotskyist I met at a Boeing rally. The machinists were considering going on strike and some people were attending out of solidarity (and from my perspective, it seems like the were also attending to sell their party newspaper). Anyway, one trot gleefully asked a machinist, "so are you excited about the strike!?". The guy looked at him and said, "fuck no I'm not excited, are you crazy?" You are cutting off your income, healthcare for you and your whole family. Working families struggle to pay bills, risk loosing their houses, etc.

Getting all giddy about a strike because it fulfills some idealistic commie wet dream is a terrible attitude to take, and extremely alienating. It's something people due out of necessity, and should be respected for the struggle that it is.

[Stand Your Ground]

You remind me of this trotskyist I met at a Boeing rally. The machinists were considering going on strike and some people were attending out of solidarity (and from my perspective, it seems like the were also attending to sell their party newspaper). Anyway, one trot gleefully asked a machinist, "so are you excited about the strike!?". The guy looked at him and said, "fuck no I'm not excited, are you crazy?" You are cutting off your income, healthcare for you and your whole family. Working families struggle to pay bills, risk loosing their houses, etc.

Getting all giddy about a strike because it fulfills some idealistic commie wet dream is a terrible attitude to take, and extremely alienating. It's something people due out of necessity, and should be respected for the struggle that it is.
When they wanna cut their pensions it seems pretty necessary to me.

[Dooga Aetrus Blackrazor]

Unless the Nurses are willing to go all out, I don't see a strike going well. Media spin will blame them for any deaths or wait times. They'll show coverage of the laziest Nurses and site pay averages. All the people who make less won't care.

And the government would probably just remove the right of Nurses to leave work for Strike purposes. In Vancouver, the paramedics can't actually leave the job when striking. So clearly, they have very little bargaining power.

I'm not against striking here. I just think it's interesting that people don't support labor movements like they did in the past - at least in my experiences. You'll hear remarks like "greedy teachers" and "in this economy." It scares me, but every day people become more supportive of the establishment. People used to argue against oppression more than they do today. Now most of the anti-leftist critics are the proletariat themselves.

Oh well. Hopefully some good comes out of it.

[Lacrimi de Chiciură]

Unless the Nurses are willing to go all out, I don't see a strike going well. Media spin will blame them for any deaths or wait times. They'll show coverage of the laziest Nurses and site pay averages. All the people who make less won't care.

And the government would probably just remove the right of Nurses to leave work for Strike purposes. In Vancouver, the paramedics can't actually leave the job when striking. So clearly, they have very little bargaining power.

I'm not against striking here. I just think it's interesting that people don't support labor movements like they did in the past - at least in my experiences. You'll hear remarks like "greedy teachers" and "in this economy." It scares me, but every day people become more supportive of the establishment. People used to argue against oppression more than they do today. Now most of the anti-leftist critics are the proletariat themselves.

Oh well. Hopefully some good comes out of it.

There is a lot of support in the community. You can't walk more than a block or two without seeing a "Nurses: We support you" sign. There is consciousness that management, not the staff, is to blame for putting patients at risk by not staffing the hospitals. Also, looking at the Temple Nurses strike in Philadelphia (http://www.socialistalternative.org/news/article14.php?id=1354), it's clear that something has to be done because this a trend going on all around the country.

[Dooga Aetrus Blackrazor]

There is a lot of support in the community. You can't walk more than a block or two without seeing a "Nurses: We support you" sign. There is consciousness that management, not the staff, is to blame for putting patients at risk by not staffing the hospitals. Also, looking at the Temple Nurses strike in Philadelphia (http://www.socialistalternative.org/news/article14.php?id=1354), it's clear that something has to be done because this a trend going on all around the country.

Good to hear. I guess it varies with the time and place. I've seen a lot of similar strikes end up with a union totally demonized.

[Lacrimi de Chiciură]

Update: the nurses voted to go on strike for one day.


Twin Cities Nurses Prepare for One-Day Walkout

By Nellie Munn
| May 28, 2010


Twelve thousand nurses in the Twin Cities are fending off a well-coordinated attack by corporate health care interests to diminish the power of our union. In a metropolitan area with one of the highest densities of organized nurses in the country, we know that if the employers take down the Minnesota Nurses Association, they can take down anyone.
The nurses authorized a one-day strike last week by more than 90 percent of 9,200 voting. Negotiations with 14 Twin Cities hospitals owned by six corporations started in March, but little actual back and forth has taken place. One bargaining session lasted 12 minutes before management walked out. Another was over after 20 minutes.
MNA set a strike date for June 10, but the employers are threatening a lockout on June 1, when the contract expires.
Nurse negotiators from each hospital voted unanimously to recommend the one-day strategy to their members because it will cause minimal disruption to our patients while causing maximum pain to our employers. For the employers, a one-day action could cause significant disruption as they attempt to find scabs willing to travel for a one-day commitment and scale back their most profitable service, outpatient same-day surgery, in preparation. It also struck a nerve with the powers that be that nurses have the audacity to walk off the job and determine their own return-to-work date.
The nurses have been building up to this point for months. Hundreds have packed meeting rooms to face management, marched on the boss to deliver notices detailing how we felt about the assaults on our contracts, and rallied in red union T-shirts at the vote locations. We conducted two informational picketing events during Nurses Week May 6-12 that attracted thousands of nurses to demonstrate in front of the hospitals, making plain our concerns for patient safety and making public the hospitals’ attacks.
BIG CHANGES

You have to be really ill to stay in the hospital these days. The patients are sicker. The stays are shorter. The needs are more complex. And like every state outside of California, which has mandated nurse-to-patient ratios, there are simply not enough nurses at the bedside in Minnesota to monitor the patients, detect subtle changes in condition, and prevent devastating medical errors and preventable complications.
Yet management continues to push through elective surgeries when we don’t have enough nurses to care for the needs of those already in the beds. They have systematically chipped away at contract standards in order to gain more control over our work and the environment in which we deliver care. They have hired consultants to institute the Toyota lean manufacturing philosophy (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbPOO1hNX10) in our hospitals, to increase the speed of care and try to replace nurses with less skilled workers. They want to keep the beds filled even when there are no nurses to safely provide the care. They want us to continually do more with less. But when it comes to the lives of patients, we can’t rely on recalls to fix problems!
Despite much research (http://www.protectmasspatients.org/medical.htm) that shows thousands of patients die every year in hospitals due to unsafe staffing levels, and many more suffer preventable injuries, our proposals for mandatory nurse-to-patient ratios and enforceable language to close overstretched units temporarily to new admissions are falling on deaf ears. Daycare centers have mandatory caregiver ratios in Minnesota, but hospitals somehow do not.
The hospital chains have other plans. They made a bid to return to 1984, when Twin Cities nurses had to strike for 38 days in order to protect seniority rights in times of restructuring, layoff, and recall. This time, the week before the strike vote, the employers dropped this take-back proposal, which had galvanized nurses like no other. But they left many additional demands on the table.
They want concessions across the board, economic and non-economic, trying to extract something in exchange for dropping other proposed cuts. It’s as if someone walked into your house, stole your furniture, and then tried to sell it back to you for a higher price than you first paid for it.
They want us to take six days off every year unpaid, so those working 12-hour days—as many nurses do—could lose 72 hours of pay, equal to a two-week furlough. They propose to slash the defined-benefit pension plan by more than one-third and eliminate all early retirement options. The hospitals are targeting part-time nurses—which they demand in the name of scheduling flexibility—especially hard, attempting to strip their health insurance, sick leave, and vacations.
These “not for profit” hospitals reported more than $700 million in profits (http://mnnurses.org/sites/default/files/documents/2010-bargaining-media-page-893.pdf) in 2009, and have showered executives with bonuses, plump retirement schemes, and golden parachutes. They claim they are paying 60 percent of their revenue to labor costs—the same amount they say they paid in 1984.
The employers claim they need flexibility and expect nurses to float to other units and hospitals where they are not trained to work, somewhat like sending a carpenter across town and asking him to work on electrical wiring for the day.
CONCESSIONS COLLUSION

The employers have devoted significant resources to psychological warfare, hiring public relations firms and crisis-management teams in an effort to discredit the nurses and the union. They call us “emotional” and “dramatic” when we cite the numerous examples of patient suffering. They try to attack our pensions and health care coverage while claiming we demand too much in salary.
When asked why the hospital would not even engage a discussion of our patient care concerns, one manager spilled the beans, saying there was a power greater than those at the table that was making the decisions. MNA filed an unfair labor practice charge (http://www.twincities.com/localnews/ci_15106406) on May 17 against the employers’ collusion to undermine collective bargaining.
We have worked hard to earn the public’s trust, putting up billboards that question whether safety or profits is more important. Hundreds of “We Care For You” lawn signs have gone up around the cities. We put out YouTube videos explaining our campaign, and actively use Facebook, email, Twitter, and blogs to interact with members and the public. Labor and faith leaders have rallied in support.
We’re getting support from our sisters and brothers in National Nurses United, the nationwide nurse alliance which Minnesota belongs to, because we’re all in the same boat—these employer attacks are part of a national campaign by corporate health care. We’ve learned from NNU about strategies to win these kinds of difficult negotiations, and the union produced a video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kABPmw7jLpM) of nurses around the nation declaring their backing.
Whatever it takes, we will keep fighting for safe patient care and good jobs for nurses because these issues are inseparable.
Also, I've seen this billboard up in a few places. I think it's pretty effective.

http://mnnurses.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/maybillboardfinal.jpg

[proudcomrade]

Look at this: http://abcnews.go.com/Business/Media/thousands-nurses-strike-minnesota/comments?type=story&id=10875712 (http://abcnews.go.com/Business/Media/thousands-nurses-strike-minnesota/comments?type=story&id=10875712)

I am so relieved at the sheer number of comments expressing solidarity with the nurses. I honestly did not believe that so many Americans were even capable of giving a shit about labor anymore, let alone hospital pt. safety. I read the article & then figured that the vast majority of the commentary would be your standard libertarian/Beckhead tripe. This was a serious cause for cheer for me; rarely am I so happy to be proven totally wrong :thumbup1:

[Fietsketting]

You remind me of this trotskyist I met at a Boeing rally. The machinists were considering going on strike and some people were attending out of solidarity (and from my perspective, it seems like the were also attending to sell their party newspaper). Anyway, one trot gleefully asked a machinist, "so are you excited about the strike!?". The guy looked at him and said, "fuck no I'm not excited, are you crazy?" You are cutting off your income, healthcare for you and your whole family. Working families struggle to pay bills, risk loosing their houses, etc.

Getting all giddy about a strike because it fulfills some idealistic commie wet dream is a terrible attitude to take, and extremely alienating. It's something people due out of necessity, and should be respected for the struggle that it is.

This feels so familair. :lol:

[9]

photos etc. (http://www.workdayminnesota.org/index.php?news_6_4514)

[redasheville]

There was an injunction on the UC nurses, barring them from striking. Their strike was supposed to correspond with the MN nurses.

[redasheville]

You remind me of this trotskyist I met at a Boeing rally. The machinists were considering going on strike and some people were attending out of solidarity (and from my perspective, it seems like the were also attending to sell their party newspaper). Anyway, one trot gleefully asked a machinist, "so are you excited about the strike!?". The guy looked at him and said, "fuck no I'm not excited, are you crazy?" You are cutting off your income, healthcare for you and your whole family. Working families struggle to pay bills, risk loosing their houses, etc.

Getting all giddy about a strike because it fulfills some idealistic commie wet dream is a terrible attitude to take, and extremely alienating. It's something people due out of necessity, and should be respected for the struggle that it is.

I see where you're coming from, and there is some truth to what you're saying. Many radicals make a fetish out of strikes. And the approach the radical you're refering to obviously had the wrong attitude to take.

However, the strike weapon is sorely under used in the contemporary American labor movement. I think it is very exciting when workers take a stand and withhold their labor power from the bosses. One of my comrades was recently on strike and she told me how it built the confidence of her coworkers, beat back some of the attack form the bosses and was generally a very inspiring experience for those involved. How could you not be excited?

[this is an invasion]

It would be cooler if hospitals started allowing patients to be treated for free. Accomplishes the same thing as a strike would, and helps out other working people.

[vyborg]

a marxist analysis here

http://www.marxist.com/usa-historic-nurses-strike-in-minnesota.htm

[9]

It would be cooler if hospitals started allowing patients to be treated for free. Accomplishes the same thing as a strike would, and helps out other working people.

Uh...? Is this supposed to be an argument for socialized healthcare, or are you suggesting that "it would be cool" if the hospital just quit paying the workers...?

[gorillafuck]

Uh...? Is this supposed to be an argument for socialized healthcare, or are you suggesting that "it would be cool" if the hospital just quit paying the workers...?
There have been bus driver strikes where bus drivers would still drive people around but nobody actually paid to ride the bus, as a way to be on strike but still provide services to the public and to gain public support and solidarity. I think he means something like that.

[Lacrimi de Chiciură]

Update:
Management did one more futile "discussion" after the strike and now the nurses are set to strike indefinitely on July 6. The lines have been drawn and it's "patients vs. profits." Will the state come in to assist management? A judge in California already stopped 13,000 nurses from striking there.

http://www.socialistalternative.org/news/article14.php?id=1396

The red shirts, the snappy logo, the "Patients before Profits" slogan... The nurses have set this up well. Let it spread like a pack of wildcats fleeing a wildfire.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQ6uc9woors
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meOxPeHtubU

[RED DAVE]

minneapolis (wkow) -- the minnesota nurses association announces that nurses have approved a contract and eluded a strike with 14 hospitals in the minneapolis-st. Paul area.


The approved agreement covers 12,000 nurses. On tuesday, the nurses originally had planned to go on another strike.


Union leaders endorsed the deal that was tentatively reached last week.
Under this agreement, the hospitals withdrew their proposal to cut pension and health care benefits and the nurses gave up their demand for rigid nurse-to-patient ratios.


The nurses walked off the job for one day on june 10, but the strike scheduled for tuesday was to be open-ended.http://www.wkowtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=12764983

RED DAVE

[Lacrimi de Chiciură]

The deal is really disappointing. It is a sell-out. Although it's good that their pensions aren't being cut, many nurses were willing to strike just for adequate staffing (and that was what their campaign focused on.) Some nurses are concerned that this deal makes it look like they were only doing this for the money. That staffing levels haven't even been addressed and that union officials would give in without a fight is perplexing, since that was what the nurses voted to strike for in the first place. The struggle must continue until we win!

[RED DAVE]

The deal is really disappointing. It is a sell-out. Although it's good that their pensions aren't being cut, many nurses were willing to strike just for adequate staffing (and that was what their campaign focused on.) Some nurses are concerned that this deal makes it look like they were only doing this for the money. That staffing levels haven't even been addressed and that union officials would give in without a fight is perplexing, since that was what the nurses voted to strike for in the first place.Sadly, all this seems to be true.


The struggle must continue until we win!Now, a serious question: What you have just done is mouthed a slogan. What, actually, do you (a) advocate people do, (b) intend to do yourself?

RED DAVE

[Lacrimi de Chiciură]

Sadly, all this seems to be true.

Now, a serious question: What you have just done is mouthed a slogan. What, actually, do you (a) advocate people do, (b) intend to do yourself?

RED DAVE

I'm no nurse, so I'll be waiting to see what new developments arise from within the nursing community. I advocate using this as an example of how for-profit hospitals don't provide adequate health care even when they have the resources, and if this class struggle leads to more pickets or whatever, I will try to be there to show solidarity with the workers.

[this is an invasion]

Uh...? Is this supposed to be an argument for socialized healthcare, or are you suggesting that "it would be cool" if the hospital just quit paying the workers...?

No, I'm saying instead of fully or partially shutting down the hospital, so that the owners don't make money, they should run it for free, so that the owners don't make money.


I think it's actually called communism.