Minnesota Nurses Ratify New Contract
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After more than three months of tense negotiations that included a 24-hour strike, some 12,000 nurses in Minnesota’s Twin Cities yesterday voted to ratify a new three-year contract with 14 area hospitals. The new pact contains no concessions or give-backs and maintains the pension plan.
Although they did not win new safe staffing language they sought, the nurses maintained safe staffing language already in their contract, in which a nurse has a right to close a unit when it becomes unsafe to admit any more patients. The nurses are members of the Minnesota Nurses Association (MNA), an affiliate of National Nurses United (NNU).
Cindy Olson, an RN at St. John’s Hospital in Maplewood and a member of the MNA negotiating team, said:
It’s been a long three-plus months, but the nurses I’m talking to tonight have a healthy mixture of relief and resolve. Relief that we finally have a contract in front of us that we could ratify, and resolve to make sure we finish the job when it comes to attaining the safe staffing levels our patients and our profession deserve.
