MPR: Nurses strike ends after 23 days

Nurses strike ends after 23 days
By Tom Scheck , Minnesota Public Radio
June 26, 2001

The Minnesota Nurses Association says the 1,350 nurses at Fairview Southdale in Edina and Fairview Riverside in Minneapolis will go back to work on Friday morning after ratifying a new contract. The ratification vote ends a 23-day strike by the nurses and puts an end to bitter negotiations between the union and 13 Twin Cities hospitals.

Susan Tinebra is a nurse at Fairview Southdale. Listen to her comments, and the comments of other striking nurses in this RealAudio slideshow.

UNION LEADERS SAY the nurses at the two hospitals ratified the contract by a wide margin and will go back to work at seven o'clock Friday morning. They didn't release the final vote tallies.

Outside of the union headquarters , lead negotiator Sue Buesgens said the hospitals agreed to give the Fairview Riverside and Fairview Southdale nurses a raise of 19.8 percent over three years, pay 75 percent of the nurses health insurance premiums and give the nurses a greater say in workload.

"The contract allows bargaining unit nurses to temporarily close their unit to admissions when the nursing care needs of patients exceeds the available nurses and alternative resources are not available," Buesgens said.

For the past three weeks, many of the Fairview nurses on the picket line said they weren't striking because of the wage proposal by the hospitals, but because they wanted to see improvements made to the hospital's work environment. Yet the union says it was disappointed that the hospitals didn't change their salary offer from the last contract.

Fairview Riverside nurse and union negotiator Jacqui Luoma says a higher salary would have attracted more people into the field. "There are some who are disappointed that the wages aren't increased. Because they don't feel that the wages, although they are increased wages in what we've seen in the past negotiations, they're still saying it's not enough to draw really young, bright people into the profession," Luoma said.

Among those young nurses is Christina Detjen, an oncology nurse who's worked one year at Fairview Southdale. Detjen said she was happy with the wage proposal, but disappointed that the hospital and union didn't do a better job of providing incentives to go into the field.

"I guess I'd rather see tuition reimbursement and things that are really going to attract new grads," she said.

Officials at Fairview Health Systems say they're relieved the nurses ratified the contract. Fairview Southdale Hospital Vice President Jeanne Johnson says the hospitals now have to work to make sure there are no problems between the nurses and management. "There will be a lot of different ways that we will do that. Mostly we will have dialogue with staff at staff meetings and working through the issues," according to Johnson.

Fairview Riverside Vice President Kathie Taranto called the deal "a contract that both the hospitals and union can feel good about." She said the hospitals will start preparing to welcome the nurses back to work on Friday. "Between the two hospitals there are 1,300 nurses, so we need time to get the schedules in place to communicate with the nurses to make sure that they know when they're working and when they need to come back," Taranto said.

The Fairview nurses are the last group from 13 Twin Cities hospitals to ratify contracts. The deals cover more than 8,000 nurses for the next three years.

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