Thousands of nurses walked out Monday morning, in a massive strike aimed at 13 hospitals in the Minneapolis and neighboring St. Paul area.
The roughly 15,000 nurses and nursing staff claimed they are struggling for improved staff training and patient care and say that hospitals are severely understaffed.
Understaffing is a consequence of the pandemic years, and is causing existing nursing personnel to be overworked and exhausted.
The protest is only planned to last for three days. The Minnesota Nurses Association claims that the main target of the strike is not wages, but about allowing members to provide high-quality treatment for their patients.
“We did not go on a walkout because of our wages and we are demanding for the right to have a significant opinion over our line of work and the capacity to have a balanced personal and professional life,” said Mary Turner, a Covid ICU nurse who is also the leader of the Minnesota Nurses Association, the protesting union.
The union stated that it has been negotiating with healthcare directors for over five months and that its representatives have been operating without a contract for weeks. Although Turner noted that both of the sides are getting closer to an agreement on salaries, they remain significantly apart on other issues. They have not made any progress on the union’s requests to address short-staffing, retainment, and enhanced patient care.
Directors at the different hospitals have stated that they cannot satisfy the nurses’ requirements and are doing everything in their power to continue undisrupted, quality patient care.
The nurses have stated they want to feel valued and appreciated for their services.
The protest is another example of an increasing movement of unions striking or threatening to strike over labor conditions, as opposed to wage and compensation issues.
The nurses say they do not want anything other than better staffing decisions from the leaders of the medical community. They are still focusing on their duties towards their patients and fulfilling them to the best of their abilities. However, this can bring about massive trouble for the healthcare sector in the United States.
Lawmakers in Washington, including Senator Bernie Sanders, are supporting the Minnesota nurses in their walkout. “Nurses are the backbone of our health care system,” Sanders wrote on Twitter.
