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Union votes to be tallied for Allina Health doctors and other labor news [1]

['Max Nesterak', 'More From Author', '- October']

Date: 2023-10-13

Take a seat in the Break Room, our weekly round-up of labor news.

Election Day for Allina Health clinicians

Votes from hundreds of Allina Health doctors, physician assistants and nurse practitioners will be tallied Friday in a historic union election. If successful, the group of more than 550 clinicians across 61 primary and urgent care clinics will be the nation’s largest private-sector union of advanced care practitioners, according to Doctors Council SEIU, the union organizing the workers.

Doctors’ unions are rare, especially in the private sector. But labor organizing is growing in popularity among physicians because they increasingly work for large health care systems rather than their own practices. In the past decade, the share of physicians who work for hospitals and or health systems has ballooned from 26% to 52%, according to surveys sponsored by the Physicians Advocacy Institute.

Allina clinicians leading the effort say a union will empower them to push back against increasing productivity demands and paperwork duties they say are burning them out and hurting patients.

The election comes as Allina is fighting back another union effort by physicians at its Mercy Hospital in Fridley and Coon Rapids. Over 100 doctors voted by a margin of 2-to-1 to unionize in March. Allina challenged the results of the election, but a federal hearing officer sided with the union. Allina is appealing the decision.

Union aims for $25 minimum hourly wage for nursing home workers

Union leaders with SEIU Healthcare Minnesota and Iowa want nursing home workers to make at least $25 an hour. That would mean a raise for about 80% of workers across the state, according to a recent union survey of about 1,450 nursing home workers.

That survey also found two-thirds of nursing home workers say they struggle to afford basic necessities each month, and many said the pay is too low to attract new workers to an industry suffering from dire staffing shortages.

After the 2023 legislative session, SEIU Healthcare Minnesota and Iowa has significantly more power to raise wages for nursing assistants, dieticians, custodians and other nursing home workers.

The Legislature created one of the nation’s most powerful labor standards boards — the Nursing Home Workforce Standards Board — which has the power to set minimum pay and benefits for workers across the state’s 350 nursing homes. The board is made up of three government representatives, three industry representatives and three worker representatives. At the board’s first meeting, they voted to appoint SEIU Healthcare Minnesota and Iowa President Jamie Gulley as chair.

Nursing homes are funded nearly entirely by the government through Medicare and Medicaid, and Minnesota sets their reimbursement rates. Under the law, if the board’s proposals exceed what nursing homes can reasonably afford, the increases to wages and benefits will be delayed until the Legislature grants them more funding.

Hormel workers ratify contract

Workers at Hormel plants will get the largest wage increase in the company’s history after voting to ratify a new four-year contract, according to the United Food and Commercial Workers Union.

Under the new four-year contract — covering plants in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa and Georgia — workers will get a $3 an hour raise immediately and at least another $1.75 an hour by the end of the contract. Workers will also see an increase to their pension and 401k benefits and more bereavement leave, according to the union.

The new contract averts a strike that seemed imminent after workers rejected Hormel’s final offer in September. The company offered $3.50 an hour raises over four years while the union proposed $6.25 an hour. The final agreement lands nearly in the middle.

“(Workers) having fought for better wages means that their communities are all going to do better and that folks should remember that they are essential to our country and to us all being able to eat,” said UFCW Local 663 President Rena Wong.

Hormel employs 1,700 UFCW union members at its plant in Austin. The prospect of a strike raised memories of the last standoff at the plant in 1985-86, which divided the community and the union. The strike lasted more than a year, and at one point devolved into a riot. Hormel workers are now represented by a different UFCW local.

Minnesota meat processor settles child labor complaint

Monogram Meat Snacks will pay $140,164 in civil penalties after federal labor regulators found 11 teenagers working at its plant in Chandler in southwestern Minnesota. Nine of the teens operated hazardous machinery, the Department of Labor said in announcing the settlement on Tuesday.

Migrant children from Latin America are working in some of the most dangerous industries — including meatpacking and construction — at alarming rates and in violation of federal child labor laws. The U.S. Department of Labor said it has seen a 69% increase in children being employed illegally by companies.

In February, Wisconsin-based Packers Sanitation Services paid $1.5 million after federal authorities found more than 100 children were illegally employed in hazardous jobs, including at three Minnesota meat processing facilities.

“Child labor abuses are a stain on our nation, and we will continue to utilize every tool and legal strategy at our disposal to keep young people safe,” Solicitor of Labor Seema Nanda said in a statement.

Reporting by the New York Times has shown federal agencies ignored warnings that migrant children were working dangerous jobs at the Biden administration sought to quickly move kids out of immigration facilities.

Racial wage gap closes slightly post-pandemic

Significant wage gains in lower paid service jobs like food preparation, janitorial work and home health care have outpaced inflation, as well as wage growth in jobs requiring more education and job training. This has helped reduce racial inequality coming out of the pandemic, since those jobs are mostly done by Black, Latino and Asian people.

Researchers at the state Department of Employment and Economic Development studied the earnings of over 240,000 people in the Twin Cities metro area who requested unemployment benefits in the initial months of the pandemic recession.

They found workers with some or no college saw their real wages rise around 13%, while workers with advanced degrees saw just a 4.5% increase in real wages. In fact, most workers with a masters degree or higher suffered wage losses greater than 1% of their pre-pandemic wages because inflation ate up any pay raises they received.

Still, college degrees and trade skills continue to lead to much higher wages, and are a blueprint for closing racial disparities. For example, Latino workers have found success in well-paid union construction jobs while Black workers who earn degrees and pursue careers in nursing, teaching or counseling are often out-earning white workers in the same occupations, according to DEED.

Workers strike final Minnesota United game

The final regular season soccer game of the Minnesota United couldn’t be streamed on Apple on Saturday because the audio and video workers went on strike. It was the first strike by members of the IATSE Local 745 since it was formed in 2009.

The union represents about 30 video board technicians who voted to unionize in September 2022, but have yet to ratify a first labor contract covering wages, benefits and working conditions.

The union proposed significant wage increases of more than 17% over the next three years to make up for stagnant wages in recent years. They also asked for a $50 per day health care contribution, which the team’s management called outrageous, according to the union.

Union representative Charlie Cushing said the health care proposal would have cost about $12,000 a season total, since each game only requires about a dozen workers and there are 18 games in a season. Currently, workers earn about $40 an hour.

“We’re always ready and willing to make a reasonable deal,” Cushing said. “Being told it was outrageous when the majority owner is a billionaire off the back of the largest private health insurance company in the world, UnitedHealth, is a little challenging.”

An email to Minnesota United was not returned.

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