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Nurses announce strike in Duluth, Superior hospitals and clinics • Minnesota Reformer [1]
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Date: 2025-06-30
Thousands of nurses at dozens of health care facilities in the Twin Cities and Duluth area voted to authorize a strike last week if their union negotiators couldn’t reach a deal with their employers.
After getting permission from their members, union leaders for several hospitals and clinics moved quickly to initiate a strike.
The first wave of nurses and other health care workers — all in Duluth and Superior — intend to strike beginning July 8. They include hospital acute care nurses at Essentia Health’s hospitals in the area, and those at Aspirus Health’s St. Luke’s Hospital. It also includes nurses and other health care workers at Essentia Health clinics in Duluth and Superior, Miller Hill Ambulatory Surgery Center and Solvay Hospice House.
A second strike is set to begin July 10 at Essentia Health facilities in northeast Minnesota and northwest Wisconsin. A group of unionized nurse practitioners, physician assistants, nurse midwives and clinical nurse specialists — referred to collectively as “advanced practice providers” — will be the first with that title in Minnesota history to participate in a so-called “unfair labor practice” or ULP strike
ULP strikes are related to an employers’ violation of labor laws — rather than better pay or hours — and provide stronger job protections than other kinds of strikes.
Sara McCumber, who has worked for Essentia Health as a nurse practitioner for 24 years and is part of her union’s negotiating unit, said Essentia has refused to come to the table to negotiate.
Essentia Health has contested the union election via the National Labor Relations Board, but a ruling in January shot down Essentia’s most recent appeal.
Nurses with the Minnesota Nurses Association say their top priority isn’t pay — it’s staffing. Nurses say they want higher nurse-to-patient ratios to ensure better care, lower burnout and less violence against health care workers, who are five times more likely to be seriously injured from an assault on the job than the U.S. workforce as a whole, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
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