Potential MN Nurses Strike?

Nurses Union

Published

Below is video of an amazing, heartfelt and to-the-point statement from Methodist Hospital RN Karen Anderson during today's bargaining session. Please watch and share this video as it sums up what this entire contract bargaining situation is all about!

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I am a bit saddened that the central demand: patient:staff ratio was not met, especially since MNA said that was the major cause of their fight. I really do hope their promise to continue discussion within the hospital system is genuine. I really think that's what they should have done to begin with, as it seems like the strike didn't give a lot of the public a good impression based on all the comments I've seen on news articles and comments I've overheard.

A lot of the impression all around was "greedy nurses." The fact that they gave in on their cause but got the hospitals to comprise on their pension and health insurance etc makes it look even worse to the public. They don't know any better because they are not a nurse. Neither am I...yet, but that's the impression that was left on the public, sadly. My guess is that the bargaining staff realized that patient-staff ratio fight was far too complex to handle by striking and would not be worth it when patients would suffer from an indefinite strike. It would also cost hospitals millions which would ruin their budget for any future hope for nurses and patients.

I'm pretty sure there were nurses there just for the money and don't give much care for patients other than to do their work and make a living. I'm sure there are nurses that are truly there for the patients and didn't care if they got pensions or not. I do believe the MNA though, the face of these nurses took them all in the wrong path though and now the public thinks that all nurses make 79,000 a year and want more.

Specializes in cardiac, ICU, education.
We surely do need to get staffing right, but the 47 million part is not quite correct. It would be true if we had really done health reform right, like most of the rest of the world does it. New laws will provide and/or require coverage for some substantial portion of the 47 million that were uninsured, but quite a few - perhaps 20 million, depending on whose figures you like - will still remain uncovered for various reasons. And the uninsured are a diverse mix - many of them folks who had pre-existing conditions and weren't able to get coverage at any price, but some of them were the young and healthy who have jobs that don't provide insurance and either felt they could not afford insurance or who simply opted to gamble and not buy it. So some will still be left out and many of those coming into the system are healthy enough not to hit the care system particularly hard.

Be careful what you vote for. In the rest of the world, nurses in universal health care make less than nurses in the US, even when accounting for cost of living. Most of the universal systems, like the one in France, are going bankrupt. The union nurses in this country would have to do a lot more picketing if they wanted their income to stay the same. Look at the department's of labor websites. Statistics are reported by each government yearly. The following numbers are from labor sites around the world. I did a paper on international nursing and why the US has seen such an influx of nurses from other countries, (15% of all new grad last year in the US were trained in a foreign country). Other countries such as the Philippines don't even report income but their nurses only make about $3500 a year. Again, we can have universal health care, but where is the money going to come from? The biggest healthcare cost is salary.

Registered Nurse Salary Information for Nursing Jobs in Canada

Country Registered Nurse Net Monthly Income constant 2008 US$

U.S. average salary$ 3,368 U.S. Department of Labor, [t].

Australia average income$ 2,653 Normal hours from collective agreements. Australian Bureau of Statistics, [9], [t].

UK median salar$ 2,782. UK Employment Department,

France median salary$ 1,868 Full-time employees, Institut National de la Statistique et des Études Économiques, [36].

Norway average income$ 3,075 Statistics Norway, [9]. 28,754 kroners

Canada average income$ 2,216 Statistics Canada, [9], [t].

Austria average salary$ 1,684 Austrian Central Statistical Office (ÖSTAT), [9], [t].

Germany average salary$ 2,244 Minimum per month, normal hours of work. Federal Statistical Office of Germany, [9], [t].

Finland average salary$ 2,230 Normal hours of work, Women only - men make 2,583 per month. Statistics Finland, [9],

Taiwan average income$ 996 Full-time and part-time employees, National Statistics Republic of China, [9].

Specializes in Critical care, tele, Medical-Surgical.

Healthcare compensation in 2008 was highest for people working for corporations that provide no patient care at all.

Ron Williams - Aetna: Total Compensation: $24,300,112.oo

H. Edward Hanway - CIGNA: Total Compensation: $12,236,740.00

Angela Braly - WellPoint: Total Compensation: $9,844,212

Dale Wolf - Coventry Health Care: Compensation: $9,047,469

http://www.fiercehealthcare.com/special-reports/total-package-health-plan-ceo-compensations-2008

In 2009 Cigna compensated Edward Hanway with a retirement package worth $110.9 million -- which included $18.8 million in executive compensation for 2009, as well as a healthy pension plan, deferred compensation and stock options.

http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/701221/000104746910002486/a2197149zdef14a.htm

Specializes in cardiac, ICU, education.
Healthcare compensation in 2008 was highest for people working for corporations that provide no patient care at all.

Yes, I understand that, but CEO compensation is a different argument all together.

What I am saying is that universal health care countries usually have a lower RN compensation satisfaction measure against that of the US. I am totally in agreement with you on how much CEO's are overpaid in all corporate arenas, but apples to apples, US nurses also benefit from the for profit insurance reimbursement by increased wages.

The nurses who are so unhappy with the eeeeeeeeevil (find and hire a CEO and V-P's who will do the job for less money and see how that works out - maybe it will, and maybe it will not... YMMV, so to speak) hospital administration should join together and open their own (union-led, of course) hospital and run it the way they want their current employers to run their current place of employment. If they succeed, more power to them as a new model will have emerged as a true innovation. If not, they can go back to being led by a union.

Actually, back in Nursing school, a few of us incorrigible students came up with an idea for opening a hospital, but it had nothing to do with unions. Using the Roy Model (remember her?), our criteria for discharge would be the patient being able to tell a good joke... we called it "Adaptive in the Humor Mode". We would name the place, "St. Shecky's Memorial Hospital." :jester:

But seriously, folks, when enough employees demand more money from a source that eventually runs out of "more money", then something has to give; three guesses as to what will "give", and what the result will be. ;)

Specializes in Critical care, tele, Medical-Surgical.

Hospital administrators job is to run a hospital Their duty is to provide healthcare.

I was NOT posting about them.

Health insurance corporations duty is to shareholders.

No one working for them provides any healthcare at all. (Kaiser is the one exception)

How come hospitals are short staffed, patients get less care while nurses ar constantly interrupted?

Where do our health insurance premiums go?

They should go to paying for healthcare when and if we need it. Yet just one person got a $110 million retirement from an insurance corporation.

Nurses caring for patients are not the problem in our healthcare.

Nurses deserve to retire with dignity.

Specializes in cardiac/stroke/med surg/telemetry.

MSN 10

That nurse in Norway also gets 8 weeks PAID vacation every year, 6 months PAID maternity or paternity leave, FREE college education for life (NO STUDENT LOANS), FREE health care, and the highest standard of living in the world. So her $3000 net monthly salary would actually be about $10,000 monthly USD minimum.

Specializes in Psych.

Hmmm.. how hard would it be to learn Norwegian?

Specializes in cardiac, ICU, education.
That nurse in Norway also gets 8 weeks PAID vacation every year, 6 months PAID maternity or paternity leave, FREE college education for life (NO STUDENT LOANS), FREE health care, and the highest standard of living in the world. So her $3000 net monthly salary would actually be about $10,000 monthly USD minimum.

Yeah, except that in Norway they have a 28% flat tax (Oh how I wish this country had a flat tax) and a VAT tax of 25%. I am not sure about that "highest standard of living" but the income you calculated doesn't include the unreasonably high amount of rent they pay.

I can't put it up on this thread but my sister-in-law works as a corporate relocator for a major corp and they have a cost of living calculator. At the end of the day, US nurses make more per hour with all other factors considered. I think we can be proud of that fact and realize that based on the ICN, the United States is the most desirable place for international nurses to migrate to.

Also, Norway's HC system is not all that wonderful.

There are significant waiting times for many procedures. Many Norwegians go abroad for medical treatments. The average weight for a hip replacement is more than 4 months. "Approximately 23 percent of all patients referred for hospital admission have to wait longer than three months for admission." Also, care can be denied if it is not deemed to be cost-effective.

I am not saying nurses should not be compensated fairly, just when 10% of the workforce is out of work, many people have lost health care and there is a list of other economic issues, we need to be careful.

This rant is ridiculous. Exactly how many years has it been since you worked at the bedside? Since when is a 4:1 acute care ratio a cakewalk? I have to say NO, we don't all know this -- similar ratios are now legally mandated in CA -- so the entire state doesn't agree with you, and this is coming soon to a hospital near you via the NNU, whether you agree with it or not. I am seeing this as a HUGE national push that nearly all bedside nurses agree with. Regardless of whether or not a bedside nurse wants to buy into a union or agree with it's governance, the profession as a whole is dedicated to providing excellent care, and we are no longer able to do that without mandated patient ratios because of people like YOU. Acute care hospital patients are now the sickest of the sick. Floor patients are now the ICU patients of 30 years ago. Unfortunately, management strategies haven't changed to reflect this reality --- hence the union involvement.

I also really resent your statements about "real" nurses being able to handle a 10:1 ratio, and the partying/drinking on the picket lines. Excuse me? Do you have some sort of documentation to back that up? I'm sure if nurses were drinking on the picket lines it would have been all over the news -- I live in Minnesota, and would have gotten the local scoop either via the newspaper or the TV news. And yeah, sure, real nurses can take 10 patients -- but they can't provide even adequate care to 10 acute care patients. Get real. Get your butt out of the boardroom and follow a "real" nurse for a shift and find out what she/he really does these days.

Joint commission has data out there (I believe it was previously posted in this thread, so I'm not going to link it) that states that nearly 25% of reported serious errors were related to nurse staffing issues. How does that play into your ideology? Don't you, as an exec, participate in the survey process and report to them? If you think your 10:1 RNs can get all their required joint commission charting done on 10 patients so you can CYA and maintain your accreditation without missing/falsifying information AND actually take care of the patients, you are sorely mistaken.

I had believed and supported the fact that the MN nurses seemed to be striking for better staffing ratios...however in the end they did settle for just more money....so tell me who really won? No one really...Nothing good happens or results when a strike is decided in my view. I am glad they settled...and honestly think they should have stopped when the one day thing was over.

Hmmm.. how hard would it be to learn Norwegian?

Not long for sure....I bet chayah you could do it in "two shakes of a lamb's tail"!

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