Twin Cities nurses overwhelmingly authorized their union to launch an open-ended strike if it can’t reach a contract agreement with metro hospitals.
The Minnesota Nurses Association (MNA) said late Monday night that 84 percent of its members voted to empower the union to call an indefinite walkout.
“This is a vote we never wanted to take,” Linda Hamilton, a registered nurse at Children’s Hospital and MNA president, said in a statement. “The hospitals forced us to this point by adamantly refusing to address even a single proposal related to patient safety over the past three months of negotiations. But Minnesota nurses will do whatever it takes to protect our patients. We have been and will continue to be united for our patients and safe staffing levels.”
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While the vote doesn’t mean the union will automatically strike, the move raises the stakes in the months-old contract struggle with Minnesota hospitals. Unlike the 24-hour strike the MNA staged earlier this month, an open-ended strike could severely disrupt hospitals across the region, forcing patients to seek care elsewhere and hospitals to spend millions of dollars hiring replacement nurses.
A strike carries risk for the union too, which has made patient safety the central plank in its bargaining platform. By law, the MNA must give hospitals a 10-day notice before a strike.
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