Normally, I don’t read too much into strike authorization votes. Having been a union member myself, the vote is almost a required ritual in hard labor negotiations, a tactic designed to maximize pressure on the company.
With that said, there’s nothing to indicate the Minnesota Nurses Association’s threat to go nuclear — an open-ended strike — is a bluff. The union Friday filed the legally required 10-day notice to strike, a mere four days after nurses voted overwhelmingly to approve one. On July 6, nurses will walk — again.
And this after agreeing to returning to the bargaining table with the help of a federal mediator. Apparently, the nurses are getting a little impatient with the hospitals.
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“Our nurses spent more than 13 hours today doing our best to stay hopeful about negotiations,” the MNA said in a statement. “Unfortunately, zero progress was made. Despite today’s setback, our nurses offered to return to the bargaining table again on Friday, Saturday, Sunday and every other day until a contract agreement can be reached. Instead, the Twin Cities Hospitals responded that the earliest they could meet would be sometime next week.”
“It has become beyond obvious to our nurses that the Twin Cities Hospitals, despite what they continue to say publicly, have no interest in meaningful or good faith negotiations. MNA had agreed not to file a 10-day strike notice if meaningful, productive negotiations were taking place”
Let’s be clear. A strike would be disastrous for all involved, the near equivalent of mutually assured destruction. But I’m going to make a bold prediction:
The nurses will not get what they want.
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I say that because unlike wages and benefits, the MNA has staked this strike on winning mandatory nurse-to-patient ratios. With the arrival of the newly passed healthcare reform law, hospitals can’t afford to lock themselves into set work rules. So as much as a strike would hurt the hospitals financially in the short-term, ratios will hurt them far more in the unpredictable future.
Perhaps it would make more sense to strike over patient ratios in a good economy, but that’s not the case today. Yes, the California nurses won such legislation in 1998. But that was 12 years ago and a lot has changed. Hospitals today face dwindling volumes of paying patients, shrinking profit margins, reduced state aid and lower Medicare payments.
According to a recent report by healthcare analyst Allan Baumgarten, Allina, Fairview and HealthEast generated total net income of $173 million in 2008, a 31 percent jump from the previous year. But throw in Methodist and North Memorial, both of which have suffered heavy operating losses, and Twin Cities hospitals have lost $3.9 million in the same period compared to a net income of $275 million.
My point is that nurses aren’t striking against just one hospital chain, the same way a union would strike against a Boeing or a General Motors. Twin Cities hospitals all vary in terms of financial strength and performance. So what incentive would the hospitals see in codifying ratios in a contract when they face vastly different financial challenges?
The nurses also won’t get the ratios because workplace rules are always a complex issue. The nurses can argue ratios guarantee patient safety, but those issues get harder to link as time passes and the public loses interest in the subject. Trust me, anything with the word “ratios” is bound to bore people whereas everyone can relate to paychecks and pensions.
Getting into a strike is easy. Getting out of one is lot harder because strikes are almost always about saving face for both parties. Neither the union nor the hospitals can really declare total victory. They certainly won’t declare total defeat.
The two sides can always work out something on wages and benefits. But ratios is a different story. Anything less would be a failure for the union, which, for better or worse, has hitched its wagon to this horse.
