Duluth nurses set strike date against St. Mary’s Medical Center

As nurses at St. Luke’s Hospital in Duluth, Minnesota prepare to vote on a tentative contract agreement next week, their counterparts at St. Mary’s Medical Center are also knee deep in preparations- for a one day strike.

The Minnesota Nurses Association, which represents the 1,000 nurses at St. Mary’s, filed an official 10 day strike notice, which means the nurses will walk September 14 if there is no deal.

The union said it will resume bargaining with the hospital September 8 under federal mediation.

“Nobody wants a strike, and we hope it doesn’t come to that,” union negotiator Steve Strand said in a statement. “We still have time to talk and work out a contract. The executives know what their nurses need for this contract agreement to be reached.”

Strand says the two sides continue to argue about nursing staffing levels.

Earlier this week, the MNA and St. Luke’s managed to work out language concerning the temporary closing of a unit because of staffing shortage.

The union wants to close a hospital unit “for a period of time.” St. Luke’s preferred to say unit traffic is “redirected or temporarily delayed.”

The hospital also had offered a 3-percent pay raise over three years, and to boost its subsidy of monthly health insurance premiums to 85 percent from 70 percent for dependent coverage.