They were thousands to join the pickets on Monday. In Minnesota, private-sector nurses have launched the largest nurses’ strike in US history.
On the front line during the Covid-19 crisis, striking workers denounce the lack of staff and an overload of work, exacerbated by the pandemic. They are also demanding wage increases in a context of high inflation which has greatly reduced the real wages of workers.
According to Washington Post, “Minnesota nurses denounce, for example, that certain units operate without a nurse manager, and that nurses fresh out of school are assigned to tasks normally performed by experienced nurses”.
The strike comes following months of fruitless negotiations, with the nurses seeking new job openings and 30% wage increases over the next three years. Hospitals have responded with increases of around 10% over three years and say they cannot afford to go any further.
Strike lines are rocking across the state ! #patientsbeforeprofits #striketember pic.twitter.com/vg0BUzCExR
— Minnesota Nurses (@mnnurses) September 12, 2022
Nurses, and healthcare workers more generally, have come through the pandemic often without adequate protection, in grueling working conditions… And without any reward, either during or following.
On the contrary, the situation has worsened: a significant proportion of them are leaving the profession, considered to be poorly paid and risky for physical and mental health. [il y a 37 000 travailleurs de la santé de moins aujourd’hui qu’en février 2020]. A situation that has further overloaded “those who remain”, without this being recognized by the management of hospitals or health conglomerates.
As a result, the quality of care and patient safety is threatened. This is precisely one of the central themes of the campaign of the Nurses Association of Minnesota, seeking to connect with the population suffering from high costs and degraded care, while challenging hospital management. Indeed, such working conditions generate exhaustion among workers, but also mistreatment among patients.
A recent report from the Minnesota Department of Health shows that adverse health events increased by 33% between 2020 and 2021, while a recent survey from the’Illinois Economic Policy Institute showed that just over half of nurses plan to leave the profession within the next year.
In the United States, private health care companies make billions of dollars thanks to the commodification of the sector with the agreement of the various governments, both Democratic and Republican. At the same time that they despise and exhaust the workers, the bills they make users pay become unpayable, to the point that during the pandemic many have preferred not to seek treatment to avoid going into debt for years. .
It is for this reason that nurses in Minnesota have denounced the seven-figure salaries of hospital executives; proof that healthcare organizations can afford to increase the salaries of their employees.
The Minnesota nurses’ strike comes in a context of increased mobilization around the issue of wages in different countries. In the United States, they have taken place in different sectors such as education, services or logistics, and are also accompanied by a major wave of unionization, mainly among young people in precarious jobs.