Minnesota
Minnesota nurses vote in favor of strike
DULUTH — Nurses within the Minnesota Nurses Affiliation, together with these within the Twin Ports, have voted to authorize a strike, the MNA introduced late Monday evening.
The 15,000 MNA members within the Twin Ports and Twin Cities voted “overwhelmingly” in favor of the strike, in keeping with the information launch from MNA. The vote was taken amongst nurses at 15 hospitals below seven hospital techniques. Nurse negotiation leaders at the moment are licensed to name a strike following a 10-day discover to hospital employers.
Chris Rubesch, first vp of MNA and a registered nurse at Essentia Well being, stated he could not launch particular vote tallies, nevertheless it was very clear nurses have been in favor of the strike.
“I can’t use sufficient descriptor phrases to emphasise how overwhelming each turnout and the vote was,” Rubesch stated. “I imply, this was not even shut.”
The strike can be the primary time Twin Cities and Twin Ports nurses took such an motion collectively in contract negotiations. Rubesch stated the 15 hospitals concerned within the vote are in discussions for when a strike may occur and what the strike would entail. He stated if the discover for a strike is given, all taking part MNA our bodies would strike on the identical time. Hospitals affected by the strike can be introduced on the time the 10-day discover is given.
In statements, Essentia Well being and St. Luke’s stated they’re creating contingency plans in anticipation of MNA-member nurses happening strike to make sure there’ll nonetheless be affected person care accessible.
“We’re disillusioned by the vote as a result of we imagine nobody wins in a strike — and we’ve a shared accountability to supply high quality care to the sufferers and communities we’re privileged to serve,” Essentia stated within the assertion. “Please be aware, nevertheless, that this vote doesn’t imply a strike is imminent.”
Nurses have been in contract negotiations throughout the state since March, and have been working with out contracts since July 1. The nurses just lately took a vote of no confidence in a number of Minnesota hospital executives, together with St. Luke’s co-CEOs Eric Lohn and Nick Van Deelen.
MNA members have spoken out a number of occasions about their frustrations with administration, together with unsafe staffing ranges and low retention charges. Nurses picketed in June to assist elevate consciousness for the struggles they hope administration will tackle of their new contracts.
In a current assertion, Lohn and Van Deelen stated St. Luke’s has supplied a ten.25% elevate for nurses over three years in its most up-to-date negotiating session, whereas MNA is asking for a 36.5% enhance over that point.
“We look ahead to our subsequent MNA negotiating session this Thursday, and we stay dedicated to bargaining in good religion to achieve a good and affordable contract,” St. Luke’s stated in an announcement Tuesday. “We’re proud to acknowledge the essential contributions of our nurses and all staff by providing aggressive compensation packages and distinctive advantages, whereas additionally striving to maintain healthcare reasonably priced for our neighborhood. … We are going to once more ask MNA to conform to inviting a mediator to affix us on the desk. Mediators are skilled professionals who can help in efficiently negotiating contracts when the 2 sides are far aside.”
At a information convention Tuesday morning, Rubesch stated staffing is the primary problem statewide that has led nurses to take motion, and he stated St. Luke’s is deflecting from that problem by speaking solely about wages.
Larissa Hubbart, co-chair for St. Luke’s MNA and a registered nurse at St. Luke’s, stated executives in negotiation conferences have not engaged in MNA’s makes an attempt to speak about growing staffing or giving nurses decision-making energy of their new contracts.
Emily Kniskern, who’s a nurse in St. Luke’s pediatric and labor and supply items, stated quick staffing has triggered her to name 5 pregnant ladies this month to inform them they do not have sufficient workers to induce their labor, even when the induction was scheduled for a medical security cause.
“We deserve care that we are able to depend on,” Kniskern stated. “Once we respect nurses, once we rent sufficient nurses, once we make the hospital a spot the place nurses wish to work, we are able to present one of the best care on the earth. However we want nurses on the bedside, and that’s the reason we voted ‘sure.’”
Lake View Hospital to carry picket
Nurses at St. Luke’s Two Harbors Lake View Hospital can be holding an informational picket Friday to attract consideration to low staffing ranges, nurse Jerri Swardstrom introduced throughout the MNA information convention Tuesday. The picket can be held from midday to six p.m. Friday with the intention of getting Lake View administration acknowledge and discover options for the staffing issues nurses have raised to them.
Swardstrom stated acute inpatient stays have elevated 65% from 2018 to 2021. In that point, outpatient companies have elevated 87% and emergency room and pressing care visits elevated 28%. Infusion remedy companies have been additionally added.
“There was minimal RN recruitment to assist bridge the calls for in nursing to assist this type of institutional function,” Swardstrom stated. “By the tip of this yr, we mission an annual deficit of greater than 5,000 hours needing to be crammed, which equates to a 15% enhance in our present workers.”
This story was up to date at 8:05 a.m. Aug. 16 to replicate the newest supply from St. Luke’s to MNA and once more at 11:20 a.m. Aug. 16 so as to add feedback from nurses, St. Luke’s and Essentia. It was initially posted at 11:56 p.m. Aug. 15.
Minnesota
After months stuck in Brazil, Minnesota family arrives home with newborn
Lori Tocholke waited nervously near baggage claim carousel 11 Tuesday afternoon at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, her heart “beating a thousand miles per hour.”
On March 12, Tocholke’s newest grandchild, Greyson Leo Phillips, was born, 2 pounds 2.6 ounces and 12 weeks ahead of schedule.
The premature birth was traumatic enough for Tocholke’s daughter, Cheri Phillips. Worse was the fact that Greyson was born while Phillips and her husband, Chris, were vacationing in Brazil.
Because of a technicality, Brazilian authorities refused to issue his birth certificate. Without a birth certificate, Greyson couldn’t get a U.S. passport. And without a U.S. passport, Greyson couldn’t go home to Minnesota.
The family’s travails caused a storm in Brazilian media, held up as an example of how the country’s bureaucracy can tie up daily life for no good reason.
At the airport Tuesday, a half-dozen news cameras encircled the entry to baggage claim.
All Tocholke wanted?
To hold her newest grandchild for the first time, 105 heart-wrenching days after he was born. Tocholke told the other waiting family members she had first dibs.
The plane landed at 1:48 p.m., seven minutes early. Tocholke bided her time as Chris, Cheri and Greyson gathered their things from the plane and made their way from gate G19 to baggage claim.
Suddenly, a stroller burst through the doors, then Cheri, then Chris: a happy, exhausted family, finally home. Applause erupted. Tocholke hugged her daughter, then she got down to the business at hand: That sweet baby boy.
Greyson’s silver-blue eyes peered up at his grandma as she scooped him out of the stroller and cooed. He cried a few times. “Oh, I know!” his grandma soothed. She snuggled him and jiggled him, and he quieted. She held him like a football, then passed him to another family member, who passed him to another, then another.
“Everybody’s here, everybody’s safe, my heart is full,” Tocholke said.
A few feet away, tears and sweat streamed down Chris Phillips’ face and chest, exhausted after three days of travel and months of uncertainty. The family had gone to Brazil to visit Chris’ 8-year-old daughter, who lives with her mom in the Brazilian coastal city of Florianópolis.
“It was an ordeal, and not something we ever expected,” he said. “We went down for 17 days, just to visit my daughter on her birthday. Along this entire process, it seems like every time we made one step forward, it was three steps back.”
During their sojourn in Brazil, the family did interviews with a slew of Brazilian media outlets, focusing on the gaps in Brazilian bureaucracy. Their story resonated. Three days after Minnesota media first published the family’s story, two representatives from the Brazilian cartorio, like a public notary, came to their AirBnb with Greyson’s birth certificate.
“We love Brazil; this wasn’t us hating Brazil,” Chris said. “I go there three times a year. My daughter is half Brazilian. Now my son’s been born in Brazil. I feel part Brazilian. It’s a wonderful place. But what do I hope changes? I hope Brazilian bureaucracy is behind us, but for hundreds of millions of Brazilians, it’s not.”
Before they left the airport for the hour drive to Cambridge — to the new home they closed on remotely from Brazil — Cheri pulled out a bottle and fed Greyson.
“He’s been alive for three and a half months and never been home,” Cheri said.
“We’re home, bud,” Chris said, patting his head. “We’re home.”
Minnesota
Minnesota companies fund election deniers despite vowing not to • Minnesota Reformer
In the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, many leading Minnesota businesses announced they were pausing their political donations to review their giving strategy.
Some went further, vowing not to bankroll political candidates who supported Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election.
But today, three and a half years later, nearly all of them have resumed giving money to politicians engaging in election denial, according to an analysis by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a nonprofit that investigates government corruption.
Among them were some of Minnesota’s blue-chip mega corporations: UnitedHealth, Target, Best, Buy, 3M, U.S. Bancorp, Ameriprise and Ecolab, which all promised not to donate to members of what CREW calls the “sedition caucus.”
But as of today, they’ve given hundreds of thousands of dollars to politicians who voted against certifying the 2020 election, opposed the establishment of the Jan. 6 committee, or otherwise supported Trump’s attempt to undo the 2020 results.
A number of other Minnesota companies, including CHS, C.H. Robinson, Thrivent and Polaris, never promised to suspend donations and have continued giving money to candidates who sought to undermine the rightful, peaceful transfer of power after the 2020 election.
One of those companies, Moorhead-based American Crystal Sugar, has for years been one of the biggest financial supporters of the sedition caucus. According to CREW’s analysis, they’ve given over $1 million since 2021, the third highest amount in the nation. Among other things, they’re focused on maintaining the federal program that keeps sugar prices high and undergirds their profitability.
Only one current Minnesota lawmaker voted against certifying the 2020 election results: Rep. Michelle Fischbach of the 7th District, who falsely told Fox News shortly after the 2020 election that vote tabulators were “finding votes” when in fact they were counting them.
In a sign of the state Republican Party’s post-Jan. 6 radicalization, she was unable to obtain the party’s endorsement this year and is now facing a primary challenge from a Christian nationalist who says his goal is to “harness God’s power to lead ordinary Americans and their legislators in Washington back towards the Lord.”
CREW said the companies should mind the value of a stable democracy.
“Corporations depend on the stability and laws of a strong democracy in order to do business,” CREW writes. “Taking a stand against lawlessness aligns with the long-term interests of companies benefiting from government protection of intellectual property, contract enforcement and support for American business interests at home and abroad.”
According to their analysis, just one Minnesota company has so far upheld a promise to not give money to election deniers: Golden Valley-based Cheerio maker, General Mills.
Minnesota
Minnesota Dam Is in 'Imminent Failure Condition'
An aging dam in Minnesota is in “imminent failure condition” after flooding on the Blue Earth River, officials say. The Blue Earth County Sheriff’s Office said Monday that there had been a breach on the west side of the Rapidan Dam near Mankato, but the main part of the 114-year-old dam is “still intact and there are no current plans for a mass evacuation,” CBS News reports. Water surged around the dam after debris accumulated early Monday, washing away the western bank and several buildings including an electrical substation, reports the Mankato Free Press.
“The dam could fail,” Eric Weller, Blue Earth County emergency management director, said Monday, per the Star Tribune. He said people who would be in danger from a collapse have been warned and many have been evacuated. Officials in North Mankato say a flood emergency has been declared and an earthen levee is being built “out of an abundance of caution.” Officials say that if the entire dam fails, the river will surge around 2 feet, enough for existing flood-control systems to handle. (A rail bridge linking Iowa and South Dakota collapsed Sunday night.)
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