BEMIDJI, Minn. (AP) — Nurses at Sanford Bemidji hospital vote Thursday on whether to accept a contract offer or reject it and authorize a strike.
Leaders of the Minnesota Nurses Association bargaining committee are recommending nurses reject the offer.
Peter Danielson, a member of the union bargaining team, says issues include safe staffing levels and management's proposed concessions from nurses on health-care and pension plans.
Sanford Bemidji Chief Operations Officer Joy Johnson says Sanford has presented "a fair plan based on current economic realities."
The MNA represents more than 230 nurses at Sanford Bemidji. The two sides have been negotiating since April. The current contract expired on Feb. 28.
Sanford Health recently bought the Bemidji hospital, previously known as North Country Regional Hospital.
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Online:
http://www.mnnurses.org/Bemidji
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press.
Comments (6)
Add commentSo....
Isn't anyone going to jump in and start bashing nurses, unions, and the medical field in general?
I mean, this is an article about contract negotiations and that may include discussion of salary increases...ie, how dare they ask for a raise when so many have taken pay cuts.
Or do we reserve the hatred for teachers and schools only?
same thing
Anybody interested can look at the proposal, make up their mind on who is being unreasonable and choose if they are going to give Sanford Health any money ever again.
There might be a slight difference in people's perceptions when comparing a union bargaining with a private company over revenue sharing and a union bargaining with elected officials over tax dollars.
Maybe.
Except you can't really
Except you can't really "will" yourself to never get sick, never have an accident, never grow old and never need health care.
It's not always feasible for patients to travel several hours to find a clinic/hospital that provides the services they need, who happens to accept their type of health insurance.
And really, do you examine the human resources files and business prospectus of every clinic/hospital you visit before you decide to be treated there? Maybe the hospital you travel hours to get to (out of spite) settled it's contracts with an even higher salary increase for staff than the one you are boycotting.
Imagine this...you are driving near Bemidji and you get in a car accident. You are severly injured. The ambulance comes, picks you up and says you need to be transported to the hospital right away. Do you really tell them you won't go to any Sanford Health facility because you don't like their contract settlement? LOL!
So let's equate taxes to health insurance premiums for just a moment. You do realize that what you pay for health insurance is directly related to what it costs the insurance companies to cover the cost of care. And they don't set YOUR premium based only upon the one or two facilities you use. Your BCBS premium that you pay to use Essentia Health in Brainerd is partly determined by how much BCBS has to pay for other people to attend Sanford Health in Bemidji, the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Essentia in Brainerd, and Abbot in Mpls. So your premium dollars go into the pool with everyone else's to pay for care for everyone. If you don't go to the doctor all year, you don't get your premiums back, do you? Right. So, in that way, premiums are like taxes. You have to pay in and your money may or may not go to directly benefit you...you might be paying for things for others.
So if you don't like Sanford's settlement, are you prepared to give up all medical care at any facility and all coverage by any health insurance carrier for the rest of your life?
FWIW-I believe nurses earn every cent they make and I would applaud them if they get an increase, so I am not anti contract negotiations. I just wondered why people love to jump in and call teachers "greedy", but not a word about nurses negotiating contracts.
cool story bro
That doesn't change anything I posted.
Maybe people view different unions differently.
If someone is interested in the negotiations they are more than welcome to make up their own minds and choose a different health care provider. Many people in this area aren't overly pleased with Essentia, so they choose Lakewood or CRMC when they choose to purchase health services.
Frankly, I am not interested in the least. I was just pointing out a possible answer to your question.
It was defeated
Patient load seems to be an issue there. Nurses earn every penny and benefit and deserve our respect.
John and Lake
1. I agree that many people view different unions differently. My point was WHY? Unions are unions. They are all out to protect their members and get them fair compensation and fair working conditions. The teacher's union is no different from the nurse's union in this respect.
2. Substitute the word "teacher" for the word "nurse" and "class size" for the words "patient load" in your statement and see how that tastes. "Class size seems to be an issue there. Teachers earn every penny and benefit and deserve our respect."
Both statements are true, are they not? Would YOU want to be responsible for molding young minds into tomorrow's future leaders 30 at a time? In the way that a teacher is more effective with fewer children in a room (or better behaved children), a nurse is more effective with fewer patients (or less needy ones). How much care do you think you would get if you were on a floor with 1 nurse and 15 patients and there were 2 of them that were very demanding of the nurse's attention? How about if she had 30 patients on that floor and 5 of them were very demanding? You'd get about the same amount of attention as a complacent student in a class of 30 with 5 special education kids mainstreamed in. You'd get the minimum sure, and the aids could handle some basic functions, but you sure wouldn't get everything you needed, when you needed it.
You couldn't pay me enough to do what teachers OR nurses do now a days. They are all professionals who work hard for what they get under less than wonderful conditions.
And no, I'm not a teacher or a nurse.