Duluth nurses plan one-day, informational picket over pay, staffing levels

WDULUTH — Twin Ports nurses announced they will picket this month amid contract negotiations with the area's two biggest health systems.

More than 100 nurses for Essentia Health and St. Luke's, clad in matching red face masks and Minnesota Nursing Association (MNA) shirts, gathered in downtown Duluth Thursday to announce a June 21 informational picket.

Staff shortages, pandemic burnout and the safety of patients and workers were cited as reasons that nurses are leaving the field in droves and why better working conditions are being sought.

"It's just been chaos since the pandemic," said Shawna Johnson, a nurse on an orthopedics and urology floor for Essentia Health's St. Mary's Medical Center. "We work with extreme numbers of patients per staff ... and our ability to provide the correct amount of care is being stretched thin."

Contracts for about 2,500 nurses for St. Luke's and Essentia expire June 30. They seek "fair compensation for sacrifices made during the pandemic and for the rising cost of living," said Chris Rubesch, an MNA leader and Essentia nurse.

He said the number of registered nursing licenses in the state has grown by 14,000 in the last three years, but a recent state report showed an increase in nurses choosing other work.

"We are not in a nursing shortage; we are in a shortage of nurses willing to work in these conditions," Rubesch said.

St. Luke's said it was "disappointed that in the midst of good faith negotiations, the Minnesota Nurses Association has chosen to take this approach."

Its statement said that while it works on an equitable agreement with nurses, "we will be educating the communities we serve on the value we place in and the support we provide to our patients, staff and communities."

The union's contract proposals include stronger recruitment and retention pieces, such as incentives and loan repayment programs for nurses.

Understaffing was an issue long before the pandemic, nurses said, and since the onset of COVID-19, patients arrive who are sicker and often with multiple health problems that require more care. Dangerous patients are another growing issue that takes time to handle, said St. Mary's nurse Sherrie Beyer. She shared a story of three nurses and three security guards who recently spent an hour with a drug-addicted patient who wouldn't surrender his narcotics and insinuated he had a gun.

Burnout is intense, nurses said, especially after months dealing with the risk of exposure and scarce protective equipment. It's led to departures for better-paying travel nurse roles, early retirements or some opting out of nursing entirely.