"Emily," a nurse who flew to Minnesota from Missouri this week, had steeled herself to cross a picket line. She even missed her daughter's birthday for the opportunity to earn $1,600 for one day's work as a replacement nurse.
Instead, she never saw the inside of a Twin Cities hospital.
Emily was one of what appears to be a small number of replacement nurses who were told hours before they were due to start work that their Minnesota licenses had not been processed in time by the staffing agency -- and were not happy about it.
"I just want to know who's going to pay me," said Emily, wearing scrubs and waiting in the lobby of a Bloomington hotel.
She was one of about a half-dozen nurses milling around glumly late Thursday afternoon at the hotel, which served as a processing center for the replacements. Another nurse lay on a bench, resting her head on her bag.
Emily, who asked that her real name not be used, said she had been told that her license wasn't approved yet, but the staffing agency, Healthsource Global of California, told her to fly in anyway. So she left a birthday present for her sleeping daughter and got on the plane.
Since she arrived, she said, she's been helping to process other nurses, trying to make herself useful. "It's been very disorganized," she said.
A man who identified himself only as an employee of the staffing agency said: "At every strike, there are always nurses that don't get to work" for "all sorts of reasons." He said that he couldn't say how many didn't get to work during Thursday's strike and that no one else was available to comment because they were heading into a shift change.
A few minutes later, someone came out to tell Emily that she would be paid. But because she hadn't worked, it would be $1,000, not the $1,600 she was promised.
CHEN MAY YEE
