DULUTH, Minn.-- After nearly 30 straight hours at the bargaining table it appears a scheduled strike by nurses at Essentia Health, formerly known as SMDC Medical Center in Duluth, has been averted.
Union negotiators for those nurses reached a tentative agreement with management, thereby averting a one-day strike that was scheduled for Sept. 14th.
Minnesota Nurses Association spokesman John Nemo tells KARE 11 the big sticking point was language involving safe staffing levels. The agreement also provides a 1 percent pay hike in the contract's first year, .8 percent the second year, and 2 percent the third. It also provides a boost to education and life insurance funding.
Nurses at Duluth's St. Luke's Hospital, who reached a tentative agreement with that hospital last week, are voting on 'their' proposed contract today, and are expected to overwhelming ratify their new contract, making it official.
Hospital administrators, patients and their families were bracing for a walkout that would have seen nearly one thousand nurses walk off the job for 24 hours beginning on Sept. 14th.
(Copyright 2010 by KARE. All Rights Reserved.)
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