DEER RIVER — Essentia Health-Deer River service workers’ strike entered its 30th day Tuesday, Jan. 7.
There has been little activity on a deal in the last month. The health care organization and members of Service Employees International Union haven’t met since Dec. 4.
The health care organization and the union began negotiating a new contract in August. The union represents roughly 70 workers from a variety of positions at the hospital and nursing home, including environmental services technicians, nursing assistants and maintenance engineers.
Kayla Schwankl, SEIU organizer and the unit’s lead bargainer, said at that meeting, Essentia provided a proposal it had presented three times prior that the union did not support. She also said Essentia’s lawyer was demeaning toward them.
“Told us that we were wasting Essentia’s money, that we were disrupting labor, that we were causing a lot of harm to Essentia,” she said. “Basically kind of scolding us for standing up for what is right, for doing the strike.”
The union countered Dec. 5 and has yet to receive another offer from Essentia. The two sides have only exchanged a few letters since. Schwankl said Essentia has been misrepresenting the union as the reason talks have stalled.
“Instead of telling us, ‘Oh hey, our administrator’s on vacation, we’ll schedule this time,’ they just kept basically – I'm going to say it – lying to everybody and saying it was SEIU’s fault that we weren’t meeting,” she said. “Which is not the case.”
The union’s largest sticking points are wages and a cross-facility cooperation agreement.
Essentia says the agreement would give the employees the opportunity to work at other locations and allow workers from other facilities to work in Deer River if patient needs demand. But the union says it would mean workers from other facilities would come to Deer River and get paid more than local employees for doing the exact same work.
Union members say they are the lowest-paid Essentia facility in the state and want a new deal to bring them up to market rate.
Essentia has proposed an overall wage increase of 9% over three years, though the union contends the increases are not even across the scale and would actually result in some workers taking a pay cut.
The health care organization said its offer is consistent with increases ratified by other units and the union’s proposed 18% wage increase is unrealistic given the state of rural health care.
Schwankl pointed to the Deer River nurses’ union contract that was ratified last year, which included a 17% increase over three years plus additional steps on the wage scale, something that the union has also been denied.
SEIU held an official vote on Essentia’s last, best and final offer Tuesday, which it said Essentia demanded despite unofficial surveys showing members would not approve it. Ninety-two percent of members shot down the deal.
Schwankl said those results will be shared in a formal letter to Essentia.
“'Hey, our members have rejected this, here's our dates, we want to meet. We want to get this settled,’” she said. “I mean, we want to get a deal made, but we’re not just going to do it on Essentia’s terms.”
In a statement shared Tuesday evening, Essentia said it is disappointed in the outcome of the vote given other union groups have ratified similar agreements.
"We remain committed to achieving a contract that recognizes the important contributions of these valued colleagues while also ensuring continued access to high-quality health care for our patients in Deer River and the surrounding communities,” the statement reads.
