On Monday September 12, 15,000 nurses across 15 hospitals in Minnesota walked off the job. The nation’s largest nursing strike to date captured the attention of nurses all across the country and beyond. The thousands who took part posted on their social feeds right from the picket line, and thousands more watched to see collective bargaining in action. The loudest demand—scrolled across vibrant red signs—was for Minnesota hospitals to prioritize “patients before profits.” 

More specifically, Minnesota nurses were asking for safer staffing ratios, safer workplaces, and an increase in salary and benefits.  The planned three-day strike ended Thursday September 15, and no formative agreements have come from it as of yet. But the message—nurses are done “managing with less” and have realized their strength in numbers—has sent a ripple effect through other nursing communities, prompting strengthened unionizations and more strikes seen nationwide in the weeks since.

What Minnesota nurses were asking for

Led by the Minnesota Nurses Association (MNA), a 22,000 member labor organization that serves nurses in Minnesota and the surrounding Midwest, the strike in mid-September was a culmination of nursing frustrations that have been building since the pandemic and beyond. Nursing staff turnover and a doubling in nursing vacancies from 2019 to 2021 (5,587 nursing jobs, a whopping 8%, remain unfilled) have left a wake of extreme burnout in the staff who continue to show up at the bedside. 

The lousy attrition rate is often explained away by healthcare organizations as stemming from a broader nursing shortage. But nurses working at the bedside beg to differ; insufferable working conditions are causing nurses to leave and seek employment outside the hospital setting. In fact, a recent survey completed by the MNA showed that more than two-thirds of nurses responding were looking to quit. 

The Minnesota nursing strike was a direct result of hospitals continually adding more to the nursing workload, while at the same time neglecting to provide the resources nurses need to get their jobs done. Nursing in the best of conditions is a grueling profession; when nurses are asked to perform more duties with less resources, something has to give. This time, it was their presence, if only for three days.

During the strike, “scab nurses” were brought in to cover their workload, earning up to $8,000 for one week of contract work. While the healthcare organizations maintained that patient care and safety were upheld during the strike, nurses on the picket lines estimated that it was a skeleton crew replacing them at best. Many reports have since come out from the returning nurses noting major discrepancies in care.

The ripple effect of the historic Minnesota nursing strike

At this time, contract negotiations remain ongoing for MNA nurses. Several sessions were canceled by hospital executives, who cited (ironically) the inability of bargaining nurses to break away from their bedside duties. Despite their efforts being stalled for the moment, the impact of the Minnesota nursing strike has inspired great movement nationwide.

The issues that MNA nurses were striking over are the same concerns shared by nurses across the country. So far in 2022, healthcare workers have organized more than 14 strikes. Again, unsafe working environments due to inadequate staffing has been the dominant drive for these walk-outs. 

A few recent collective bargaining waves have bolstered the morale of unionized nurses. Following a declared intention to strike in August, by the end of September a union representing 6,200 University of Michigan nurses successfully renegotiated a contract ensuring a 22.5% wage increase over the next 4 years, an elimination of mandatory OT, and bringing NP practice up to the level of PAs. 

Nurses at St. Mary’s Medical Center in Reno had an initial 24 hour strike in June 2022 followed by stalled negotiations. When they threatened to go on strike again in August 2022, negotiations were reopened; the result was a new three-year contract promising improvements to patient safety and nurse retention. Overseas, The Royal College of Nursing—a union of 300,000 nurses—is considering striking over unmet wage increase demands. The significance of this is huge: the first time a strike has been planned since the union’s inception 106 years ago. 

The power of union

Nurses do not take leaving their patients to go on strike lightly. This is one of the major moral concerns nurses have when considering union membership. But we’ve come to a point in nursing where nurses feel broken and unsupported. No longer relying on the healthcare organizations that employ them to also have their backs when it comes to safe working environments, nurses are discovering the strength they’ve possessed all along: each other.