Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Even the nurses have had it!




I was aware that the nurses at North Country Hospital here in Bemidji have been on the verge of striking for awhile. This, to me, is big news because these are REALLY NICE people. Things would have to be extremely bad for them to take such drastic action. So, apparently what went on today from 3-4 p.m. in front of the hospital was an "informational picketing," according to a MNA (Minnesota Nurses' Association) member from Thief River Falls who showed up in support. There are a few more steps before an actual strike, but stay tuned -- it's quite possible.

When I came at 3:00, only about 20 nurses in red MNA t-shirts congregated around a tin table covered with bottled water and surrounded by picket sign materials and boxes of more t-shirts. No media. No civilians. Nothing. By the time I left, almost an hour later, I'd estimate the crowd at 60+. I recognized nobody except a retired BSU employee, whose wife is a nurse, and Bob Treuer, an octogenarian former labor activist and very smart man whose personal history includes having fled Austria from the Nazis as a young boy. Bob marched for quite awhile at the head of the group with a picket sign. His reason for supporting the nurses? "We can't afford not to!" I saw no BSU professors or staff, no business people, no prominent members of the community. Native Americans were well represented and what looked like family members of nurses -- spouses, a few kids.

One lean, tough 60-ish guy standing apart from the picket line held up a sign saying "Senior citizens support the MNA" and another reading "MNA deserve decent benefits." From the information on the MNA Web site, the issues seem to be cuts in pension and health care benefits and patient load. How ironic can you get? It's bizarre beyond words. But the hospital and clinic have recently been bought out by Sanford Health, a gigantic corporation based in South Dakota, one of the most worker-unfriendly states in America.

I learned from a former Bemidji resident who works as a nurse in the Twin Cities that a number of horror stories are on record with the MNA, and they are in the process of getting permission from the patients involved to make some of them public. This source said she has read some and they are truly disturbing. Keep posted for that. I'll pass them on as soon as I can.

What saddened me (but didn't surprise me) was the total lack of support from prominent members of the community, from my faculty union, the BSUFA (which held it's monthly meeting at exactly the same time as this picket -- go figure), from patients and former patients and from other hospital employees. My husband and I walked through the hospital, and he asked two volunteers in the gift shop why they thought nobody was out there, and they just looked at him blankly. How can people not support NURSES, for God's sake??

I figured this would be the most exciting thing to happen in this town since Sarah Palin's husband visited during the presidential campaign in 2008. Somebody actually defying authority besides criminals. Hurray! But overall, it was a bit of a letdown, I must admit. Only one lone reporter from the local public TV station showed up. Lakeland Public TV has a nightly newscast that tries, but has almost no resources. Nobody from the Pioneer, nobody from public radio or any radio station, for that matter. But it's not over. This is just the start. I plan to follow this one.






A PRE-STRIKE ACTUALLY TAKES PLACE IN BEMIDJI!!!