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A Newsweek article from 2023 touted my employer, HealthPartners, as a “great place to work.” I wonder who said that. My union, Office and Professional Employees International Union (OPEIU) Local 12, has been in tough negotiations since September. We will probably be taking a strike vote soon.
I’m a steward and a member of the bargaining team. As frustrating as the process has been, there is no place I would have been other than at that bargaining table, where we have been fighting to expand justice and dignity at our workplace.
Because the proposals that HealthPartners gave us were an attack on our dignity, as well as on our value to HealthPartners. Among other things, they want to triple our health premiums while giving us a laughable wage proposal: 2.5%. In our wage ranges, this amounts to 50-80 cents per hour. Offset against the health plan increase, I would take home roughly $10 more per two-week pay period.
Their stance takes me back to watching television on Saturday mornings when my kids were little. When I tried to find something educational, we’d end up watching a show about wild animals. It was all great until they showed where an animal fits into the food chain. Ka-boom! There’s the lion, pouncing on that poor little zebra.
But we’re not zebras and we’re not their prey. We’re human beings with families that love us and trust us to do what’s right for them.
We need to make enough money to support ourselves and our families with one job. They say they pay the “industry standard.” That “standard” assumes many of us need to moonlight. That standard has no work/life balance, no dignity. We’ve proposed raises of $5/hour for each year of the contract to do exactly that: to restore that balance and that dignity. Lest this be seen as “too much”: We agreed to no raises in 2020, the first year of the COVID pandemic.
