Second union at Mayo Clinic votes for right to strike

A second health care union unit in Rochester has voted for the right to strike in future contract negotiations with Mayo Clinic.

SEIU officials announced Thursday that 87% of frontline health care union workers at Mayo Clinic Hospital Methodist Campus supported the ability to strike in future contract negotiations, citing an increasingly frustrating bargaining process with Mayo leadership.

“We are not the ones that are ramping things up,” said Hallie Wallace, a local SEIU negotiator. “It’s the changes in the way that Mayo Clinic is running their hospital and treating their employees over the last 10 years that has been a huge attack on the people who work here.”

Union members, including sterile-processing technicians, patient escorts, surgical techs and maintenance workers among others at Mayo Methodist are in the middle of bargaining for a new three-year contract. This week’s vote doesn’t apply to current bargaining talks, which include an arbitration agreement, but would kick in during the next round of negotiations.

The unit of about 600 or so workers successfully negotiated a one-year deal last year that saw most workers get at least $20 per hour.

That one-year deal ran out in January; workers are seeking to get remaining members to that $20 hourly threshold as well as subsequent wage increases.

A Mayo Clinic spokesperson said in a statement that the medical center “continues to be committed to supporting our staff and reaching a mutually beneficial agreement through the bargaining process.”

Whether Mayo Methodist workers accomplish that will likely depend on Mayo’s negotiations with another union at nearby St. Marys Hospital in downtown Rochester. St. Marys workers have bargained with Mayo for more than a year; the two sides entered into arbitration last September and union officials expect a decision next week.

Last year St. Marys workers also voted to end its arbitration agreement with Mayo in favor of the right to strike in future contract negotiations. Union workers at Mayo have had arbitration agreements since the 1970s.

Workers at both hospitals say Mayo leadership hasn’t taken care of employees in recent years, offering raises that don’t cover the increasing cost of living in the area. As a result, some departments are routinely understaffed, causing excessive overtime and burnout among other workplace issues.

Alejandro Romero, a certified sterile technician and a part of the Mayo-Methodist union’s bargaining team, compared Mayo’s actions to hitting its workers at the knees.

“People have to be taken care of to take care of others,” Romero said. “Are you going to be taken care of if you have to choose between medication and rent? It gets there sometimes.”

Wallace said Mayo’s tough negotiating tactics have workers worried over future contracts. She expects the clinic’s $5 billion downtown expansion to be “a huge point of contention in our next round of contract negotiations.”

Workers are concerned Mayo won’t be able to address its ongoing staffing issues once the expansion is complete, wondering whether employees who transfer over to new buildings will face excessive overtime, overwork and even more burnout.

“We have no clue how they’re going to be able to run that with the amount of employees that they have right now and that they’re able to bring in,” she said. “And a big answer to that is raising wages enough to be attracting people … recruiting new employees and retaining them.”

Mayo officials have in the past defended the Rochester hospital’s medical record, emphasizing its reputation as a prominent health care center. A state report last year on preventable errors in hospitals across Minnesota showed Mayo Clinic’s number of errors decreased in the last 12-month period surveyed ending in October 2023 — 53 events in the most recent report compared to 63 events from October 2021 to October 2022.