Amplatz Children’s Hospital nurses join MNA

http://www.workdayminnesota.org/index.php?news_6_4701

By Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor
5 December 2010

MINNEAPOLIS - Nurses at the University of Minnesota’s Amplatz Children’s Hospital will enjoy the benefits and security of a union contract from the day the facility opens its new riverside campus in Minneapolis next year.

The Minnesota Nurses Association announced Friday it will represent Amplatz nurses, according to the terms of an agreement the union reached with Fairview Health Services after a series of discussions between the two sides that began in the fall.

About one-third of the new hospital’s nurses will transfer to Amplatz from other Fairview facilities. Concern among those nurses about whether their union contract would transfer with them prompted the MNA to open talks with Fairview, MNA Director of Organizing Joni Ketter said.

“Our members were concerned they would be leaving their union positions to go work in a non-union facility,” Ketter said. “They didn’t want that to happen.”

Management at Fairview, Ketter added, was “open to having the discussion, and we were delighted with the way this proceeded very quickly and very amicably.”

Nurses at Amplatz will be covered by the union contract approved in July by MNA members who work at Fairview hospitals.

FULL story at link.