Mankato Mayo Clinic nurses officially cut ties with union

CATHY WURZER: Our lead story-- nurses at the Mayo Clinic hospital in Mankato have officially cut ties with their union. Nurses voted 213 to 180 Monday to decertify the Minnesota Nurses Association. Max Nesterak is Deputy Editor with the Minnesota Reformer. That's a nonprofit digital news outlet.

He's been covering the union vote and he joins me right now. Welcome back to the show, Max.

MAX NESTERAK: Thanks for having me on, Cathy.

CATHY WURZER: This move, as you know, is a defeat for the powerful Minnesota Nurses Association and a win for an anti-union group. How did this all come about?

MAX NESTERAK: So from my understanding, the petition was filed by a nurse named Brittany Burgess with free legal support from a national group called the National Right to Work Foundation. They're a group that helps workers around the country file petitions for elections to decertify their unions. It's a nonprofit group, and their mission is to eliminate coercive union power and compulsory unionism, according to their mission statement.

CATHY WURZER: Now, nurses there, gosh, had been part of this union for more than, what, 70 years. Do we know why the nurses wanted out?

MAX NESTERAK: That's right. So this nurses union was formed even before Mayo Clinic took control of the Mankato hospital. Actually, there's never been a successful unionization effort among nurses at a Mayo Clinic. All of the 500 or so nurses that are now unionized after this vote were all grandfathered in.

To why so many nurses voted to leave the union is still somewhat unclear to me. People have been very tight-lipped about this on both sides. It's been a very tense issue, as you can imagine. And people have not really wanted to talk on the record, or even on background about what has led to this division.

I sent calls to more than half a dozen anti-union nurses. I posted up outside the hospital to catch people on their way coming during shift change. And no nurses who were against the union wanted to speak with me. So all information I've gotten has come from the National Right to Work Foundation.

And they just sent me a statement about two minutes ago and they said, we're proud to have helped Mayo Clinic nurses exercise their right to free themselves of an unwanted union.

CATHY WURZER: What has the MNA said?

MAX NESTERAK: So the MNA, they have pointed to the National Right to Work Foundation's involvement and accused this of outside meddling and an outside political agenda. One thing I did note in my story is that Brittany Burgess is the stepdaughter of Glen Taylor, a Republican billionaire who does not favor unions.

And the reason why I think that's important to mention is because some nurses were invited to a decertification event at his Mankato house. So go ahead.

CATHY WURZER: We should mention too, while you're talking about this, that the President and CEO of American Public Media Group, which includes Minnesota Public Radio, is Jean Taylor. And Jean's the daughter of Glen Taylor and the stepsister of Brittany Burgess, who is involved in this story. But Jean Taylor is not involved in this story. So go ahead.

MAX NESTERAK: That's right. Yeah, good clarification. So the union is also pointing to that. And they say, in a statement that I received yesterday, a nurse at the Mankato hospital said quote, "the removal of the union marks another sad step in the corporatization of community health care in southern Minnesota, following moves by Mayo Clinic to close and consolidate services in other communities." So they feel like this is a real loss and say they fear that care for patients will go down because nurses can't bargain for staffing ratios and other things that they say helps patients.

CATHY WURZER: Max, there have been successful efforts to dump unions and other sectors of the Minnesota economy in the past. I'm curious-- what's the process to decertify?

MAX NESTERAK: So to decertify, a petition has to be filed with the National Labor Relations Board. That's the federal agency that regulates private sector unions. And you need at least 30% of the bargaining group to sign on to this petition.

The National Right to Work Foundation said they got over 200 signatures on their petition. So that's way more than they needed, because there's about 500 nurses at Mankato hospital. And after that, the National Labor Relations Board holds a vote.

And not everyone has to vote. As you mentioned at the top, the vote was 213 to 181. So that is a high turnout for these types of union elections. Oftentimes, you see that not even half of eligible workers vote. And so a lot of nurses did vote-- not all of them.

And now what happens is the NLRB has to certify the results, which could take about a week. But there is nothing indicating that this won't go through. The nurses union hasn't told me that they're going to challenge it. It wasn't a close vote, with 213 voting to leave the union and 181 voting to stay.

CATHY WURZER: It's interesting that this occurred, Max, as you know, because we're seeing other efforts to unionize in other parts of the Minnesota economy, right? A number of places have unionized. And how does this vote, then, fit into the larger picture of the labor movement in Minnesota right now?

MAX NESTERAK: Right. That's why I think the story is so interesting, because we see all these stories about there being a surge in union support. And actually, if you look at Pew Research, American support for unions has seldom been higher. The National Labor Relations Board says they're seeing a 50% increase in requests for new union elections over last year.

So there is a lot of interest in labor organizing now. But that's not the entire story, as we see here that there are successful efforts to get rid of unions. And one thing that a Minnesota Nurses Association vice president told me is he thinks the frustration that workers have felt during the pandemic, especially in the health care sector that motivated a lot of workers to seek unions, can also be harnessed against unions.

And so he brought that back to the National Right to Work Foundation and says it was outside people capitalizing on that worker frustration and channeling it against the union. Make of that what you will. Again, I'm interested in hearing from anti-union nurses about why they voted against leaving the union. But certainly, this worker frustration that a lot of people are feeling during the pandemic has played a role.

CATHY WURZER: Might there be, then, more medical facilities in Minnesota that might have similar situations pop up? Do you know if the Right to Work Foundation is backing petitions at other places?

MAX NESTERAK: They are. They're backing one at several [INAUDIBLE] facilities. Those are clerical workers that are unionized with SEIU. We could see more pop up at other Mayo Clinic facilities. I should note that Mayo Clinic employs about 22,000 nurses across the country.

And before this vote, only about 1,000 were unionized, and all of those were in Minnesota. Of course, Mayo Clinic has facilities all across the country. And these are primarily in Southern Minnesota in hospitals that Mayo Clinic acquired. So of the 500 or so remaining unionized nurses, we could, perhaps, see more decertification efforts there.

CATHY WURZER: All right. I know you'll keep digging. Thank you, Max. I appreciate it.

MAX NESTERAK: Thanks for having me on, Cathy.

CATHY WURZER: Max Nesterak is a Deputy Editor for the Minnesota Reformer news site.