More than 80 workers, including nursing assistants, housekeepers and maintenance staff at the Mayo Clinic Albert Lea are planning a one-day strike today–which organizers say is the first-ever Unfair Labor Practice strike at Mayo. SEIU Healthcare MN president Jamie Gulley says it’s about benefits and good faith bargaining and he asserts that “Mayo is just putting their bottom line good jobs and quality rural healthcare.” Gulley says Mayo is undermining jobs and “in the case of skilled maintenance workers they actually want the right to subcontract their jobs out to people who would do it for less. ”
But Mayo spokeswoman Ginger Plumbo says that she personally doesn’t “think that the strike is about employee healthcare or bad faith bargaining, it’s about the union using threats and intimidation to try and influence the negotiations process.” Last month union workers voted overwhelmingly to go on strike. Plumbo says patient care will be uninterrupted during the strike. MNN’s Scott Peterson spoke with Gulley:
And Plumbo: