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HealthPartners GHI Bargaining

Bargaining News and Updates.

Bargaining Update - December 2

We have made it through the first pass of all non-economic issues as of Tuesday's bargaining session. This does not mean all of the proposals have been settled, but they have at least all been presented and gotten responses from each side.

We have now started discussing and drafting our economic proposals. We cannot share details on these proposals until they are presented to the employer which will likely take 2-3 weeks.

The next two bargaining Tuesdays will be focused on special issues presentations.

Thank you to everyone who has responded to questions from fellow members about how you would vote if there was a strike authorization vote to defend our healthcare benefits. If no one has reached out to you yet, expect a message over the next couple of weeks either in person, via text, or via email. Please answer their questions honestly, and ask any questions you have about bargaining and what this process would look like. If you're ready to help with this process, join us at our next in-person or remote CAT meetings in 2 weeks for training!

Click Here to RSVP for the CAT meetings so we can prepare for who will attend!

Please reach out with any thoughts, questions or concerns.

- Tova and the Union Bargaining Team

Bargaining Update - November 25

We made some progress yesterday on getting through proposals from both sides. There weren't huge substantive changes today, but we were glad to see the employer drop some of their junk proposals, including the one to end vacation donation and their proposal on floats and mileage. The next couple weeks should show some more movement as we have special issues presentations on 12/9 and 12/16. We may be getting into economic issues in the next couple of weeks as well.

The healthcare proposal continues to be terrible, both in content and in forcing us into an early enrollment period. Our best chance to make change on this is to show a unified front in regards to our willingness to strike to defend our healthcare. Union leaders are going to start polling members on how they would vote in a vote on strike authorization. This is not the actual vote, just a check-in with each member about how they plan to vote when and if the bargaining team puts it to a vote.

To be clear: no strike could happen until February 1 at the earliest, if the current contract (which has a clause prohibiting strikes) expires. Also, federal law requires healthcare workers to give their employers at least 10 days of advance written notice of any strike, or even of picketing activity (a picket is when you march outside and shout and do all the same sorts of things you might do in a strike, but on your non-work time). So no strike is going to be happening any time soon. But the Contract Action Team and bargaining team want to get a sense of how everyone would vote, and they are considering calling a vote well in advance of the contract expiring.

Please respond when someone (possibly one of us or another member of the bargaining team, or members of the Contract Action Team) reaches out to you, and give an honest answer and ask questions if you have them.

There are still some clinics, listed below, that need someone to take charge of the strike-authorization vote polling/organizing. Please email cj.griffin@seiuhcmnia.org if interested.

If you are down to take this on, please plan to join one of our next Contract Action Team meetings for training! Click here to RSVP.

Happy holidays! For those of you working Thanksgiving, enjoy your holiday pay because the employer also wants to reduce that 🙃

- Tova, and your whole Union Bargaining Team!

Bargaining Update - November 18

We had a two week break from bargaining and came back today. The main update is the health insurance proposal got even worse.

To recap, GHI (the employer) wants to change us to a dramatically worse and more expensive health insurance plan, and to remove our health benefits altogether from our Union contract (they could change them at any time they wanted in the future). What we found out today is that they also want the plan start date to be FEBRUARY 1, 2026. They would do a special enrollment period instead of letting us complete the plan year of our current insurance which would normally end December 31, 2026.

This not only would hasten the arrival of garbage health insurance but also ensure that we all missed the open enrollment period to jump ship to a spouse's insurance plan for 2026. (Based on our discussions today, a "change" in insurance does not meet the legal requirements to trigger another special enrollment period for a spouse's insurance, so we would be stuck for the rest of 2026.)

Click here to view an infographic that starts to give a sense of how much more expensive this new insurance would be. This still doesn't even begin to address unknown/variable costs including drug prices, lists of actual covered treatments/specialties, etc. -- those comparisons will be coming in future updates from the bargaining team.

Until next time,

Tova and your Union Bargaining Team

Bargaining Update - October 31

Happy Halloween! Slowly, but surely, we are working through the numerous scary proposals the employer gave us on day 1 of Bargaining. We are still working on crunching some numbers and putting together materials on the employer's nightmare of a healthcare proposal, so we wanted to take some time to share some quick summaries of other proposals GHI put on the table.

As a reminder, none of these changes have gone into our contract yet. The stronger we stand together in solidarity, the more we can WIN in our contract rather than lose in concessions! Let's stick together to say BOO to HP and turn the employer's TRICKS into our TREATS.

Health Insurance
Huge increases in premiums and copays for nearly everyone, with some members seeing literally double or triple (or even higher!) the premiums they currently pay if we agree to the employer's offer. We are still crunching the numbers on exactly what this will look like, and will send out a detail email next week with more information and cost breakdown. These worse health insurance benefits would also no longer be specified in our contract, meaning that the employer could change them at-will.

Sick Time
Since Earned Sick and Safe Time is now in effect, the employer wants to take away sick time language written into our contract and deplete all earned sick time in employee's banks. ESST law would then be followed. While ESST is a fantastic new law that will benefit many Minnesotans, we need to keep our sick time language in writing in our contract in case the law ever changes.

Doctor Time
The employer wants to get rid of it, and require us to instead use ESST time (which would have formerly been our sick time) in alignment with the proposal above. Our union bargaining team said NO strongly to both proposals - we want to protect our sick time bank the way it is, and keep our doctor time for our health.

Seniority
The employer has several items on the table that would weaken seniority rule in our contract and instead give managers and HP more discretion to direct our work as they see fit. Seniority has been questioned between FTE status and Benefit status. They have also proposed new language around the position elimination and hours reduction process, which we are still discussing.

Reassignment
The employer wants to increase reassignment mileage from 16 miles to 30 miles. By our calculations, this means that management could reassign folks to virtually any clinic in the GHI metro area. They also want to increase the number of times an individual union member can be reassigned from a maximum of 10 times per year to 20 times in a year.

Trial Period
The employer has introduced new language that would place members on a "three strikes" system for trial periods. After three failed trial periods, rather than being returned to their previous position (as is the case in our current contract language), members would be placed on the Recall List until a new position opens. This language has the potential to unfairly punish members who are seeking new training/education to move into higher-paid job classifications or other new opportunity.

Funeral Leave
Like the sick time language in our contract, HP is seeking to eliminate the language currently in our contract and replace it with their employer policy, which they would then be able to change at-will. There are some improvements in the employer policy that we are seeking to lock into our contract (like aunts, uncles, nieces, and nephews, as well as time away for fertility-related loss), but we are not open to eliminating these contract protections altogether.

Paid Holidays
The employer originally proposed no longer having the Christmas Eve half day as a holiday. Following our Purple Parties in clinics last week + advocacy from your bargaining team when they pointed out that Local 12 has already locked in the Christmas Eve half day in their contract, HP ended up dropping this proposal and kept it as a paid holiday.

Wages
So far the employer has made NO proposal for wage increases whatsoever.

There are several additional items we are still working through and discussing, so we will continue to send updates as we work through proposals.

Our next bargaining date is Tuesday, November 18th.

CAT Team: Watch for another email with more resources to support the bargaining team. Our next CAT meeting will be in-person with a hybrid option available upon request on Tuesday, November 11 from 7-8:30pm.

Remember, we are ALL in this together! It's not just your bargaining team or your CAT team doing the work. They need to know you support them as well by standing strong with them!

In solidarity,
Your Union Bargaining Team

Bargaining Update - October 22

Yesterday was the first day of bargaining with the employer, and we are deeply disappointed by the proposals they presented. Despite our expectations of some concessions, we were stunned to receive 57 pages of proposed takebacks on Grinch green paper—a stark contrast to the 14 non-economic proposals across 8 pages that we submitted, focused primarily on modest wording adjustments and protections for our members. (We make all our proposals regarding wages, benefits and other economic issues at a later stage in the bargaining process.)

The proposals we received from the employer yesterday represent the most aggressive rollback attempt we’ve seen in over four decades of negotiations. Every benefit that our current and former members have fought tirelessly to secure is now at risk. Nothing was considered off-limits.

The most alarming change targets our healthcare benefits, which union members have consistently identified as their top priority. The employer’s proposal seeks to remove from our Union contract the healthcare benefits our members have fought to establish and defend over the last 45 years. They proposed to give us instead the health insurance plan non-union employees receive.

Beyond healthcare, the employer’s proposal threatens nearly every aspect of our contract, including:

While the employer claims to value our contributions, their actions suggest otherwise. Our members’ dedication to patient care and the success of this organization deserves respect—not cuts. We have historically made sacrifices, including taking smaller wage increases, to preserve our excellent healthcare benefits and support cost-saving initiatives. This proposal disregards those efforts and the history of our collective bargaining relationship.

🚨 Call to Action: We Must Act Now 🚨

This is not just a negotiation—this is a fight for our future. The employer’s proposal is a direct threat to the benefits we’ve worked decades to secure. If we don’t act now, we risk losing everything.

We need every member to step up immediately:

Silence is surrender. Unity is power. The strength of our contract depends on the strength of our solidarity. We must show the employer that we will not back down, we will not be divided, and we will not accept less than what we’ve earned.

Stand up. Speak out. Stay united.

In solidarity,
Your Union Bargaining Team

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10.21.25