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HealthPartners GHI Bargaining

Bargaining News and Updates.

What else is HP still proposing Flyer

Bargaining Update - January 21

Well, we learned something new last night: Zoom caps out our meeting attendance at 300 participants. Thank you EVERYONE who joined (or tried to join) last night's all-supporters meeting. Last night made it clear that we have power in numbers, and we are ready to fight for what we need and reject scraps and takebacks.

The employer made extremely clear in yesterday's bargaining session that our raises are dependent on how much we pay for our healthcare. Meaning that they won't give us good raises unless we pay more for our healthcare. We agree that our raises and healthcare costs are dependent on each other. We WILL NOT pay more for healthcare without some HUGE raises.

HP did finally propose a raise: 0.25% per year across the contract. With our current healthcare proposal this is a pay CUT. They want us to do our jobs for less money. That is why we are prepared to strike if needed to show HP that we are serious about what we need for ourselves and for our patients. (At the bottom of this message, you can find more info on what else is also still on the table).

It's time to show HealthPartners that we are very serious about our strike threat, so they need to get serious about bargaining at the table. This Friday, we will meet at the Como Clinic for an informational picket, where we will inform the public about what we're fighting for in our contract and show HP what it will be like if we strike. Due to the cold, we will picket only at the Como Clinic from 6-7am. We will also be adding a CAR PICKET- if you can't picket in the cold, deck out your car in purple with messages for HP, coworkers, and the community, and carpool with coworkers to drive in the picket and show your pride!!! SEIU will have both prepped picket signs from our bargaining team and blank picket signs to create your own message on-site at the picket.

If you cannot make it to the Como Clinic for the picket action on Friday morning, we are calling for union workers to create picket signs with your own message and leaving in your car windshield when you park for your shift at work and WEAR PURPLE FRIDAY!!! These signs will be best if everyone gets creative!

Our picket will also kick off Minnesota's Day of Truth and Freedom for SEIU, where union members and Minnesotans all across the state will stand together to demand ICE Out of Minnesota and show that we can take care of each other. This picket will be our best chance to show our solidarity that day for folks who work (all union members are required to honor the no-strike clause until our contract expires). If you are off the schedule in the afternoon, SEIU members (along with friends, family, and neighbors) will be taking buses from our union hall in St. Paul to the march in downtown Minneapolis, click here to RSVP.

Let's stick together this week and show HealthPartners it's their choice whether we get a deal by next Friday or not. We're ready to bargain, and we're ready to do what we have to if they won't.

Bargaining Update - January 15

Strike Vote coverage (KSTP)

You have probably already heard the big news we announced to a row of TV cameras this morning: 99% of HP-GHI SEIU members have voted YES to authorize a strike to win a fair wage increase and protect our healthcare benefits! Thank you to EVERYONE who made their voices heard yesterday, especially to folks who traveled throughout the metro area to vote in-person: the support we saw yesterday and the incredible conversations members of the Contract Action Team and Bargaining Team had were incredibly powerful. Yesterday's voting day was a reminder of why SEIU members are ready to stand strong for our patients, our union, and each other, and the results show that we're prepared to take action.

Nearly every person who voted YES. However, some members did not cast a vote. If you did not vote: it will take ALL of us to show our power and get a great contract, and we want to say one thing loud and clear: ALL OF US are the union, even when we disagree. And it is not too late to join the fight for what we deserve!

Over the next two weeks, we will need to remain disciplined and focused to show HP that we are ready and able to put our money where our mouth is and strike if they force us to. We have two actions next week that we are asking all members to join for:

Starting tomorrow, union leaders will be asking all members to sign the Picket Pledge Petition and commit that we will all join for the informational picket (without work stoppage/strike) next Friday and also honor the picket line when and if we strike. (A reminder: the earliest date we could possibly strike is February 1.) This helps us as the Bargaining Team know who will be with the union as we take action, and gives us another way to show the employer that we are unified and serious. Please sign the pledge and reach out to any of us with questions.

Thank you again to EVERYONE for your solidarity and positivity as we all do what we can to win what we deserve. We are in this together and have each other's backs.

Bargaining Update - January 13

We met with HP for our 10th bargaining session today. We were hoping the notice we sent of our strike vote and picketing would push the employer to drop their terrible healthcare proposals. Instead, the only proposals they responded to today were on relatively minor items, so we are moving forward with our strike vote tomorrow to show the employer we are prepared to do whatever it takes to maintain our healthcare benefits and win a fair wage increase.

I am writing to share some final details ahead of tomorrow's vote.

Voting Hours Extended

Following many requests from members, we are extending voting hours at all three voting sites to 6am-8pm. Stop by before or after your shift or on your lunch break to cast your ballot!

Voting Sites, Parking, Access Instructions

We understand these voting locations may be inconvenient for some members, but folks' willingness to show up in-person even if it is inconvenient is an important part of how we measure our readiness to potentially strike, which will be inconvenient and burdensome for everyone. Voting with our feet is how we show each other we are ready to show up. If you are not able to vote in-person for personal safety reasons due to the current emergency situation in the Twin Cities, you may request a digital ballot by submitting this form by tonight at 11:59pm, but we ask all members to be honest and only use this if it is truly needed for safety.

Frequently Asked Questions

Click here for a Frequently Asked Questions document with more details on what a strike vote would mean and what our protections and resources are. We will have copies of the employer's healthcare proposal at all voting sites for review tomorrow, and Bargaining Team and Contract Action Team leaders will also be present at each site to answer any questions and share why they are voting YES.

Strike Hotline

Reach out to a union leader first with any questions! There will be a couple at each voting location throughout the day to answer your questions tomorrow. If you cannot reach a Bargaining or Contract Action Team leader, please call me on the Strike Questions Hotline at 612-704-3972.

Let's show HP how strong we are and that we need a strong contract to match. SEE YOU TOMORROW and let me know if you have any questions!

Bargaining Update - January 6

2026 bargaining started with a bang. There is a lot to report on today, and a very important SURVEY for you to fill out after you’ve read the updates.

The union bargaining team presented our full set of economic proposals this morning, covering a wide range of issues. The big one, which we presented last, was our proposal for across-the-board wage increases: we proposed a 430% increase in the first year, to match the average 430% increase in premium costs to our members that the employer has proposed by trying to move us to their non-contract company-wide coverage. After making that proposal, I said: “A 430% wage increase probably sounds absurd to you. It IS absurd. But it is no more absurd than your healthcare proposal. Get that proposal off the table, so that we can start making progress together in these negotiations.”

When the employer came back in with their response an hour or so later, they made some concessions on healthcare. Their healthcare proposals are still terrible, but they are not as terrible as what they’d previously proposed. Here’s how their healthcare proposals changed:

Altogether, the new proposals left a very bad taste in the union bargaining team’s mouths -- just a different flavor of bad.

Let’s be clear: the good things that happened today only happened because union members stood strong and fought back against them. But the changes the employer made don’t come even close to treating us with the respect we deserve or protecting our industry-leading healthcare benefits.

Also, the employer DID NOT propose even a single cent of wage increases. And they once again told us that they won’t make any wage proposals until they know where we are landing on changes to our healthcare.

They also formally responded today to both of the petitions we presented at the start of negotiations: one demanding that they sit down with both Triage RNs and Careline RNs to hear their input on the changes the employer has made in recent months to where patient calls get routed, and one demanding that they drop their plans to stop funding the pension that pre-2008 employees receive. They rejected both petitions.

So here’s what we need to know: given these updates, which of you would still vote YES to authorize a strike, if the bargaining team calls one, to prevent the cost increases for health care that the employer proposed today? We know that most of you have already answered a very similar question in the last few weeks, but it was in the context of the employer proposing to remove the health plans from the union contract. Now they have dropped that proposal and replaced it with a different one, though still terrible. We need to know if the changes made today change the level of support among union members for authorizing a potential strike.

We want to get everyone’s responses quickly, so we’re sending this as a straw poll via Survey Monkey. To be clear, this is not a strike authorization vote – that would take place in person, all day (6:30am-8pm) on a weekday, and be conducted by secret ballot. This survey is a straw poll to quickly get a sense of whether today’s developments changed many members’ minds about how they would vote.

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

Videos

10.21.25