Essentia Health employs several thousand workers, who are divided up into dozens of different job titles. 1,000 of those workers are covered by the Green Book contract of the United Steelworkers Local 9460. It covers job titles from Environmental Services to Clinical Assistants. They are currently engaged in a tough contract fight with Essentia. As is so often the case, Essentia has been dramatically increasing the workloads, but it is dragging its feet on offering a decent wage increase. While CEO regularly give himself three million a year, with annual increases that are always well over the rate of inflation, Essentia is trying to get its employees to settle for 2%. Such a low offer is taken as an insult by the workers, so this Saturday they took it to the streets! Local 9460 held an information picket down in Canal Park as part of their campaign to make the community aware of how poorly Essentia is treating its workers.
The union is planning another information picket for this coming Saturday - July 20. It will be from 11am to 1pm and will be on the corner of Railroad Street and Lake Avenue. They are also asking folks to call Essentia's CEO Dave Herman directly on July 22-23 to urge him to instruct his negotiators to offer a fair wage. The number to call is (218) 786-3162.
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