Transcripts

LEIF ENGER: In usually sedate Pierz, a town of 1,100 surrounded by farm fields and shrines to the Madonna, drivers passing the nursing home are treated to the alien sight of women in snow pants waving neon green placards. The signs proclaim the administration of the home to be unfair and asked drivers to honk if they agree.

[CAR HONKS]

Like hundreds of nursing homes that care for people on medical assistance, St. Mary's requested and received a subsidy from the state to boost wages, which are notoriously low in the industry. The home, St. Mary's Villa, is the town's second-largest employer after the school. And more than half its 120 employees are organized-- maintenance workers, nursing assistants, kitchen and laundry staff. The union workers asked the administration to divide the subsidy, about $80,000, into identical per hour raises for all staff.

SPEAKER: We don't want more than they're getting. We want the same amount. She wants to give the non-union people a lot more money than she's giving us.

LEIF ENGER: These strikers, who asked to be interviewed as a group, say administrator Jenny Meyer is playing favorites by offering raises based on a percentage of salary. They say a 3.5% raise means much more in real dollars to a nurse making $30,000 a year than it does to an assistant making $10,000. Nurses are non-union at St. Mary's.

SPEAKER: Basically, it's a principled decision, more than anything, because last year, she would not divide the money equally, and we gave in. But if we give in again this year, she's going to want to do the same thing again next year and the year after.

LEIF ENGER: After negotiations stalled, more than half St. Mary's workforce walked out November 22. Administrator Jenny Meyer says the home keeps operating by the overtime efforts of nurses and other non-union employees, by hiring temps from the surrounding area, and by an influx of unpaid volunteers.

JENNY MEYER: I believe that if you're in this line of work, you fulfill it with your heart and soul. And you do whatever needs to be done. And that's what we're finding. Anything that needs to be done, we don't have anyone quibbling over it. It's just a willingness to do and people acting and doing things without asking for recognition.

LEIF ENGER: Meyer contends it's hardly unfair to reward a longtime nurse with a larger raise than a just-hired assistant. And she says the raise the union rejected was actually a larger percentage than that accepted by non-union employees. Also weighing in on the dispute is State Senator Don Samuelson, who wrote the wage hike bill and whose sympathies lie with the pickets.

DON SAMUELSON: That ought to be done based on across-the-board dollars and cents increase versus percentages because when you give percentage of increases, obviously, the people on the very, very high end of the wage ladder receive more. And the gap gets larger and larger from the lowest to the highest.

LEIF ENGER: Samuelson says another wage and benefits increase is in the works for next session. Meantime, in Pierz, neither side wants to ask for more negotiations. And chances look small for an agreement by year's end. Leif Enger, Minnesota Public Radio.