COON RAPIDS, Minn. — Some 150 doctors, including OB-GYNs, psychiatrists and critical care physicians at Allina’s Mercy Hospital here and its Unity campus in Fridley began a four-day strike Sept. 14 after three years of fighting to win their first contract. The strike is said to be the first walkout by private-sector hospital doctors in U.S. history.
The doctors are members of Doctors Council Service Employees International Union, having won union recognition in 2024 after the National Labor Relations Board rejected a challenge by Allina. Both hospitals are in the Twin Cities northern suburbs.
The doctors are fighting for paid sick days and cost-of-living adjustments to blunt today’s high inflation. But their fight, they say, goes beyond pay and benefits. It’s a fight against profit-focused hospital executives who demand workloads so punishing that doctors are burning out, and patients’ care is at risk.
“The labor movement fought to make industry more humane,” Dr. Alia Sharif, an internal medicine physician who serves on the Doctors Council SEIU bargaining team, wrote in an op-ed in the Sept. 15 Minnesota Star Tribune. “Physicians must now organize to keep healthcare human.”
“Medicine has become an arena in which titans — healthcare corporations, private equity firms, insurers and pharmaceutical companies — wrestle over pots of gold,” she said.