ROCHESTER — Several dozen people gathered outside Mayo Clinic Hospital-Saint Marys on Tuesday afternoon for an informational picket in support of the roughly 1,600 hospital employees whose union contract negotiations have been in progress for three months. "We are underpaid, we are overworked, our benefits are constantly under attack," said Mike Szynal, a Saint Marys patient care assistant and union steward. "And that has become the norm here.
" Mayo Clinic and SEIU Healthcare Minnesota & Iowa have met several times since Feb. 29 to negotiate the group's next three-year contract. Their latest contract expired in April.
"At this point, we are very frustrated that we have not been making the progress we know our members deserve," said Hallie Wallace, an SEIU organizer and lead negotiator for the contract. The top issue for the Saint Marys unit is wages. Wallace said Mayo Clinic's current offer is a 3.
5% wage increase in the first year of the contract, then 1.5% in both the second and third years. That offer was referenced in one of the chants that picketers shouted as they walked up and down the Second Street SW sidewalk: "3.
5% doesn't even pay my rent." ADVERTISEMENT "This is way lower than we need," Wallace said. "We need those proportional raises across the board for everybody to reflect the economy that we're in, to reflect the fact that they've been giving non-union (employees) bigger raises and denying those to union members despite being able to do that anytime.
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