Workers at Guardian Angels Ratify a New Contract

In a major victory for nursing home workers, members of SEIU Healthcare reached an agreement with Elk River-based Guardian Angels. The agreement was reached Friday and ratified in overwhelming numbers Monday afternoon thereby avoiding a planned 10-day ULP strike.

Important gains included pay increases of 7.5% over the contract (with retro pay for time since contract expired), winning Union access for members to have a voice on the job for the first time in 30 years, improvements on staffing and hiring bonuses to address staffing shortages. 

The bargaining team released the following statement following the membership voting to approve the agreement. 

After a long and drawn-out fight, we voted to approve our contract today and won an important victory for workers, residents and our whole community. We are so proud that we won the right to have union access, retro pay and pay increases that will help recruit and retain the staff that make this the Five Star facility that it is. We learned through the last six months that SEIU’s saying is true: When We Fight, We Win!

The group of over 100 workers do housekeeping, laundry, dietary and health unit coordinating, nursing assistance, recreation and maintenance for the elderly at the facility. This same group went out on a two-day strike in June.

Prior reporting noted that Guardian Angels has been a largely successful non-profit enterprise.  According to publicly available 2017 tax documents Guardian Angels made $1,806,640 in profit on $16,543,644 in revenue and $14,737,004 in expenses.  In the same tax year, President and CEO Daniel C. Dixon was paid $226,658. Over the last decade, the non-profit network has consistently made a profit except for the 2013 tax year a loss of $44,057.

Filiberto Nolasco Gomez is a former union organizer and former editor of Minneapolis based Workday Minnesota, the first online labor news publication in the state. Filiberto focused on longform and investigative journalism. He has covered topics including prison labor, labor trafficking, and union fights in the Twin Cities.

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