Rochester Mayo Clinic food service workers picket over new contract
Food service workers employed by Morrison Healthcare who work at various Mayo Clinic facilities formed picket lines Thursday to highlight their demands for new contracts.
ROCHESTER, Minn. (FOX 9) - Food service workers employed by Morrison Healthcare that work at various Mayo Clinic facilities formed picket lines Thursday to highlight their demands for new contracts.
On the sidewalk outside the Mayo Gonda Building in Rochester, frontline health care workers reiterated their claims that they were, "fighting for fair wage increases and a wage scale like other Union members have, an improved grievance procedure for dealing with disrespectful treatment by Morrison supervisors and a pension plan like they had before Mayo Clinic subcontracted their work five years ago," according to a press release.
Negotiations are currently underway for a second union contract. The current five-year deal expired on June 30, 2022.
According to the announcement, to date Morrison Healthcare has offered wage increases with a cap of 1.5% in 2022, 2% in 2023 and 2% in 2024.
The workers are part of the Morrison Coalition of Unions, which includes more than 500 members from various unions. In total, they perform all aspects of food service work, including as cooks, bakers, dietary aides who prepare and serve the food to patients and visitors, baristas, cashiers, sanitation workers and more.
FOX 9 reached out to Morrison Healthcare for comment, and received the following statement: "Our hard-working team members are at the heart of what we do, and their determination to provide best-in-class care and service is inspiring. We take pride in paying competitive wages and providing affordable benefits, and we have a long history of listening to our employees and working productively with unions. Within the past year, we have amicably renewed three union collective bargaining agreements within the Mayo Clinic system, including SEIU Healthcare Minnesota, and Teamsters Local 120. We will continue to uphold our agreement with the SEIU, AFSCME, and Teamsters Local 120, and we will continue to meet and negotiate - always in good faith."