Health care union members at HealthPartners’ Stillwater Medical Group could conduct a four-day unfair labor practice strike as early as July 8 if an agreement with HealthPartners isn’t reached by then.

The union that represents the members of SEIU Healthcare Minnesota & Iowa on Thursday notified HealthPartners officials that they had filed an intent to strike with the state Bureau of Mediation Services. That action triggers an automatic 10-day cooling-off period, which is required under state law.

Melissa Sirek, a certified medical assistant at HealthPartners SMG and a member of the union’s bargaining team, said union members are valued and appreciated by their patients.

“We just want our employer to do the same,” Sirek said. “It feels like the long-term employees, with our dedication and loyalty, are being forgotten and overlooked. We need to see the employer put more money on the table for wages and benefits. They’re willing to pay temps significantly more money to do the same work we do. We would be able to retain more employees, and we wouldn’t need to use temps if our wages and benefits were better.”

The two sides are set to bargain on Friday.

Said Sirek: “If (HealthPartners) can’t offer us the wages and benefits we deserve at the bargaining table, then our membership is ready to go on strike to demand it.”

In a statement in response to the filing, HealthPartners said: “Our colleagues represented by SEIU Healthcare are a valuable part of our team. We remain committed to working with union leaders to reach a fair and financially responsible agreement. Our next bargaining session is Friday.”

The union consists of more than 80 workers including licensed practical nurses, certified medical assistants and other service-unit healthcare positions in the family medicine, OB/GYN, pediatrics and specialties departments at the clinic.

Nurses strike threatened

Meanwhile, more than 15,000 nurses at 11 hospitals in the Twin Cities and two in Duluth voted earlier this week to authorize an unfair labor practice strike.

The Minnesota Nurses Association says it has been negotiating with the hospitals for three months. Staffing levels are the nurses’ top issue, the MNA said after the Monday vote.

The strike vote authorizes a strike should bargaining teams deem one necessary.

In the Twin Cities, the union is negotiating with Allina Health, Children’s Minnesota, North Memorial Health, M Health Fairview and HealthPartners’ Methodist Hospital. Aspirus St. Luke’s and Essentia Health in Duluth are also involved in the talks.

Any strike would be preceded by a 10-day notice to the hospital systems, who oppose the union’s preferred approach to staffing levels: strict nurse-patient ratios.

— Mary Divine

Retirement community planning expansion

Orchard Path, a Presbyterian Homes & Services senior living community in Apple Valley, is adding 75 independent living apartments to its campus, along with an outdoor patio and a large community room.

The project will be finished by next summer, according to Pamela Belz, senior development manager at Senior Housing Partners, part of Presbyterian Homes & Services.

“This expansion provides another choice for senior living within Apple Valley,” Belz said. “There are (community) members that have been in the community a long time and want to stay.”

Adults over 65 made up about 16.5% of the population in Apple Valley in 2024, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Orchard Path current units are typically 99% to 100% occupied, said Jon Fletcher, president and CEO of Presbyterian Homes & Services, in a press announcement.

The senior living community currently offers 175 independent living apartments, 58 assisted living apartments and 20 memory care apartments.

Belz said Orchard Path’s last expansion project was a 60-apartment expansion in 2021, and the apartments opened full.

“There certainly continues to be demand and interest for this location,” Belz said. “We’re expecting a strong response from the community.”

Belz said rent for the new apartments will start at about $2,965 per month.

— Kathryn Kovalenko

Group ends search for 1950 NWA crash

A group is ending a 20-year search for a plane that crashed into Lake Michigan in 1950, killing all 58 people on board, after sweeping the vast body of water using sonar technology and even getting support from an acclaimed adventure writer.

When Northwest Orient Flight 2501 crashed, it was the worst aviation disaster in U.S. history.

Valerie van Heest, executive director of the Michigan Shipwreck Association, said she has mixed feelings about ending the search, which began in 2004.

“It’s a hard thing to have to say because part of me feels like we have failed,” van Heest told The Detroit News, “but we have done so much to keep memory of this accident and these victims at forefront that I feel like we’ve done better for them than if we’d found the wreckage.”

After covering 700 square miles of Lake Michigan, Van Heest said scientists believe the plane broke up into pieces too small to be detected by side-scan sonar and likely “sunk into the muck” on the bottom.

The plane, a propeller-driven DC-4, left LaGuardia Airport in New York at night on June 23, 1950, with two stops in the Twin Cities and Spokane, Wash., planned on the route to Seattle. An intense storm suddenly appeared and the plane went down.

Debris and body parts washed ashore in South Haven, Mich.

“We know this plane hit the water with great force, and we know there was no way to survive this,” said van Heest, who has written a book about the mystery, “Fatal Crossing.”

Clive Cussler, an author whose adventure fiction has sold in the millions, financially supported a search until 2017. Also known for his own shipwreck hunting and underwater exploits, Cussler died in 2020.

“I hope someday the families of those lost will have closure,” Cussler wrote in 2018.

Victims’ families previously helped to uncover where the remains collected by the U.S. Coast Guard and beachcombers were buried.

A local cemetery had a record of donating a mass grave, where the cremated remains had been interred without a marker.

In 2008, a local funeral home donated a granite marker for the gravesite with the notation “In Memory of Northwest Flight 2501” and listing the names of the lost and the words, “Gone But Never Forgotten,” and family members of victims attended a ceremony there. Seven years later, a second previously unmarked gravesite was found at another cemetery and a stone marker was placed.

— Associated Press