I love my job at Mayo Clinic Health System in Albert Lea hospital doing utility work to make sure the hospital runs smoothly. Like many of my co-workers, I’ve invested many years to this job. I’ve been there for 10 years, and I’m nowhere near the longest tenured in our group.

Despite our hard work, as we begin to bargain with executives from Mayo for our new contract, they are proposing plans that would undermine our job stability and move us away from these being good jobs that help provide for a family. Our community needs more jobs that allow people to pay their bills and not live paycheck to paycheck, not less. We already are facing the same pressure that too many families in our community face — pay not keeping up with our healthcare costs.

Despite working for one of the most well-known hospital systems in the entire world, I skipped doctors appointments last year to save money because of skyrocketing health care costs. When you think about house payments and taking care of our kids, it is a choice far too many of us have to make these days. And it is wrong. Now Mayo is proposing to move nearly 100 dedicated employees who work throughout the hospital even further in the wrong direction.

We live and work in Albert Lea, and love this community. We believe in Mayo’s stated values. But the way they are treating us as we begin negotiations doesn’t show that same feeling back to us. The skilled maintenance workers in our hospital have been in a two-year battle to get a fair contract (they were at the National Labor Relations Board last month for an unprecedented hearing, claiming Mayo is not “bargaining in good faith”), and we see them taking the same “our way or the highway” approach with us.

We aren’t asking for the moon. At a minimum, we simply want basic respect that comes with decent pay and benefits, along with the stability of a contract that can’t change at a moment’s notice. That would show that Mayo executives value the work we do every day and prove we aren’t just numbers on a spreadsheet.

As we move forward, I hope our friends and neighbors will support us. We are part of this community, and we want our hospital to be a place where people have the skills and experience to take care of our community members when they need care. If Mayo keeps squeezing employees, they will move in the wrong direction and lose what makes their hospital work. We hope they will bargain fairly with us and show us they value the decades of experience and commitment we have given them.

Dave Larson

Alden