Workers at a dozen Twin Cities nursing homes struck in March. One is still waiting for a contract.

Nearly 200 workers at a New Hope nursing home are set to walk off the job this weekend if they don’t reach an agreement with the facility’s current owners.

St. Therese is the last holdout after 11 other Twin Cities nursing homes settled new contacts with the union representing CNAs, PCAs, and dietary and environmental services workers.

Hundreds of workers represented by Service Employees International Union Healthcare Minnesota and Iowa walked off the job for 24 hours in March to protest low wages and poor staffing at the facilities.

At the time, Jamie Gulley, president of SEIU Healthcare Minnesota, said the March strike was the largest nursing home worker strike in Minnesota history.

The owners of St. Therese announced last week that they would be selling the facility to Compass Healthcare. St. Therese will continue to operate facilities in Brooklyn Park, Woodbury and Shoreview and plan to open a site in Corcoran this fall.

In a news release, CEO Craig Abbott said selling the organization’s flagship campus was a “difficult decision.”

It also interrupted negotiations for a new contract.

According to a new release from SEIU Healthcare, workers were not provided with the 90-day notice of ownership changes required by law. They also received no details on what the sale would mean to their current working conditions and jobs.

“It feels like they’ve treated us like trash, and it feels like this strike is our only option right now to protect workers and residents,” St. Therese CNA Mofoba Kanneh said in the union’s news release.

She also said workers were promised a $5 per hour wage increase that hasn’t been applied yet. Kanneh said she wants that settled before moving on to bargaining with Compass.

Gulley said the union has yet to start bargaining with Compass, but the plan is to secure the $5 increase before bargaining begins.

“We don’t want them to adopt the contract with the base rate that would be $5 lower. Folks aren’t okay with taking a pay cut in this sale,” Gulley said.

According to a news release from St. Therese, the transition will be final on August 1. Compass purchased another facility, Walker Methodist in south Minneapolis , last year for $24 million.

Representatives from Compass Healthcare had not responded to requests for comment at publication time.

Gulley said the union will continue to bargain with the nursing home’s owners up until the 6 a.m. strike time on June 15.

The union was able to settle contracts with all of the other nursing homes involved in the March strike by early June, Gulley said. Each facility bargained separately for its contract.

While those contracts were being negotiated, the state Nursing Home Workforce Standards Board, which Gulley is a member of, agreed on an industry minimum of $19 per hour and added overtime pay for 11 federal holidays.

The board needs to approve the minimum pay rates by August 1, according to state statute.

However, the new rates will not go into effect until 2026. Gulley said early this year that was the reason the union was bargaining for increased wages now, rather than waiting for the board to set a statewide wage floor.

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