About 70 nurses and supporters walked in front of the hospital in Albert Lea on Wednesday to show unity. The nurses are a bargaining unit that has been without a contract in place since July.

For a demonstration they called RN & Friends Walk, the group met at the gazebo at Fountain Lake Park and walked to the Emergency Room entrance on Park Avenue and back. They also had a brief meeting to discuss the next talks with administrators at Mayo Clinic Health System in Albert Lea.

The next talks are slated for May 3 and 16. They will be the first ones since February, primarily because of difficulties with scheduling.

Mark Ciota, the CEO of Mayo Clinic Health System in Albert Lea, released a statement:

“I respect the union’s right to picket and am confident progress can be made at our next negotiating session.”

The union members belong to the Minnesota Nurses Association and noted that the senior nurses in Albert Lea are the lowest paid in the Mayo System by 50 cents an hour (not the lowest in the state, as some had said last week).

However, the nurses on Wednesday said wages are merely one aspect. MNA spokeswoman Jan Rabbers said they are more concerned with keeping nurses in Albert Lea.

“Right now, several are commuting to Austin, Rochester, Fairmont and other distances. Why can’t we keep them home, to help their neighbors and friends? What draws them to those other locations; what compels them to leave their hometown to work somewhere else?” she asked.

The same sentiments were spoken Wednesday by lead negotiator Kathy Lehman, a nurse in Albert Lea for nearly 34 years. She said Albert Lea needs to be a place that attracts talented new nurses and retains its experienced nurses.

“They are a tremendous resource, and we lose them,” she said.

Lehman said the nurses care about patient safety, which is why the nurses are concerned about three aspects: “appropriate staffing,” “the support of supervisors” in an “atmosphere that fosters empowerment” and the “need to know that their input is valued.”

Mandatory cancels — when nurses are sent home and lose hours and income — are part of the negotiations, but Lehman said she cannot discuss specifics of the talks.

Lehman said remembers only one time that contracts took longer than this time. She added that nurses are called to the profession because they want to help patients.

“Nothing can replace the time a nurse spends bedside,” Lehman said. “We are doing as much as we can with the resources we have to get as much done as possible with the time available,” she said.

There hasn’t been a strike by nurses since 1990, when they won a fight to end mandatory overtime.

Lehman said the nurses go into the next round hopeful that a solution can be found.