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A Newsweek article from 2023 touted my employer, HealthPartners, as a "great place to work." I wonder who said that. My union, Office and Professional Employees International Union (OPEIU) Local 12, has been in tough negotiations since September. We will probably be taking a strike vote soon.

I'm a steward and a member of the bargaining team. As frustrating as the process has been, there is no place I would have been other than at that bargaining table, where we have been fighting to expand justice and dignity at our workplace.

Because the proposals that HealthPartners gave us were an attack on our dignity, as well as on our value to HealthPartners. Among other things, they want to triple our health premiums while giving us a laughable wage proposal: 2.5%. In our wage ranges, this amounts to 50-80 cents per hour. Offset against the health plan increase, I would take home roughly $10 more per two-week pay period.

Their stance takes me back to watching television on Saturday mornings when my kids were little. When I tried to find something educational, we'd end up watching a show about wild animals. It was all great until they showed where an animal fits into the food chain. Ka-boom! There's the lion, pouncing on that poor little zebra.

But we're not zebras and we're not their prey. We're human beings with families that love us and trust us to do what's right for them.

We need to make enough money to support ourselves and our families with one job. They say they pay the "industry standard." That "standard" assumes many of us need to moonlight. That standard has no work/life balance, no dignity. We've proposed raises of $5/hour for each year of the contract to do exactly that: to restore that balance and that dignity. Lest this be seen as "too much": We agreed to no raises in 2020, the first year of the COVID pandemic.

We're also fighting to protect our health care plan. It's a great one because we've fought for it. It's the plan we would want for everyone in this country. We won't go back.

Often in these struggles, employers will talk about "the union" as if we were some outside body – "the union is demanding … ." Like the union came out of nowhere, making demands, creating barriers. But my coworkers and I are learning that the union is all of us.

Our CEO, Andrea Walsh, makes $3.6 million a year, or nearly $1,800 an hour. That's more than most of us make in a two-week pay period. HealthPartners would function considerably better without overpaid executives, like her and her photo-ops.

But without us? There would be no appointments scheduled, no phones answered, no calls returned, no copays taken, no reimbursements processed. To say nothing of the kindness and care we extend to our patients and colleagues. Yet our patience has its limits: Of the 1,000-plus members at HealthPartners, 901 signed a strike pledge (a precursor to a strike vote).

It has been the deepest honor to serve my union in this way. Our bargaining team has taken and continue to take our role seriously. We are humbled by the trust our coworkers have put in us. Unity, loyalty and solidarity will win the day.

This is a struggle for a future with balance and hope. While looking forward, our fight also calls to mind the labor movement's time-honored struggle for justice. In the labor song, "Solidarity Forever," written by Ralph Chapin in 1915, the last stanza articulates a vision that is still true today:

In our hands is placed a power greater than their hoarded gold,

Greater than the might of armies, magnified a thousandfold.

We shall bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old,

For the union makes us strong.

Paula Moyer, of Lauderdale, Minn., is a clinical assistant at HealthPartners, where she is a steward for Office and Professional Employees International Union Local 12 and a member of the union's bargaining team.