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Nearly 5,000 nurses took to the picket lines on Monday — Labor Day — as they began an open-ended strike at five Twin Cities hospitals operated by the Allina Health system. The strike follows a 22-hour negotiation session that stretched from Friday into Saturday morning but failed to produce an agreement between the Minnesota Nurses Association and Minneapolis-based Allina. “We should be at a Labor Day picnic, and here we are at a Labor Day picket instead,” MNA executive director Rose Roach said at a Monday news conference outside Abbot Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis. (Cooney, 9/5)

The second strike this summer by more than 4,000 Allina Health nurses started like the first — with a bagpiper serenading the pickets at 7 a.m. Monday at Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis, and cheers rising as bleary-eyed nurses finishing overnight shifts emerged from the hospital. And yet this walkout felt very different to the picketing nurses. The June strike lasted seven days; this one, they say, won’t end until a deal is reached. (Olson, 9/6)

Thousands of nurses at five Minnesota hospitals went on strike today in a dispute over health insurance, workplace safety and staffing levels. Here's a look at some of the issues. (Benson and Karnowski, 9/4)