A tentative agreement to end the 43-day strike was struck Friday by nurses who are on strike at all eight Providence hospitals in Oregon.
This is the second time the hospital chain and the nurses union have reached an agreement.Some nurses privately stated on Friday that they intend to vote no again after nurses decisively rejected the initial pact earlier this month.
A few irate nurses expressed their opinion that the most recent contract does not fairly pay them for the time they spent working without a contract the previous year. Others are dissatisfied that nurses’ health insurance plans are not improved by the new contract.
According to a statement given to members Friday afternoon by the Oregon Nurses Association, the proposed agreement does provide salary increases of at least sixteen percent if it is approved.
According to a union press release, some nurses will see wage increases of up to 42% for the duration of the new contract. Each hospital has a different contract duration; some expire next year, while others endure until 2027.
In a statement released Friday, Providence Oregon CEO Jennifer Burrows expressed the organization’s hope that nurses represented by ONA will approve the tentative agreements that provide a strong future for all of us.
Since January 10, almost 5,000 Providence nurses in Oregon have gone on strike. The hospitals in Hood River, Medford, Milwaukie, Newberg, Seaside, and Oregon City are among those impacted by the strike, along with Portland’s St. Vincent and Providence Portland Medical Center.
Each hospital’s union nurses must approve the new agreement by a majority vote. Voting runs from Saturday till Sunday at 4 p.m. According to the union, nurses will remain on strike during the voting and resume work on Wednesday if deals are approved.
The agreement was reached about two weeks after the greatest health care strike in Oregon history was prolonged after union nurses at all Providence hospitals in the state unanimously rejected a previously negotiated contract package.
Concerns about wages and staffing were not adequately addressed by the first agreement, according to some nurses.
The absence of retroactive pay increases for the time nurses worked without a contract was a significant issue with the prior proposal. Some claimed that the one-time bonus based on hours worked since the last contracts expired was insufficient.
Hospital nurses whose contracts ended prior to December 2024 will receive retroactive compensation under the recently reached agreement. The most recent plan calls for retroactive pay increases for nurses at Hood River, Medford, Milwaukie, Willamette Falls, and St. Vincent that would cover 75% of their hours worked in the previous year.
“We were fighting for retro pay for everyone who had been out of contract for the past year,” said Richard Botterill, an emergency nurse and the chair of Providence Portland’s nurses negotiation team. The 75% of nurses who were able to negotiate still receive far more than what (Providence) had first agreed to, even if we would have like to receive full retro pay.
Since December 2023, nurses at Providence Willamette Falls and St. Vincent have been operating under an expired contract, according to Virginia Smith, a nurse there. Smith claimed that despite her and other hospital negotiation team members’ efforts, Providence was unable to agree to provide the nurses with full retroactive compensation.
“It does seem like we’re making a significant sacrifice in an attempt to reach a consensus,” Smith said. Because it does not offer full retro pay, a sizable majority of all the nurses currently on the line will ultimately vote this down.
In lieu of retroactive salary increases for the previous several weeks, nurses at Providence Portland and Seaside whose contracts ended in December 2024 will receive a $1,750 ratification bonus.
The fact that contracts ended at different times depending on the location was another significant grievance nurses had with the previous contract plan. In order to increase their bargaining leverage in future negotiations—particularly in the event of a potential strike—nurses throughout the health system campaigned to align their contracts.
The new tentative deal, according to the heads of the bargaining team, resolves this problem by bringing the contract expiration dates of many hospitals into alignment. The contracts for nurses at St. Vincent, Milwaukie, Willamette Falls, and Newberg, for instance, would end in December 2026. The contracts for Providence Portland and Seaside would end in December 2027, while those for Hood River and Medford would expire in March 2027.
According to Christie Sowards, a nurse and part of the Providence Milwaukie negotiation team, pairing contracts for large and small hospitals provides the latter a greater say at the negotiating table.
When we are fighting for things at the same time, it helps to be in alignment. According to Sowards, it makes us more comparable on the pay spectrum.
Working conditions were the subject of another significant bargaining point. In their contract, nurses and Providence management disagreed about how to interpret the state’s new hospital staffing law.
Provisions to establish a state hospital staffing law were part of the original agreement. However, nurses contended that while assessing the maximum number of patients assigned to each nurse, the prior contract’s language failed to sufficiently take the severity of a patient’s condition into account.
As per Friday’s agreement, the union claims that staffing plans will now take patient acuity into account.
Providence and nurses have fundamentally disagreed on how to interpret the staffing law, according to Kim Martin, a nurse at Providence Portland. The new negotiated language will assist bridge the gap between the two sides, she said.
Penalty pay for each missed meal or break is also included in the proposed contract.
Additionally, nurses complained that their present health insurance coverage occasionally made it difficult for them to see their regular physicians, therefore they sought adjustments to their own plans.
The new contract creates a workgroup to examine current coverage but does not require changes to their health insurance. The previous contract also contained the clause.
More
health
-
Pope Francis listed in critical condition after asthmatic crisis
-
Measles outbreak nears 100 cases, raising fears of undetected spread in Texas
-
State pays record $4M to settle suit in 20-year-old s suicide
Providence has had to pay for 2,000 replacement nurses to keep operations going as a result of the walkout. During the strike, it also restricted certain patient appointments and operations.
Following their ratification of their first labor deal with the health system, about 80 employees of Providence’s six women’s clinics in the Portland region who went on strike at the same time as the nurses returned to work early this month.
The first-ever labor agreement between Providence and a group of 70 hospitalists and palliative care physicians at St. Vincent Medical Center, who just joined the Pacific Northwest Hospital Medicine Association, was also authorized. However, their labor contract states that they cannot resume work unless the striking nurses from the same hospital sign their agreement, therefore they have stayed on the picket line.
Face-to-face mediation sessions between Providence’s negotiators and the striking nurses resumed Tuesday.
According to Botterill, a member of Providence Portland’s bargaining team, his group continued to negotiate until 2:30 a.m. on Friday.
He remarked, “It’s a given that we didn’t get everything we wanted because that’s what bargaining is.” I don’t think we did too badly, though, when you take a step back and consider what we did do in the larger picture.
Kristine de Leon uncovers tales about data enterprise, small company, retail, and consumer health.
[email protected] is her email address.
