Nurses at six Providence locations set to strike Tuesday, June 18

Nurses at six Providence hospitals are set to strike for three days starting Tuesday, June 18.

More than 3,000 nurses are scheduled to strike at Providence Milwaukie Hospital; Providence Willamette Falls Medical Center in Oregon City; Providence Newberg Medical Center; Providence St. Vincent in Washington County; Providence Hood River Memorial Hospital; and Providence Medford Medical Center.

The nurses are represented by the Oregon Nurses Association. ONA delivered a 10-day notice of the nurses’ intent to strike to Providence management on June 7.

ONA and Providence management have been in negotiations for up to nine months at some facilities — including three days of federal mediation in early June — but have remained at loggerheads over new contracts. Nurses have been working under expired contracts since last fall and voted in late May to authorize the strike.

According to an ONA release, 3,000 nurses at the six facilities intend to begin the strike at 6 a.m. Tuesday, June 18. The organization represents nearly 20,000 nurses and other health care workers across the state.

“Since the beginning of the bargaining, nurses’ priorities have remained unchanged: commitment to Oregon’s Safe Staffing Law, affordable and quality health care and market-competitive wages to retain talented nurses and recruit more to fill the many open shifts,” ONA said in a release. “After a four-day mediation session that wrapped up today, nurses said it was clear that hospital management wasn’t interested in responding to their concerns with serious proposals.”

Providence officials countered that they have negotiated in good faith and bemoaned ONA’s decision to strike.

“Hospitals have an obligation and a commitment to care for our patients and our communities, 24 hours a day. For ONA union leadership to call for actions that could prevent Oregonians from getting emergency care or to disrupt care and choke off supplies for patients already in our hospitals is unprofessional and reckless,” Jennifer Burrows, Providence Oregon chief executive, said in a June 14 press release. Providence said it cares for more than 1,100 inpatients daily at its Oregon hospitals.

“ONA’s decision to strike is not a surprise,” Burrows said. “However, it does sadden me both personally and as a fellow nurse. … Since we started negotiating with ONA in the fall of 2023, we proposed substantial wage increases and contract enhancements that our nurses have requested, including language related to (the state’s) new staffing legislation."

The Oregon Legislature passed House Bill 2697 in 2023. The legislation sets minimum nurse-to-patient ratios and urges nursing staff and management to agree on staffing levels and care plans.

ONA has accused numerous hospital systems, including Providence, of violating the new staffing law, which went into effect June 1, 2024. In a letter to the Oregon Health Authority, ONA Executive Director Anne Tan Piazza wrote that Providence's staffing plans "are now being unilaterally abandoned by hospital executives in favor of bare minimum staffing ratios; this is an unequivocal violation of the law which is having a direct impact on nurses’ ability to deliver patient care."

Burrows pointed out that although Providence negotiates each hospital contract separately, “across our six ministries, we have market-competitive offers of approximately 10% increases in the first year of the contracts” and added that a typical full-time nurse at a Providence facility makes more than $100,000 per year.

Burrows also claimed that Providence’s benefit package is sound: “Providence pays 82% of the cost of health care coverage for our caregivers. The health care industry average is 70%.”

Burrows added that the strike will delay negotiations as Providence “will not return to the bargaining table until the strike concludes” and the ONA was aware of that fact when it initiated the strike, yet “repeatedly rejected proposed bargaining dates from Providence teams” and “in some cases we did not meet for bargaining sessions for more than a month.”

ONA officials insist that Providence is not negotiating in good faith and refuses to adjust to the reality of nursing shortages across the nation.

"Providence's continued refusal to address the priorities of our members — including market competitive wages, improved safe staffing and better health benefits — will drive more nurses away and exacerbate the existing workforce shortage," Piazza said in a prepared statement.

Caroline Allison, a registered nurse working in Medford, is quoted in the ONA release. “At Providence Medford, we are facing a staffing crisis and our nurses are overworked, offered low quality health care and paid less than the current market for nurses in Medford,” Allison wrote. “Adding insult to injury, it has now become clear that Providence appears to be systematically trying to undermine Oregon’s Safe Staffing Law. The Safe Staffing Law was intended to solve the nurse workforce shortage crisis and allow us to greatly enhance patient care. Instead, Providence has again made the decision to focus on its bottom lines instead of their workforce, their communities and their patients. This is why I voted to strike. Because if a $28 billion dollar health care corporation isn’t going to fight for the community, our patients, and our nurses, then we will.”

This is not the union’s first foray into strike territory in recent memory: more than 1,800 nurses mounted a five-day strike in June 2023 at three other Providence facilities. Pay and staffing issues also were at the center of contract squabbles at that time, but the nurses reached a deal with Providence several months later.

"A strike is a very, very, very serious action,” Piazza said at a June 7 news conference in Wilsonville. “It is an action that ONA and our nurses at Providence would never take lightly.”

Striking Providence facilities will remain open

Burrows stressed that, despite the strike, the six targeted Providence facilities will remain open.

“We’ve been preparing for months and we have replacement workers coming in to help us care for patients and meet our commitments to our communities,” she said. “We expect to continue providing our comprehensive services during ONA’s work stoppage.”

Providence has hired replacement nurses to work during the strike.

Burrows said that “nurses who want to come to work and not strike are welcome to do so” and Providence will facilitate that. She added that “many core leaders and caregivers will be generously working to care for patients at our hospitals.”