By MALLORY GRUBEN

Oregon’s first nurses strike in nearly two decades built solidarity among workers, brought a noted national labor leader to Portland, and prompted legal questions about the use of professional strikebreakers. But strikers still have no new union contract. 

Almost 1,800 nurses and clinicians from Providence Portland, Providence Seaside, and Providence Home Health and Hospice walked out June 19 on a five-day strike. The workers are represented by the Oregon Nurse Association (ONA), the state’s largest nurses union. 

The three units started negotiating new contracts almost nine months ago. Workers say they want the next contract to set safe staffing standards and improve wages, healthcare benefits, and paid leave programs. 

“The division between what we were saying we needed and what they were offering was big,” said Providence Portland labor and delivery nurse Molly Burtchaell, a member of the bargaining team. “To push nurses to strike is really saying something.” 

‘Where’s Providence?’

But the strike hasn’t seemed to sway Providence to close that gap any time soon.

Ahead of the walkout, Providence Portland’s chief nursing officer Lori Green notified the union’s bargaining team in an email that the hospital was “very clear in our communications to ONA that our economic proposals following a work stoppage will be very different and not nearly as lucrative as the package they walked away from.” The hospital canceled all bargaining scheduled sessions during the strike, saying it needed “full focus” on preparing the facility for the walkout. That included canceling surgeries, transferring patients, and hiring strikebreakers.

And since the strike ended June 23, management has met just once with one of the three striking units, Providence Home Health and Hospice.

An ONA spokesperson said there weren’t many details from that bargaining session that she could share publicly, but workers at the table told her there was minimal movement by management. No other bargaining sessions were scheduled as of press time, though workers with Providence Portland had proposed times to meet.

Surgical oncology nurse Kyle Cook, secretary of the union bargaining team at Providence Portland, said the delay is due to calendar conflicts. Many workers and managers had pre-planned vacations for the summer, he said, so it’s been difficult finding a time that works for everyone to meet for bargaining.

“I don’t necessarily think they are delaying it to be punitive by any means. I think in some ways it’s logistical,” Cook said. “But we want to get back as soon as possible, so hopefully we will find a time in the next two weeks or so.” 

Despite the delay in further negotiations, Cook says he considers the strike an “incredible success” because more than 95% of the nurses in his unit showed up to the picket line. He saw less than a handful of workers cross the line. 

“To me, it was an overwhelming success in showing solidarity, in showing what we are fighting for,” Cook said. “It gave our members a chance to come out and show the community we care, and show each other how we have each others’ backs going forward as we work toward a contract that creates positive change and gets us back to providing the absolute best care for our patients.” 

Fight for respect

Cook was among the first nurses to the picket line at 4:30 a.m. June 19 outside Providence Portland on Glisan. Within the first six hours of the strike, he was joined by more than 300 nurses, clinicians, and supporters who had signed in for a shift. 

The strike kickoff rally later that day drew more than 1,000 union supporters, including state representatives Travis Nelson and Rob Nosse, State Senator Kathleen Taylor, and U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley. And on June 22, American Federation of Teachers national president Randi Weingarten joined the picket line to speak at another rally. (AFT is the parent union of ONA). 

“The workers represented by ONA … are willing to join together to fight for the dignity and respect their patients deserve. That’s what you see here today,” Weingarten told the Labor Press. 

The block outside of Portland Providence was a sea of green ONA shirts and picket signs with quips like, “Thanks doesn’t pay the bills,” “Home health not home wealth,” “Nurses on the outside, problems on the inside,” and “What would the nuns think of this?” (Providence Health and Services is a Catholic hospital chain originally founded by an order of nuns.) Drivers regularly responded with barrages of honks and cheers.

On the picket line, nurses and clinicians shared stories of working through their lunch breaks because the hospital was short staffed; skipping vacations because their paid time off had to be used for sick days instead; relying on a partner’s health insurance because their coverage through work is too costly; or struggling with ever-growing productivity demands from managers.

All of those challenges are bad for patients, too, because their nurses and clinicians have less time to give them the quality of care they deserve, said Darcie Marley, a short stay surgery nurse who has worked at Providence Portland for 23 years. Marley said she’s expected to use no more than an hour to prepare every patient for surgery. That timeframe works well for a healthy person, but it’s unreasonable to expect the same for a patient who needs special care, she said. Many of her patients come in without their prescription list, so she has to take time to figure out what medicines they’re taking to prevent any unsafe drug interactions.

“And they do time us,” Marley said. “It’s an assembly line,” she said — counter to why she became a nurse. 

Connecting with hundreds of other nurses and clinicians on the picket line who felt the same was inspiring, Marley said. The energy from the strike made her optimistic that nurses can win a fair contract if they stay unified. 

“I actually wrote on the ONA board yesterday, ‘This old broad has been reinvigorated,’” Marley said.

Lawless strikebreakers?

Throughout the strike, Providence Portland kept all blinds on the building drawn to shield managers and more than 400 strikebreaking nurses hired through U.S. Nursing — a company that on its website touts itself as the “premier provider of job action services in the United States.” 

“It is standard practice across the United States to bring in a replacement workforce while caregivers are on strike, to continue caring for patients,” a Providence officials wrote in an email to the Labor Press. “With 10 days to prepare our hospitals and services for the strikes, we worked with an agency that helped ensure we had credentialed, highly competent nurses available to serve our patients.” 

ONA leaders say those nurses were professional strikebreakers — people who regularly find work replacing employees during strikes. Under an Oregon law, it’s illegal for employers to knowingly hire professional strikebreakers. So ONA has asked Oregon’s attorney general to open an investigation against Providence.

“Nurses will not stand idly by while employers callously disregard Oregon law, hiring companies like U.S. Nursing who are fueled only by corporate greed to illegally bring in professional strikebreakers from out of state, putting their fingers on the scales, illegally trying to shift the balance in their favor while nurses fight for their jobs, their health care, and their patient’s welfare,” ONA Executive Director Anne Tan Piazza said during a press conference June 23. “To Providence and other health systems, we say: follow the rules.” 

In a letter to the attorney general, a Providence attorney called the Oregon law “outdated,” claimed that the National Labor Relations Act allows private employers to hire replacement workers, and asked the attorney general to deny the investigation. 

A spokesperson for the attorney general’s office told the Labor Press the criminal and civil division received the letters from ONA and Providence and is reviewing them.

MORE STRIKES TO COME?

Another 3,550 nurses in three ONA-represented units at Oregon Health and Sciences University (OHSU) held informational pickets June 27-29 to ask hospital executives to set safe staffing standards, improve working conditions, and provide pay and benefits that attract and retain workers, among other facility-specific requests. All three contracts covering nurses at Columbia Memorial Hospital, OHSU, and OHSU Hillsboro had expired as of June 30. Workers have been in negotiations with the hospital since December.