Oregon Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals (OFNHP) has reached tentative agreement on local contracts for six bargaining units at Kaiser Permanente, but workers will have to wait to vote. Though OFNHP announced the tentative agreements Dec. 24, the contracts can’t be finalized until there’s a tentative agreement between Kaiser and the Alliance of Health Care Unions, which negotiates a national contract for OFNHP and 22 other local unions.
OFNHP’s tentative agreements include “market adjustment” raises for Kaiser workers in Oregon and Southwest Washington. Nurses would get a 12.5% raise in the first year, technical employees would get 11% to 14%, and other professional employees would get 9.5% to 12.5%, depending on their positions. Those first-year local raises would be followed by across-the-board raises being negotiated at the national level. Kaiser’s most recent national offer included an immediate 6.5% raise and another 15% incrementally between October 2026 and October 2028.
OFNHP hoped to negotiate “successorship language” in its local agreements, particularly for laboratory workers to ensure that workers maintain union representation even if Kaiser sells parts of its operations. The union also wanted to align contract expiration dates so that all units expire at the same time. When nearly 4,000 OFNHP members in four Kaiser units struck for five days in October along with other Alliance units, OFNHP bargaining units for technicians and dental hygienists could not join the strike because their contracts don’t expire until late 2026. OFNHP didn’t get either of those, but there’s still a chance they might end up in the national agreement.
Kaiser has had a labor-management partnership with the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions since 1997. The Alliance formed in 2018 when a majority of unions left the Coalition.
The national contract and four local OFNHP contracts expired Sept. 30. This is the longest Kaiser workers in either coalition have gone without a new contract since the labor management partnership started, according to Kaiser.
