Around 135 nurse practitioners and physician assistants at Legacy hospitals and clinics ratified a first contract Jan. 2 after ending a 29-day strike.
The workers are known as advanced practice providers, a category that sits between doctors and nurses in training and responsibility. They’re represented by the Oregon Nurses Association (ONA).
Members rejected a tentative agreement that the unit’s bargaining team and Legacy had reached just before Christmas. The union announced a second tentative agreement Dec. 30 and called off the strike before the ratification vote took place.
The new contract sets up formal pay scales and gives across-the-board raises. It also establishes consistent pay for extra shifts and extended shifts.
Workers got an average 7% raise upon ratification. The pay scales start salaries at $151,500 a year in departments like cardiology, general surgery, and hospice, and rise to as high as $215,000 for members with 20 years of experience in psychiatric and trauma specialties. That equates to hourly rates of $72.84 to $103.37.
Initial raises that come from placement on the step scale are capped at 12%. Workers will get three additional 2.75% raises over the contract, which expires March 31, 2029.
The union agreed to end the strike ahead of the second ratification vote and enter a 90-day “cooling off” period, meaning that even if members had rejected the second tentative agreement, the strike wouldn’t have restarted for at least three months.
ONA said the new contract doesn’t bring Legacy advanced practice providers’ pay up to par with other big medical systems in the Portland area, which had been their goal.
The bargaining team had to talk members through the changes in the second tentative agreement because it didn’t move forward the way that people were expecting, said bargaining team member April Callister, a physician associate in the cardiothoracic surgery department.
“I think every single person, myself included, when we issued the strike notice, was expecting movement on base wages in the direction towards some of our direct competitors, so OHSU and Kaiser,” Callister said. “So when people saw the first — and honestly the second TA — they’re like, ‘well, these are the same numbers, what movement did you even get?’ People were frustrated.”
The second tentative agreement had the same wage scales and raises as the first tentative agreement, but the raises came a few months sooner. For an advanced practice practitioner with five years of experience at the beginning of the contract, the first tentative agreement meant an additional $7,300 over three years compared to Legacy’s pre-strike offer. The second tentative agreement added around $2,300 more over the three-year period.
Thousands of Legacy workers unionized in 2024 and 2025, and most are still trying to secure their first union contracts.
