Nearly 1,000 nurses at St. Charles Bend voted to authorize a strike after more than five months negotiating with the hospital system. The Oregon Nurses Association collected votes between May 16 and May 21, claiming the vote was “all but unanimous” but didn’t provide an exact tally by press time.
Throughout the bargaining process, nurses have demanded policies that they say would recruit and retain more nurses. The union is seeking higher wages and improved nurse-to-patient ratios. St. Charles struggled to maintain adequate staffing throughout the pandemic and relied on travel nurses to fill gaps left by worker shortages.
“St. Charles has been hemorrhaging nurses for years,” said Joel Hernandez, a nurse in the OR at St. Charles, member of the ONA St. Charles bargaining team, and vice president of the ONA Board of Directors, in a press release. “Since 2018, 549 nurses have left the bedside at St. Charles due to unsafe working conditions, including unsafe staffing levels. It is simply unsustainable. Something must be done to improve conditions so that we can stop bleeding staff and recruit new nurses to replace the ones who have left.”
In February St. Charles announced a $5 per hour increase for all registered nurses at the Bend campus as a first step to recruit and retain nurses. There is a nationwide shortage of registered nurses, according to the American Federation of Teachers, that estimates that 55,000 nurses left the industry between 2021 and 2022 in a study published in November, 2022. Around the same time, the ONA found less than 1% of respondents reported their unit is always staffed appropriately.
The negotiations have been fraught at times. Earlier this month 10 nurses submitted complaints to the Oregon Health Authority alleging the hospital system failed to maintain safe staffing levels. In April, ONA members filed two unfair labor practice complaints with the National Labor Relations Board that said St. Charles bargained in bad faith when it withheld information that was relevant to bargaining. Prior to that, nurses alleged the hospital system spied on nurses engaging in union activity.
“Management has failed to take our contract negotiations seriously. They have failed to come to the table with reasonable offers and have failed to listen to the serious concerns of their nursing staff. The truly overwhelming results from this strike authorization vote are proof that nurses are standing together for the benefit of our patients, our community, and our hospital,” Erin Harrington, a nurse and member of the St. Charles Bargaining Unit, said in a press release.
The union authorized a strike but did not explicitly set a date. ONA must give a 10-day warning to St. Charles for it to cease admissions, transfer patients or reach an agreement with the union. The two bargaining teams met twice in the week since the union authorized a strike and are expected to meet four times in June if both parties don’t reach an agreement sooner.
“Strikes are always a last resort, never a first resort. But the unsafe working conditions at St. Charles Medical Center have become so serious, and the lack of action from management so glaring, that the nurses have been forced to issue a code red,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, ONA’s national union, in a press release.
In statements to media, St. Charles leaders said the hospital will continue to negotiate with the union and plans to avoid a work stoppage, but said the hospital will remain open if they don’t reach an agreement. In March 2021, 156 health care technology specialists picketed St. Charles Medical Center for 11 days without meeting an agreement. However, nurses at St. Charles haven’t called a strike since 1980. Prior negotiations have stalled longer than current talks, with contract negotiations lasting more than seven months during its last renewal.
This article appears in Source Weekly June 1, 2023.
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Ninety-four percent of the ONA members authorized a strike, with 98% voting. That’s a strong show of support for the union’s bargaining committee. St. Charles has hated and fought the nurses’ union for 43 years–since nurses were forced to strike in 1980 to get their first contract. Time for management to get serious. And time for the community to step up and support these essential workers who give so much to us. Solidarity Forever!