A crisis was averted this month when the local members of the Oregon Nurses Association reached an agreement with St. Charles Health System, giving nurses a big raise over the life of their contracts and ensuring they’re compensated when they miss meal and rest breaks. St. Charles remained Bend’s largest employer in Economic Development for Central Oregon’s 2023 rankings, though it’s interesting to note that its numbers are down from the two years prior, with 3,506 reported employees in 2023, 3,527 in 2022 and 3,648 in 2021. The pay that St. Charles’ nurses with a bachelor’s degree will earn is now higher than that of nurses in the Portland area, some of whom are currently in contract negotiations of their own.
These increases will ideally ensure that nurses stay in their jobs, that health care remains stable in the region and that people who need more than emergency care will be able to get it. Had the nurses opted to strike, the region could have seen the shutdown of elective surgeries and other non-emergency services. Having only barely recovered from the most potent effects of the pandemic, including the shutdown of elective surgeries, it would have represented a setback, to be sure.
Meanwhile, some other workers who were — and are still — affected by the fallout of the pandemic are coming up right behind the nurses. Members of the Bend Education Association, who work for Bend’s second-largest employer, Bend-La Pine Schools, are in the midst of updating their contracts, which expire June 30. The union’s 1,100 members, like the nurses, want higher pay that is more on par with their colleagues in the Portland area. Those who pay rents and mortgages or buy groceries in Bend know that the days of seeing higher prices in Portland compared to Central Oregon are long gone. Portland’s median home price was $538,00 in May, according to Redfin; Bend’s was $747,500.
In addition to the financial challenges that come with lower pay in a higher-cost environment, educators have described today’s classrooms as a “war zone,” where students are struggling with social skills and behavioral issues are only getting worse. Educators have been sounding the alarm over this issue over the past several years, but so far, the response from the wider community appears to be more on the performative side. Groups of “mama bears” have popped up in Crook County and nationwide, purporting to run for school board positions to assert the will and oversight of parents in regards to curriculum. But when it comes time for school boards to review and adopt curriculum, few, if any, community members show up, school board members told us. Teachers are begging for more support, but it seems that the type that involves loud protest over unfounded fears of Critical Race Theory and LGBTQ+ issues is more palatable for people than showing up to volunteer as a hall monitor.
The longer this goes on, the more passionate and qualified educators we’ll see leaving.
In Crook County, an award-winning superintendent is walking away from her job due to the lack of tangible support for the real and challenging work that educators do. In Bend and elsewhere, educators and administrators have likely waited with bated breath over the past many weeks to see whether the Oregon Senate would once again gain the quorum that would let it pass a significant budget, buoyed by the income from the Student Success Act. The additional funds from that Act will, “Stabilize funding for our schools and allow us to continue to respond to significant equity gaps still lingering from the pandemic,” said Rep. Zach Hudson, vice chair of the House Committee on Education, in a press release.
Likewise, nurses in the state have likely been watching the progress of HB 2697 – the legislative solution to ensuring Oregon’s health care providers establish safe staffing levels. With the Oregon Senate now back at work as of late last week, bills such as that one now have a chance. Barring that, it is only under the canopy of union organization that these critical workers in our community had a chance of advocating for themselves. If these are not examples of how union membership can and does impact people’s lives, we don’t know what does.
This article appears in Source Weekly June 22, 2023.
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Prior to the agreement the average nurse salary at St. Charles was over $100k/year. I never heard the union refute that number. There are plenty of homes in Deschutes County that are affordable for someone making this kind of money. And it is certainly not an issue with a two-income household.