Rather than hold a strike authorization vote on the critical questions of staffing and pay, the ONA chose instead to limit it to an Unfair Labor Practice dispute. Rather than organize for a serious struggle and unite health care workers across all Providence hospitals and throughout the region, the ONA has dragged out the talks for months since the contract expired on December 31, holding only an informational picket thus far in March that posed no threat to Providence’s revenues and profits. They explicitly stated this in their May 4 announcement of the strike authorization vote, “If and when a strike is called, ONA will give Providence a 10-day notice to allow Providence management adequate time to stop admissions and transfer patients or to reach a fair agreement with nurses and avert a work stoppage.” The ONA bureaucracy has absolutely no intention of leading the strike that workers have just authorized. In order to carry out such a struggle, nurses must take the reins of this fight into their own hands, organizing rank-and-file committees independent of the ONA. The timing of a strike now would also align with the sentencing of the nurse RaDonda Vaught on May 13 and protests that are expected to oppose the scapegoating of the Tennessee nurse for medical errors, which are the inevitable result of understaffing, cost cutting and the subordination of health care to profit. Hundreds or even thousands of Providence and Kaiser nurses may turn out to the rally called by the ONA on Wednesday evening, showing their solidarity with St. Vincent nurses’ strongest allies in fighting for a common struggle for their collective interests. Nurses at OHSU and Kaiser are not competitors, but rather St. Vincent nurses can appeal to hundreds of thousands of nurses in the region for their defense. The wave of health care worker opposition reflected in the strikes in California and elsewhere demonstrates that there is widespread support for a struggle, and St. Vincent nurses are in a powerful position to launch a strike. Vincent nurses, the most critical question now is how a serious struggle can be waged. With the urgency of the issues confronting St. Vincent nurses, the comparisons fail to recognize the stagnant pay of health care workers across the entire state, which has risen at a rate far below annual inflation. While useful to get a sense of the inadequate pay of St. Pay for shift differentials is $6 to $13 less than what is offered by other hospitals. Veteran nurses are paid 9 to 15 percent less than their peers at other hospitals. Vincent’s nurses are paid 5 to 12 percent less when they enter the profession. Lacking the staff to adequately respond to the Delta and Omicron waves of COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations, the state had to send the National Guard to the front lines.ĭespite the sacrifices nurses have been forced to make during the pandemic, pay rates across the state are inadequate. The Oregon Health Association (OHA) stated in last year’s legislative report that it received staffing waiver requests from 51 hospitals in the first five months of 2021. We’re doing more with less every day.”īetween 20, 17 of the state’s 18 large hospitals, 20 of 22 medium-sized hospitals, and 14 of 25 critical access hospitals requested a waiver from the recommended safe staffing levels. It’s like watching healthcare gradually fall apart, knowing it can be better, but no one is fixing it. Vincent nurse, recently told the Oregonian, “Long term issues were definitely exaggerated by COVID, but we have a mass exodus of people moving away from the bedside.
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