Nurses on strike at all eight Providence hospitals in Oregon approved new labor contracts in a vote tallied Monday, clearing the way for their return to work.
The result means that most striking nurses will return to Providence’s hospitals Thursday. Those who work night shifts will report to work Wednesday night.
Nearly 5,000 members of the Oregon Nurses Association, a labor union representing health workers at all eight Providence hospitals across the state, walked off the job on Jan. 10. Hospitals affected by the strike include Portland’s St. Vincent, Providence Portland Medical Center and hospitals in Hood River, Medford, Milwaukie, Newberg, Seaside and Oregon City.
Providence said it was “pleased” that the nurses voted to ratify their new contracts and end the strike.
“We recognize the challenges faced over the past six weeks and are proud of these agreements that address issues the union bargaining teams identified as priorities during negotiations,” the hospital chain said in a statement.
The union and the Catholic not-for-profit hospital system reached a tentative deal on Friday, nearly seven weeks into the largest health workers strike in Oregon history. The agreement had to be ratified by a majority vote of the union nurses at each hospital.
Roughly two weeks earlier, nurses at all eight Providence hospitals overwhelmingly struck down the first deal their union reached with the hospital chain. Critics had argued that deal failed to adequately address wage and staffing concerns.
Unlike the first deal, the latest includes raises that apply retroactively for nurses whose contracts expired before December. It means nurses at St. Vincent, Willamette Falls in Oregon City, Milwaukie, Hood River and Medford would receive retroactive pay increases covering 75% of the hours worked last year.
Nurses at Providence Portland and Seaside, meanwhile, will get a ratification bonus of $1,750. That’s because their contracts expired more recently, in December.
Nurses also argued that the contracts they rejected earlier this month didn’t adequately consider the severity of a patient’s condition in determining the number of patients assigned to each nurse. The new contracts, however, require Providence’s staffing plans to account for how sick patients are and how much care they require.
“We believe that these contracts will lead to greater recruitment and retention of frontline nurses as wages become more aligned with other health systems, and we have staffing language that will allow us to spend more time with the patients that need the most care,” Virginia Smith, a nurse and Oregon Nurses Association bargaining team leader for Providence Willamette Falls Medical Center, said in a statement provided by the union.
Nurses across the health system had also pushed to synchronize their contracts to strengthen their bargaining power in future negotiations, especially in the event of a potential strike. The rejected contract proposal had varying contract end dates.
The new agreement, however, aligns contract end dates for several hospitals. For example, nurses’ contracts at St. Vincent, Milwaukie, Willamette Falls and Newberg would expire in December 2026. Hood River and Medford contracts would expire in March 2027, while Providence Portland and Seaside would expire December 2027.
Negotiators for Providence and the striking nurses resumed face-to-face mediation sessions last week, after 11 of 12 members of Portland City Council sent a letter to the health system’s executives urging them to return to the table.
The agreement also came five weeks after most striking workers’ last paycheck and just days before Providence said it would end their health insurance coverage at the end of the month.
About 80 workers at Providence’s six Portland-area women’s clinics who went on strike at the same time as the nurses returned to work early this month after ratifying their first labor agreement with the health system.
A group of 70 hospitalists and palliative care doctors at St. Vincent Medical Center, who recently unionized with the Pacific Northwest Hospital Medicine Association, also approved their first ever labor agreement with Providence. Even though the physicians ratified their own contract more than two weeks ago, they remained on the picket line through Saturday. Most of them have since returned to work, according to Providence.
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