FILE: An undated, provided photo of Randall Children’s Hospital in Portland, Ore. Nurses employed by the hospital expressed intent to unionize on Monday, Jan. 6, 2025.
Courtesy of Legacy Health
Nurses at Legacy Health’s three largest hospitals are planning to unionize, according to an announcement from the Oregon Nurses Association Monday.
The union says more than 70% of the nurses from Legacy Good Samaritan Medical Center, Legacy Emanuel Medical Center and Randall Children’s Hospital have signed union authorization cards, triggering the right to hold a union election per federal law. Nurses are seeking voluntary recognition of the union by Legacy management.
“We respect our nurses’ rights to determine union representation through an election to be held by the National Labor Relations Board,” a Legacy spokesperson wrote in a brief statement emailed Monday.
The union would represent more than 2,200 nurses across the three Legacy hospitals. Legacy is the last major health system in the Portland metro area where a majority of nurses aren’t unionized.
The campaign reflects growing concerns among health care staff about workplace safety and staffing levels. At Legacy, there are also concerns about job security as competitor OHSU seeks to acquire the Legacy system this year, according to a press release from ONA.
Nurse Kathryn Geren, who works in the cardiac ICU at Legacy Emanuel and is a leader in the unionization effort, said the acquisition creates risks and benefits for Legacy’s staff.
“By unionizing, we’re able to secure the protections that we know we deserve and we’ll also be able to have a voice during the critical transition,” Geren said.
In a deal that reportedly caught Legacy’s management off-guard, OHSU has guaranteed unionized workers 12 months of employment following the merger, while non-union employees get only a six-month guarantee.
Matt Sullivan, an emergency department nurse at Good Samaritan, said the killing last year of an-on duty security guard, by the family member of patient, motivated some of his colleagues to organize.
“It really turned our world upside down,” Sullivan said. “Having input into workplace safety, and the conditions in which you work, is essential to doing a good job.”
Legacy’s nurses and physicians at other facilities have, in recent years, rapidly unionized.
Nurses at Legacy Mt. Hood, Silverton, Legacy’s Unity Center for Behavioral Health (Unity), and pros and techs at Unity are already part of the Oregon Nurses Association.
Hospitalists, primary care doctors and advanced practice providers across Legacy’s hospitals unionized in 2024 with the Pacific Northwest Hospital Medicine Association, which also represents advanced practitioners at some Providence hospitals.