The Oregon Nurses Association is urging Providence Health to resume negotiations after health system officials warned more than 4,000 striking nurses at eight hospitals they’ll lose health coverage if they aren’t back at work by Feb 28.
The new development comes more than a month after Oregon’s largest-ever strike began, two weeks after Gov. Tina Kotek urged both sides to come to a deal, and a week after nurses at all eight hospitals resoundingly voted down the tentative terms agreed to by union negotiators.
FILE - Hundreds of striking workers line the road outside of Providence St. Vincent Medical Center, in Portland, Ore., Jan. 10, 2025.
Kristyna Wentz-Graff / OPB
Nurses union officials issued a statement Thursday saying that “threatening to strip health insurance from nurses and their families, including children, while delaying and prolonging contract negotiations, is shameful and inexcusable.”
According to the union, Providence has not engaged in negotiations or mediation in the past week, since members voted down the tentative deals reached after a week of intense negotiations.
On Feb. 7, union leaders announced the outcome of the votes while urging Providence to send a “fair contract.”
In a statement, Providence replied, “Ironically, the same union bargaining team members who today were criticizing the terms of those agreements, recommended that they be ratified when they passed them on to the bargaining unit members for a vote.”
Sides debate Providence offer
What happens next is unclear.
Providence spokespeople said the health system was offering an average 20% wage increase, which would pay a “typical full-time acute-care nurse” $150,000 a year.
The union shot back that the number was fiction and that a typical nurse could make as little as $88,000 a year.
The discrepancy appears based on different assumptions — the union’s figure was not for a full-time nurse, but for one working six-tenths of that, or 24 hours a week. That’s closer to what most nurses do at Providence, according to the union.
The trend towards less-than-full-time work among Providence nurses has been driven by the stress of the job caused by understaffing, according to Scott Palmer, a nurses association spokesperson. He called the Providence figure of $150,000 “insane” and “completely irrational.”
The union has sought to get Providence to match OHSU’s market-leading wages. According to the union, the Providence offer “lagged the market by 4.3%.”
According to a survey by the Oregon Center for Nursing, 1,800 RNs in Oregon in late 2023 reported an average hourly wage of $55.14, equating to an annual full-time salary of $114,694. At the same time, state employment data showed an average wage for RNs of $53.23 per hour or $110,710 annually
Becker’s Hospital Review reported that 2023 federal data, the most recent available, indicated Oregon nurses on average were the fourth-highest paid in the nation after wages were adjusted for cost of living.
Nurses who opposed the tentative deal a week ago told The Lund Report that in addition to pay, the issues include lower-than-needed paid-time-off policies, lack of retroactive pay and high premiums for health care.
According to the union, a St. Vincent’s nurse who earns $85,000 a year would pay 11.5% of their wages, or $9,784 in annual premiums and deductibles for family coverage. A Providence executive making $1.1 million a year, however, would pay $9,784 per year for coverage, or 1.1%.
Providence losing money
Providence is paying an estimated $25 million a week for 2,000 replacement nurses to replace the more than 4,000 who went out on strike.
In a recent 12-month period before the strike, the health system paid $460 million in wages for nurses in Oregon, or nearly $9 million a week, according to Providence.
If that figure is correct, the 20% average increase in the tentative deal would add roughly $90 million in yearly costs to Providence in Oregon. Adding another 4.3% would bring that to nearly $110 million.
Providence Oregon reported having lost $100 million in the 12 months ending September 30, compared to about $4 billion in operating revenue, amounting to losses of about 2.5% for the year.
Overall, the multistate system registered about $150 million in operating losses on about $23 billion in revenues in the same time span; those losses were offset by about $400 million in other financial gains.
Coverage cutoff expected since December
The threat to cut off health coverage was not unexpected. Since December the union had been warning members that under their existing contract, Providence could try to cut off coverage as early as Feb. 1.
However, nurses association attorneys were confident that, if necessary, they would prevail with a legal challenge to ensure coverage lasted to Feb. 28, a spokesperson told The Lund Report on Dec. 30.
According to Providence, the message sent to striking nurses Thursday afternoon read as follows:
“Since the beginning of the strike, Providence and ONA have been clear that health care benefits for striking caregivers would not continue indefinitely. Benefits have remained in place for January and February.
“Now, given the extended timeline of the strike, health care benefits will lapse for striking caregivers as of Feb. 28. These caregivers will receive information about COBRA in the mail.
“Those striking caregivers who return to work by Feb. 28 will not see a suspension of their benefits.”
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This story was originally published by The Lund Report, an independent nonprofit health news organization based in Oregon. You can reach Nick Budnick at nick@thelundreport.org or via X @NickBudnick.
This republished story is part of OPB’s broader effort to ensure that everyone in our region has access to quality journalism that informs, entertains and enriches their lives. To learn more, visit opb.org/partnerships.
