After 43 days on strike, nurses have reached a new tentative agreement with Providence Oregon.
Hundreds of striking workers line the road outside of Providence St. Vincent Medical Center, in Portland, Ore., Jan. 10, 2025. Thousands of workers walked off the job on Friday at all eight Providence hospitals in the state as well as six women’s clinics, including nurses, physicians and advanced practitioners.
Kristyna Wentz-Graff / OPB
The nurses, represented by the Oregon Nurses’ Association, have been on strike indefinitely at all eight of Providence’s hospitals in the state.
This is the second attempt to bring the strike to an end. Earlier this month, nurses voted to reject a deal reached between Providence and their union. A key sticking point was retroactive pay for the months that nurses worked without a contract.
Nurses said they were owed retroactive pay raises after negotiations dragged on long past their contracts’ expiration dates.
The issue of back-pay was reportedly rated as a top priority in surveys conducted by the nurses’ union after the failed vote.
The new deal includes some retroactive pay for nurses with contracts that expired before December 2024, according to a union press release. The back pay will cover 75% of all hours nurses worked in 2024.
Nurse Virginia Smith, on the bargaining team at Providence Willamette Falls, said at a press conference Friday that she’s confident the new agreement will pass.
Smith said settling the amount of back pay nurses were entitled to was one of the linchpins of the new deal.
Agreeing to a number less than 100% was, she said, a necessary sacrifice on the part of the union.
“When you have 3,500 nurses who have their calculator out, you need to make sure what they’re getting is close to what’s on their calculator,” Smith said.
It’s also meaningful, Smith said, that the new agreement refers to the money as back pay. The last agreement did not, instead offering nurses a “ratification bonus,” which some found disrespectful.
“Even though that feels like words, it’s not words. It’s meaningful, when you’ve worked and you’re owed pay,” Smith said.
The tentative agreement also includes a larger wage increase, ranging from 20% to 42% over the three-year contract. Nurses would get an immediate 16% to 22% raise upon ratification, according to the union.
Another sticking point has been the implementation of Oregon’s nurse staffing law, which mandates minimum nurse-to-patient ratios. Nurses have argued that Providence has been using those minimums to justify lower staffing than is safe in some scenarios, such as when a nurse is caring for a sicker than usual patient.
According to the union’s press release, the tentative agreement would mean patient acuity would be factored into Providence’s staffing plans.
Nurse Christie Sowards, chair of the Providence Milwaukie bargaining team, said the language on how acuity will be taken into account varies from contract to contract. At Providence Milwaukie, it empowers supervising nurses to alter the staffing ratios to reduce the number of patients assigned to a nurse.
Nurses had also been pushing to align their contracts’ expiration dates across hospitals. That would increase the power of the union to strike and push for systemic changes.
The tentative agreement does not fully accomplish that goal, according to an ONA spokesperson. But it brings the nurses a step closer to it, by aligning Providence Milwaukie’s contract expiration date with those at Providence St. Vincent, Providence Willamette Falls, and Providence Newberg.
Sowards, chair of the Providence Milwaukie bargaining team, said that having contracts out of alignment has left nurses at smaller hospitals like hers without a seat at the table, essentially agreeing to versions of deals negotiated by the larger players.
“To actually budge a little bit, I think that’s huge,” Sowards said.
If approved, the new contracts for Providence St. Vincent, Newberg, Willamette Falls and Milwaukie last through 2026.
Providence Hood River and Providence Medford’s contracts would go through March 2027. Providence Seaside and Providence Portland’s contracts would expire December 2027.
In a statement, Providence officials said the deal was crafted during intensive bargaining over the past three days. Nurses will vote on the new deal over the weekend. If approved, they would return to work Feb. 23.
