News

On June 28th, the Lab Professionals at PeaceHealth St. John in Longview, Washington had their latest in a months long series of negotiations for their next union contract. As has happened in the past several sessions, management has refused to bargain on required issues and are denying our members the ability to receive living wages. The Lab Professionals are facing historically low wages for their position relative to the market, which means that staffing levels have been low enough to potentially harm the future of patient care. This is a problem that many of our members have seen in their

ONA Members at Providence Portland Medical Center, Providence Seaside Hospital and Providence Home Health and Hospice:

The Nurses of OFNHP want to send a message of support to you as you stand together against Providence. Our members work at Kaiser Permanente, PeaceHealth, St. Charles, and Mid-Columbia Medical Center. Your fight for safe staffing and fair pay, and just working conditions is something that unites all of us and your success will improve patient care throughout the Pacific Northwest. 

All of our “non-profit” employers hide behind their inflated bank balances while screaming poverty

In our most recent bargaining session, the employer met our team with little movement on multiple important issues. We have an update in our table below to highlight the positions of both the union and the employer.

To this date, the employer has violated Federal Law and committed multiple Unfair Labor Practices (ULPs). The employer first committed a ULP when unilaterally taking away our overtime pay and changing clock in/out practices in March 2023. Most recently, the employer refuses to bargain over mandatory subjects of bargaining that our members care about, such as: Paid Time Off, Fair

In AFT President Randi Weingarten’s latest New York Times  column, she describes what it is exactly that unions do. Though unions are the most popular they have been in decades, anti-union sentiment still thrives in red states and across the nation. “Several years ago, The Atlantic ran a story whose headline made even me, a labor leader, scratch my head: ‘Union Membership: Very Sexy,’” Weingarten writes in the column. “The gist was that higher wages, health benefits and job security—all associated with union membership—boost one’s chances of getting married. Belonging to a union doesn’t actually guarantee happily ever after, but it does help working people have a better life in the here and now.” Click through to read the full column.

On the morning of Wednesday, March 1st, more than 20 Certified Nursing Assistants (CNA)s marched into the office of PeaceHealth Columbia Network’s CEO, Sean Gregory, demanding increased incentive pay as a solution for the unsafe staffing levels many report facing. The CNAs at PeaceHealth are facing a staffing crisis similar to that faced by our members at Kaiser Permanente, St. Charles, and Mid-Columbia Medical Center, and at hospitals and clinics across the country. 

This action was designed to raise this staffing issue in a way that Gregory could not ignore, showing that PeaceHealth needed to

Below is a testimony written by Jamie Dawson, a Kaiser Permanente RN who submitted this written testimony in support of our staffing bill, HB 2697. This gives a clear picture of what is happening at the hospital, and why we need safe staffing now.

As a registered nurse, having worked in hospitals in Oregon since 1994, and as a steward in the Oregon Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals, I can testify that hospitals are simply not providing the health care people need--not in terms of access, not in terms of quality or standards of care, not in terms of outcomes for patients. People are

The technical employees at the Mid-Columbia Medical Center in The Dalles, Oregon have voted to approve their first union contract. Negotiations over this contract have lasted several months, after these frontline healthcare workers voted to join the Oregon Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals (OFNHP), Local 5017 of the 1.7 million member American Federation of Teachers, Nurses and Health Professionals (AFT). These workers voted to ratify this contract by an astounding 100%. 

“We are excited that the techs will finally have a voice at Mid-Columbia Medical Center,” says Meggan Erland, an

The Mid-Columbia Medical Center techs have just won a Tentative Agreement on their first union contract since voting to join the Oregon Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals. This ia major step forward for these healthcare workers in their fight for healthcare and workplace justice and in changing the culture at Mid-Columbia.

Now they will need to vote on ratification, to turn the Tentative Agreement into a final Collective Bargaining Agreement. Voting will take place at in-person sessions where you can look at all the details of the new contract and ask any questions you would like

Our bargaining team met with management last week to continue the process of bargaining our contract, and we are also looking forward to Friday, February 10^th, when we return to negotiations.

Because management has been rigid and uncooperative in our bargaining sessions, we have had to go into a formal mediation process to make any progress. We took our first of three mediation sessions to again emphasize to the Hospital our position that we are not second-class employees, and we expect our standards and benefits to be on par with other professional employees within the Hospital. Right now