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The members of the Oregon Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals (OFNHP, AFT Local 5017) are voicing our outrage at the ongoing attack on women and healthcare autonomy represented by the recent Supreme Court decision. The nearly 6,000 healthcare professionals we represent across Oregon and Southwest Washington are committed to the idea that healthcare access is a human right, and attacks on reproductive freedom are an act of violence against both the patients we serve and our rights as working people. Access to reproductive care, including abortion, are essential healthcare services

Our power analysis session on August 27th was an incredible success, and we learned how to put together powerful campaigns that can pressure our targets to change things in our workplaces and in the healthcare system as a whole. What comes next is the work of mapping and charting our workplaces, so we can better understand where we are already strong and where we need to build more solidarity. This will be held at our Tigard office on October 12th, starting at 6:00pm, and all members are invited to participate. 

We are inviting you to come to this session and, if possible, bring a co-worker and

Our colleagues at the Alliance of Healthcare Unions, the coalition of 52,000 Kaiser workers that we work with to win our master contract, recently put together a training to help Kaiser members better understand their retirement benefits. You can watch the video of that training below, which provides essential information to help you decode the Kaiser retirement system.

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Our Political Education and Action Committee (PEAC) has been hard at work building relationships with our political allies and setting up our endorsements for this year’s election! Below you will find some of the candidates that we have endorsed, and decisions were made by looking at each leader’s record and answers to important questions posed by colleagues across Oregon’s labor community. 

Below you will find some of the candidates that we have endorsed. Our decisions were made by reviewing each leader’s record on issues that affect our members, their responses to our candidate questionaires

For our Kaiser members covered under the Alliance National Agreement and the Partnership with management, there is an appointed position that helps the bargaining units with added contract enforcement.

Contract Specialists are selected stewards who are on full or partial release from their regular positions for a term of one to two years, typically. This Labor Management Partnership role ensures that the Contract Specialist continues to draw their regular pay from Kaiser.  The contract specialist role was implemented for three important reasons:  

• To improve Partnership implementation at the

The trust was named for Ben Hudnall, a labor leader who held a thirty year business manager position for the Engineers and Scientists of California, Oakland IFPTE Local 20. He was a strong advocate for education and retention of employees. Ben Hudnall’s tireless work in the early days of the partnership, as well as the transition to computerized charting in 2005 saved countless jobs and ensured the Partnership would work towards building the knowledge base of its employees. We now have an employee trust in his name that provides our Kaiser members with critical benefits.

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OFNHP consists of nurses and health professionals who’ve been on the frontlines, providing our communities with lifesaving care throughout this pandemic. To us, a union not only helps protect healthcare workers by fighting for living wages, benefits, and agency on the job. But, it also defends patients by helping medical staff get the resources needed to put patients first. 

That’s why we’re thrilled to voice our support for the newest addition to the American Federation of Teachers, Nurses and Health Professionals (AFT) from the St. Charles Medical System in Bend and Central Oregon. A new

Our union’s strength has been most visible the past few years by the rapid rate of growth we have seen. We’ve added tech units at both St. Charles and Mid-Columbia Medical Center. As such, and as healthcare professionals, we continue to organize and invite new members to become a part of one of the strongest union locals in the country. All workers deserve to build power in their workplaces and have a voice on the job, no matter the size of their unit.

That is why we were proud to invite a group of three new technical employees from PeaceHealth Southwest to join our Tech bargaining unit! The

Weingarten Rights guarantee employees the right to union representation during an investigatory interview or at any time they suspect questioning might be related to disciplinary action. All union represented employees have the right to union representation whenever they believe a line of questioning could result in discipline, not just when the employer says that it could. This is often invoked on normal meetings with management or when answering questions regarding work performance.

What you need to know:

1. If you are represented by a union, you have these rights!
2. You must to invoke them, which

Stewards are the absolute foundation of our union. As a union, we negotiate a union contract (a Collective Bargaining Agreement, or CBA) that affects everything from our wages and benefits to the details of our working conditions all the way to “just cause,” which prevents us from unjust discipline and termination. That contract is, however, only useful in as much as it is followed, and employers are regularly looking for ways around the contract so they can do what they want. Our power is rooted in our ability to enforce the contract, and that’s where stewards come in. A union steward is the