News

WASHINGTON—A groundbreaking new report bringing together data and testimony from frontline healthcare workers details crippling shortages across the healthcare industry, revealing dangerous conditions for patients and healthcare professionals alike, exacerbated by profit-driven corporate leadership in the healthcare field.

According to the report, nurses and other healthcare workers are exhausted, burnt out, anxious and leaving the profession in droves, a trend that began long before the COVID-19 pandemic and can be addressed with a series of key interventions and policy recommendations

Election day has come and gone – and across the country, votes are still being tallied. Election day is not “results” day, and democracy depends on taking the time to count every single vote.

In Oregon, Tina Kotek has been named as our new governor.  This was a major success for our union as she was a necessary pathway to support our legislative agenda, including a bill on staffing, that we hope to see move in the 2023 session.  

Christina Stephenson won the race for Labor Commissioner (the top seat at BOLI) She is a former civil rights attorney and working mom, and she ran on a platform

As you may have seen or read on the news, there was a safety event at the Westside Medical Center. This is frightening both for staff and for our patients, and we strive to ensure that our workplace is a safe place to encourage healing.

With everything going on in the community and in our professions, we wanted to ensure you and our members know what resources are available within Kaiser Permanente and the American Federation of Teachers, Nurses and Health Professionals (AFT).

Additional Resources:

KPLEARN:

• Has Mental Health Training for Employees
• Course ID: IND:MHW EMP
• MH Training Resource List

Our Political Education and Action Committee (PEAC) has been active in the political realm this year, running endorsements, getting out PAC donations, and looking over what’s at stake in the state’s electoral races. As a “deep Blue” state, we often assume that Oregon is safe for progressive issues that affect healthcare workers, but this can be a bit of a mirage. In statewide races, we actually are usually skating on paper thin margins. In this year’s Governor’s race, the Democrat, Tina Kotek, is having the gap closed dangerously close by her opponent, an anti-union extremist with ties to the

On Saturday, October 22nd, a hundred OFNHP members along with our friends and family came together for a festive party at McMenamins Edgefield in Troutdale, Oregon. The event was a Unity Night organized by the Social Committee, which pulls together fun events that allow union members to get to know each other outside of workplace organizing. This was the first Unity Night since the pandemic began, and was a chance for us to finally come back together and celebrate our victories from the past two years.

“Thank you so much to all those who were able to make it to our first Unity Night since the

The OFNHP Political Education and Action Committee (PEAC) has been hard at work building and securing relationships with our political allies. Over the past several months, numerous candidates have been interviewed by PEAC for endorsement. Each candidate was uniquely questioned to determine their stance on many important issues facing healthcare in our region. Below are all candidates that have all demonstrated a commitment to organized labor and willing to work with OFNHP (as well as our allied unions) to improve the health of the citizens we serve, the working conditions of healthcare

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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