Providence, nurses reach tentative deal to end strike after 4 weeks

Nurses at eight Providence hospitals reached a tentative contract agreement with the health system’s leaders late Tuesday, nearing a possible end to a strike that was in its 26th day.

The deal covers nearly 5,000 Providence nurses who walked off the job on Jan. 10, beginning the largest health care strike in Oregon history. It does not cover the 70 striking hospitalist physicians who work at Providence St. Vincent Medical Center.

The tentative agreement must be ratified by a vote by the striking nurses. The Oregon Nurses Association, the labor union that represents them, said a vote would begin Thursday and conclude by 4 p.m. Friday for most hospitals. (The union said nurses in Providence Medford will have until 4 p.m. Saturday to vote due to bad weather.)

The union said key provisions of the nurses’ agreement include “across-the-board” pay raises over the course of the contract, as well as a ratification bonus based on hours worked since a nurse’s last contract expired.

The proposed contract also includes penalty pay for each missed break or lunch. Additionally, it cements new staffing protections, incorporating Oregon’s new hospital staffing law into the contract.

Meanwhile, the union said “nurses will remain on strike during the vote and will return to work if tentative agreements are ratified.”

The development comes after nurses, physicians and advanced practitioners at Providence women’s clinics in the Portland area reached a tentative deal Sunday evening. On Tuesday, Providence announced that the women’s clinic workers have ratified their agreement and are slated to return to work Thursday.

The Oregon Nurses Association said most of the Providence nurses had been working without a contract for more than a year before the walkout. The union also bargained on behalf of 70 Providence St. Vincent Medical Center hospitalists who recently organized under the Pacific Northwest Hospital Medicine Association union but had yet to negotiate their first contract.

The hospitalists are still in negotiations, according to the union.

Negotiators for Providence and the health worker unions began meeting for marathon face-to-face mediation sessions last week at the insistence of Gov. Tina Kotek. Federal mediators were brought in to facilitate round-the-clock negotiations.

Those meetings marked the first direct talks since the strike began. Before then, bargaining teams had been exchanging written contract proposals.

Kotek had publicly criticized Providence during the strike’s early days for refusing to negotiate with workers after receiving a 10-day strike notice required for heath care workers under state law. Providence argued it needed to use the time to prepare for the strike by readying replacement workers.

The union has said chronic understaffing was at the heart of the dispute, with heavy workloads its members said have contributed to poor working conditions and burnout that drove people out of health professions. Wages for nurses, meanwhile, hadn’t kept up with inflation, the union said.

Providence and other health systems in the state, meanwhile, have struggled financially since the COVID-19 pandemic. Providence said its hospitals in Oregon have operated at a loss for eight of the last 10 quarters. (Staffing problems have contributed to the money problems because hospitals across the state have had to pay traveling nurses at premium rates to fill vacancies.)

The strike, too, has been costly for Providence, which brought in 2,000 replacement nurses to keep operations running. It also limited certain appointments and procedures during the strike.