Very serious proposals were exchanged regarding some of our top bargaining priorities this week, at our 23rd negotiation session in eight months. We are meeting for mediation again next Wednesday, August 2. After the tragic death of a security guard and injury to a house supervisor in a shooting at Good Sam Hospital, and events that have put our members at risk, we demanded to address workplace safety as our first item of the day. See the statement below from Jaimie Smith regarding recent events in OHSU’s L&D unit. Currently, management is trying to assess what will make our hospital safer, and we offered real solutions and emphasized the need to listen to nurses and use our knowledge. Management has agreed to some key elements of our proposal, but we expanded and pushed even harder for items remaining unresolved: 

• OHSU’s entrances must be more secure across the hospital and improved lock down procedure
• Expansion of the Code Green Team
• Greater transparency of workplace violence data
• In person self-defense trainings be offered
• We refused management’s inappropriate proposal that nurses pat down and wand patients and visitors 

After we spent the morning focused on workplace safety, management gave us a counter proposal on their economic package. They offered a 7% raise plus $2 increase to base wages for 2023, 3.5% for 2024, and 3.5% for 2025 which still leaves us below St. Charles and more importantly our peers at Level 1 Trauma Research hospitals. Our proposal remains at 9% for a market adjustment, 15% for 2023, and 12% for 2024 (only asking for a 2-year contract). Management increased their offers on other differentials, but overall, we still remain far apart. Next week, we’ll have a side-by-side comparison of all economics and other bargaining priorities, so stay tuned.  

Additionally, they continue to assert an incentive for signing up for extra shifts early and the right to give extra incentives to some clusters and not others. They have not yet agreed to our proposal of a two-tiered system of CNI and CNI+ to replace their usage of MOV as a second tier (which has no rules in our contract around it’s usage). They are offering $30 for CNI.

Now more than ever, we must stand together. All nurses at OHSU represented under the AURN contract are asked to urgently come together and make some very serious decisions about our next steps. We are calling for everyone whether you have signed your AURN membership form yet or not, to attend the AURN Member Meetings next week Wednesday through Saturday (8/2 to 8/5). Please find a day and time that works for you and come in person to listen, to engage, and to make major decisions about our next steps.

Additionally, we wanted to share that we’ve reached out to our unit reps in L&D and MBU regarding the recent violence.  We also learned that AURN members who work at our CHO NW clinic which is inside of Good Sam were not alerted to the active shooter through any paging or emergency texting system. We told management how shocking it was to learn they were unprepared for that, and demanded that management immediately rectify that for all nurses working at satellite locations. It was heartbreaking to learn more details about what both the staff at Good Sam experienced and what our own members have experienced. This comment from Jaimie Smith, an L&D AURN unit rep captures well what we want management to understand:

“I wasn’t there, but less than 24 hours after the shooting at Good Sam, a father punched a hole in the wall right in front of the nurses’ station. We not only have to emotionally manage the constant threat of an obstetric emergency, but we must also emotionally manage verbal abuse and physical intimidation from patients, family members, and visitors. Our nervous systems are on constant overdrive, which has huge implications on our mental and physical health. I wear a continuous glucose monitor and my blood sugar usually spikes when I arrive on the unit, and stays constantly elevated above my baseline during my shift from cortisol released from stress. Healthcare organizations are complicit compromising staff and patient safety and well-being as long as they’re making a profit.”