PORTLAND, Ore. – Earlier today, hospitalists, physicians, and nurse practitioners at Providence St. Vincent Medical Center and Providence Women’s Clinic sent Providence executives an open letter (see below) in response to
Providence’s misleading media statements about “reopening mediation” and invited Providence executives back to the table to bargain fair contracts for all 5,000 providers and avert Oregon’s largest healthcare worker strike.
The Oregon Nurses Association (ONA) and Pacific Northwest Hospital Medicine Association (PNWHMA)-represented caregivers at Providence cannot overstate how disappointed we are in our employer's recent public statements. As we have made clear since the outset of bargaining efforts, we remain steadfast in prioritizing reaching an agreement with Providence to avoid a strike.
However, Providence's recent outreach to the press (rather than to our elected caregiver bargaining teams), continues a pattern of illegal, reckless, and manipulative behavior by its executives. This outreach underscores Providence’s unlawful refusal to bargain with nine out of eleven contracts - a tactic no other major health system has employed. These public actions, which include threatening our community's health and stability by pledging to maintain their refusal to negotiate, and even implying a callous disregard for the impact of a caregiver strike, are shocking, outrageous, and a blatant abuse of both the law and community trust.
As members of the bargaining teams who have been working toward agreements for over a year, we are also appalled by their blatantly false implication that we have ceased bargaining.
It was Providence that issued a December 23 deadline to accept their last proposals and then discontinued negotiations; proposals which fell far short of addressing the needs of our patients and caregivers. Nevertheless, we promptly responded with additional compromises and have been waiting for over a week for Providence to re-engage with concrete counters, not empty promises. Several of our units made heavy compromises to be able to engage in coordinated mediation across units in a sincere effort to reach mutual agreement across the health system, only to have Providence unilaterally decide to walk away from the table with their unlawful refusal to negotiate during the 10-day strike notice period.
Providence’s latest announcement fails to demonstrate any genuine willingness to address critical issues that impact providers, RNs, and patients, such as:
- Commitment to staffing and hiring based on patient needs.
- Reasonable workloads to ensure adequate patient care and safe surgeries.
- Improve the recruitment and retention of providers and RNs through equitable compensation.
- Preserving vital services by avoiding sales to for-profit private equity firms that harm patient outcomes.
Let us be very clear: Providence's piecemeal approach, ongoing PR stunts, and refusal to engage meaningfully do nothing to resolve the systemic issues at the heart of this dispute. We demand Providence discontinue its violations of federal law, end these divisive tactics, and come to the table with real proposals that address all caregivers’ and patients’ needs.
The pathway to ending a strike lies in their hands, and we implore them to open their eyes and realize that our patients and communities deserve better.
Signed,
Bargaining team members for Providence Women’s Clinic:
- Hayley Hirt, CNM
- Charlie Saltalamacchia, MD
- Heather Wilson, CNM
- Diana Gill, MD
Bargaining team members for Providence St. Vincent Hospitalists:
- Lena Hillenburg, MD
- Gabe Hyder, MD
- Lesley Liu, MD
- Jahnavi Chandrashekar, MD
- Jeremiah Wright, APP
- Shirley Fox, MD
- Shekhar Ojha, MD
- Robert Fojtasek, MD
