After months of negotiations, nurses say they are fed up with unfair treatment by PeaceHealth executives.

(SPRINGFIELD, Ore.) – During a news conference this morning, nurse leaders announced that a significant majority of the more than 90 registered nurses at Sacred Heart Home Care Services voted to authorize their bargaining team to call a strike. The strike authorization vote ran Dec. 27 and 28. The home health and hospice nurses are represented by the Oregon Nurses Association (ONA).

”For many years, the nurses at Sacred Heart Home Care Services were there to pick up the slack. We’ve taken on patients not only that no other home care company will take but cannot take because they do not have the nurses that have the expertise to take these patients that are coming out of the hospital,” said Jo Turner a hospice nurse and member of ONA’s executive committee at PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Home Care Services. “But as PeaceHealth continues to low-ball us and leave us without a contract, we’re losing the nurses we need to care for our most vulnerable community members.”

Nurses have been bargaining with PeaceHealth for almost a year and have been working under their old contract since it expired in April 2023. Despite their essential work, PeaceHealth continues to low-ball home care nurses with inequitable compensation offers. PeaceHealth is offering its home care nurses less than nurses at similar home health agencies and significantly less than PeaceHealth pays local hospital nurses–despite previously paying both home care and hospital nurses equally.

“We need wage equality to keep nurses and hire new ones. Nurses cannot afford to take a paycut to come work here. To recruit, retain nurses we need equality,” said Heather Herbert, a hospice nurse at PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Home Care Services. “I cannot stress enough we are not asking for more or special treatment, just what we have always had and the standard that all other PeaceHealth hospitals have had in Washington and Oregon.”

Nurses are calling for a fair contract that addresses PeaceHealth’s staffing crisis, raises safety standards, increases recruitment and retention of skilled nurses, and ensures all Oregonians have access to safe, affordable and accessible home health care.

“They are walking into a new situation every day because they care. They care about the patients, they care about our families and they care about the work they do,” said US Representative Val Hoyle. “We do need to recruit more nurses. We do need to retain those nurses which means good working conditions and fair pay so they don’t leave to other places where they can easily get paid more. And we need to respect the nurses we have and respect means paying them the same wage as other nurses get.”

If a strike is called, ONA will provide our community and PeaceHealth executives with a 10-day notice to allow PeaceHealth executives adequate time to connect our patients to alternate care options or to join us at the table and reach a fair agreement. 

The Oregon Nurses Association (ONA) is the state’s largest and most influential nursing organization. We are a professional association and labor union representing more than 17,000 nurses and health care professionals throughout the state. ONA’s mission is to advocate for nursing, quality health care and healthy communities. For more information visit: www.OregonRN.org.