WHY DO NURSES AND CLINICIANS STRIKE?

Strikes are union nurses' and clinicians' most powerful tool when companies refuse to listen to frontline caregivers and patients! Strikes are also an essential way that workers can protest and try to stop an employer from committing unfair labor practices.

The value of our work and ONA health care workers' strength in numbers make a strike a very powerful form of leverage at the bargaining table or to stop a company from continuing to break the law.

HOW DID THE NURSES AND CLINICIANS AT PEACEHEALTH SACRED HEART HOME CARE SERVICES MAKE THE DECISION TO STRIKE?

ONA is a democratic union, and an overwhelming majority of represented nurses must vote to strike and commit to participating in a strike action.

Local nurses on the bargaining and contract action teams have asked every represented nurse to support their strike authorization vote. A decision to go on strike involves participation, input and votes by nurses and allied health workers represented for collective bargaining in that unit, local unit officers, statewide elected ONA bargaining unit leaders and staff.

Only the ONA nurses and clinicians in the affected bargaining unit, by democratic vote, have the power to authorize a strike.

ARE NURSES’ AND CLINICIANS' JOBS SAFE IF THEY STRIKE?

It is illegal to terminate workers for striking. Thousands of health care workers have gone on strike across the West Coast and consistently return to their positions at the end of the strike.

WHO WILL CARE FOR HOME CARE AND HOSPICE PATIENTS IF NURSES GO ON STRIKE?

If nurses at PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Home Care Services go on strike, it will be to improve patients’ care, now and in the future. By standing up for improved conditions that allow us to recruit and retain caregivers, nurses are advocating to better care for patients.

ONA will give our community and PeaceHealth a minimum 10 days advance notice before a strike so that PeaceHealth executives can make appropriate arrangements to care for patients or come to a fair agreement with nurses. 

If a legitimate emergency (natural disaster, catastrophic event) arises, the emergency will be assessed and the decision to provide RNs or other workers will be made.

IS IT ETHICAL FOR A NURSES TO GO ON STRIKE?

Nurses and clinicians, just like workers from every profession, are sometimes left no other option but to go on strike.

After years of being stretched beyond our capacity during a pandemic and watching PeaceHealth executives continually cut local care to increase corporate profits, local nurses have no choice but to stand up to the CEOs. PeaceHealth has not made substantial enough movement at the bargaining table and continues refusing to offer home care and hospice nurses equitable compensation. PeaceHealth executives rightfully call nurses and other health care workers heroes, but they won’t commit to a fair contract that allows us to give patients the care they expect and deserve! We fully expect PeaceHealth executives and spokespeople to attempt to spin this and say, “you are abandoning the patients and your community” or threaten to close down the agency and blame nurses for that decision. 

It’s important to remember this is the same type of language, blame and threats they use when they try to impose mandatory overtime or unsafe patient assignments on exhausted, overburdened staff. But we know the problems at PeaceHealth and in our health care system were created by executives fixated on extreme efficiency and profit at the expense of workers and patients.

Let’s remember; nurses are the most trusted professions in America because of our strong code of ethics and moral compass, and executives will always try to exploit those virtues for their own gain.

Oregonians know the truth: nurses and clinicians aren’t avoiding hard work or asking for too much. We are advocating for a fair agreement to protect and care for our patients, our community and our coworkers.

Three key things for nurses to remember:

First, know your rights! You have a right to strike, and the rules are clearly established in federal law.

Second, striking is not patient abandonment: According to the OSBN Interpretive Statement on Patient Abandonment: “The key component in determining if an action constitutes patient abandonment is the establishment of a relationship between nursing personnel and the patient” and “Refusal to accept an assignment or establish a care relationship with the patient or patients does not constitute patient abandonment.”

Lastly, nurses and clinicians have an obligation to improve working conditions including unsafe staffing. The ANA Code of ethics states, in Provision 6: “The needs of patients may never be used to obligate nurses to remain in persistently morally unacceptable work environments.” Health care executives have been pushing the limits for too long, work demands and environments are unacceptable–particularly as inequitable compensation and treatment drain our talent pool. Nurses and others are facing a moral injury epidemic that needs immediate intervention and if employers won’t commit to that at the table, then collective action is needed. As the ANA Code of Ethics states: “The nurse, through individual and collective action, establishes, maintains, and improves the moral environment of the work setting and the conditions of employment, conducive to quality health care.”

When nurses and other frontline health care providers are forced to come together in solidarity and strike, we all need to carefully examine the institutions claiming to provide a community benefit while taking advantage of dedicated staff. The decision to strike is never an easy one and it is false to assert that workers demanding better conditions are a threat to any health care system.

HOW CAN I SUPPORT NURSES?

Click here to sign our community petition and learn about other ways you can support home care nurses. 

You can also send questions to news@oregonrn.org, with the subject line PeaceHealth Nurses and a staff member will get back to you as soon as possible.