As a massive health care workers strike enters its fifth week, Oregon’s largest nurses union and its legislative allies are pushing to make hospitals reveal how much they are paying to replace striking employees.
Almost 5,000 nurses and allied health care workers walked off the job on Jan. 10 at eight Providence hospitals and six clinics around the state. The strike is the largest in Oregon health care in history.
Negotiators for the Oregon Nurses Association agreed to tentative deals with Providence recently, only to have members at eight hospitals reject them resoundingly. As the strike goes on, Providence is paying replacement workers $25 million a week, according to one estimate.
Meanwhile, the state hospital trade group has warned that many of its members are struggling to break even and are asking lawmakers for additional financial help.
“Hospitals pleading financial hardship while diverting funds into costly, short term-labor solutions lacks accountability and erodes trust,” state Rep. Travis Nelson, D-Portland said during a hearing of the House Labor and Workplace Standards Committee on Monday.
Nelson is spearheading House Bill 2792, a bill that would force hospitals to report how much they spent to recruit and pay replacement workers. The bill reflects the increased frequency of health care worker strikes, and is the latest in an ongoing power struggle between the influential nurses union and the hospital association.
The bill is supported by the nurses association, which has grown to 20,000 nurses and other health care workers. Kathy Keane, chair of the nurses bargaining unit at Providence St. Vincent, told the committee that hospital management called the union’s earlier proposals “financially unviable” while paying for the housing, transportation and compensation of replacement workers.
The Hospital Association of Oregon opposes the bill. Sean Kolmer, the association’s executive vice president of external affairs, wrote in testimony that the bill’s reporting requirements would be a distraction for hospital managers while they are trying to maintain care during a strike.
“What is this bill trying to accomplish?” Kolmer told lawmakers. “Ultimately, the members in this room are about delivering health care. This bill doesn’t do that.”
He called the bill a “negotiating tool.”
Nelson, a registered nurse who has been active with the Oregon union as well as its Washington state counterpart, denied that he was trying to interfere with labor negotiations and said the one-page bill is intended to be narrowly focused.
Republican members of the committee reacted skeptically to the bill. State Rep. Ana Scharf, R-Amity, brought up a different bill being considered by lawmakers that would allow striking workers to receive state unemployment benefits. Scharf asked Nelson if he was open to requiring unemployment benefits to be publicly reported. Nelson said he was willing to discuss it.
