Cook says nurses bargained with Providence for eight months before deciding to strike. “I don’t feel they were making meaningful movement, and we were,” he says. The strike had a five-day limit and ended as expected. Cook says that for many years there has been a “rising wave against union work.” During the past 3.5 years of the pandemic, “working conditions were morally and ethically unjust,” and nurses have suffered moral injury—a term for mental health distress in response to witnessing or participating in events that go against one’s values. After the Providence strike wrapped, the ONA wrote a letter asking Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum to investigate the hospital system’s handling of the strike, specifically in hiring nurses from U.S. Nursing to ensure patient care while nurses struck. Providence sent a letter to Rosenblum asking her office to deny ONA’s request, writing, “In the interest of public safety, it is imperative that Providence’s ministries be able to continue caring for patients in the event of a strike.” Tan Piazza says the problem is not that the hospital hired substitute workers during the strike but that U.S. Nursing has an explicit mission of strikebreaking, which places the hospital in violation of state law against hiring strikebreakers. (Providence has also described that law as outdated.) U.S. Nursing’s website says, “Since 1989, U.S. Nursing has been working with healthcare facilities and professionals to provide turn-key staffing solutions during labor disputes.” Tan Piazza says there are alternative nursing agencies that allow hospitals to hire nurses on contract that don’t advertise in quite the way U.S. Nursing does. Looking ahead, Tan Piazza says ONA will continue to bargain and fight on behalf of caregivers — including not just nurses but physicians, physical therapists and others who have begun to organize as well. “Our members—our nurses and caregivers—know what the actual patient needs are in their hospitals, in their care settings. They will continue to come up in our collective bargaining to advocate for standards that are appropriate and needed for their specific population at that particular hospital or care setting,” Tan Piazza says. “I would say that the continued discussion and conversations around recruitment and retention and respect keep coming back to the same themes. The staffing law, we believe, will make a significant difference in providing a baseline in terms of improving working conditions for nurses. But again, there are specific things that are unique to each care setting and unique to each hospital. That is going to be bargained over.” Travis Nelson, State Representative for House District 44 and a registered nurse, speaks at an ONA Providence press conference. At top, picketers at Providence Portland Medical Center in Northeast Portland. 29
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