Update: I was contacted by the ONA about this article after it posted yesterday, and they request I hold off for a day until they had a chance to make their strike notice official. I certainly don’t want to make their jobs harder, so I was happy to do so. They also offered some valuable corrections on some of my numbers and provided some additional points worth mentioning (see below).
Heroes. That’s what the executives at PeaceHealth called their nurses during the pandemic. They even put a big banner in front of the building proclaiming “Heroes Work Here!” and gave them buttons to wear.
For those who aren’t aware, PeaceHealth is a non-for-profit Catholic-based chain of 10 hospitals in the Pacific Northwest with $3.2 billion in annual revenues. The top 25 members of the executive team earn an average of nearly $1.2 million in annual compensation plus bonuses. The CEO takes home over $5.6 million per year, plus over $500,000 in annual bonus, twice what it was five years ago. Meanwhile, their nurses did not get a new contract in those same five years, and have been operating without a contract at all for nearly a year now (no raises for the front line workers).
While the executive team was staying safe from sickness in their multi-million dollar homes, it was the nurses who were caring for the sick and dying patients during the pandemic, and often getting sick themselves.
But now that it’s time to renew their contracts and ensure these nurses are treated equally to other RNs in the PeaceHealth chain and have safe staffing for hospice and home care, those same executives who praised them as heroes two years ago are telling them they don’t deserve a raise or extra support. Just days ago, many of those same nurses braved 3 inches of ice to get medications to their patients in their homes (one hospice nurse walked 16 blocks across the ice to pick up meds for a patient who needed them and deliver them).
You know the worst part? Just a single bonus check from a top executive for a single year would cover the entirety of what these nurses are asking for over the entire course of a new four year contract. Where would you rather your healthcare dollars go?
These executives are telling the hospice RNs at PeaceHealth that they deserve less pay than RNs working in a hospital setting in all other specialties. These PeaceHealth RNs handle complex wounds and other complicated needs that other agencies do not take, and they operate every day on their own out in the field, without hospital staff to back them up. If there is a patient emergency, there’s no call button for them to push.
Plus, hospice nurses do so incredibly much to support the grieving families, helping their loved ones pass with dignity and without pain or discomfort, and even providing after-death visits to support the family. Some of those hospice nurses are pediatric specialists, because children sometimes die too. Wouldn’t you want the best trained and most experienced registered nurse helping your family through that tragedy and providing the highest possible level of care for your dying child?
But the executives say these angels on earth, doing God’s work, deserve less pay and fewer benefits than RNs working in a hospital setting. Talk about the tip of the spear in caring for dying COVID patients. They deserve so much more than the cost of living increases they’re asking for.
And now, those same executives are threatening to cancel health insurance coverage for any nurse who goes on strike. At a hospital chain. Are you kidding me?
Many of these nurses are the primary income earners for their households. After a year of being ignored and insulted and denigrated by PeaceHealth Management without a contract, these nurses have reluctantly voted to strike beginning Feb. 10 should PeaceHealth continue to ignore their needs. They won’t get paid. They can’t use their PTO. And they don’t qualify for unemployment benefits.
They do NOT want to strike, because they care so much for their patients and are terrified for their patients’ care. But they are, sadly, left with no other recourse.
PeaceHealth is also threatening to lock these experienced and compassionate nurses out and bring in travel nurses to replace them, which is insane, since the increased costs of paying the agency nurses and the overtime those nurses will have to work to cover the patient load is MORE than the amount the union is asking for in the contract. But this is about union busting, not healthcare.
Here’s a statement from the Oregon Nurses Association:
Home care nurses in the Eugene/Springfield area overwhelmingly voted to authorize a strike in December following nearly a year of unsuccessful contract negotiations with PeaceHealth executives. On Jan. 19, nurses delivered a strike notice to PeaceHealth executives informing them of the original Feb. 1 strike date. By delaying the strike to Feb. 10 and providing extensive advance notice, nurses are once again putting their community’s health first and giving PeaceHealth additional time to transfer patient care to other home care agencies. It also gives PeaceHealth executives ample time to join nurses at the bargaining table and reach a fair agreement to prevent a strike.
And this comes just weeks after PeaceHealth shut down the only emergency room south of the Willamette River. Their greed is disgusting, and it has to stop.
If you live in the PNW or care about nurses, I encourage you to let PeaceHealth and your elected representatives know how you feel.
Watch this space for updates and coverage of this evolving situation. I will be creating a GoFundMe page to help cover some of the expenses for the hospice nurses at PeaceHealth Eugene.