Oregon: Nurses continue strike in Providence after strike officially ends

PORTLAND, Oregon (KOIN) – After a three-day strikeOregon nurses go on strike for the fourth straight day as tensions rise between the union and Providence.

Representatives of both the Oregon Nurses Association and Providence said they received a letter from the Oregon Health Authority late Thursday night. In it, the ONA claims the OHA found Providence to be in violation of a recently enacted hospital staffing law. Providence, in turn, claims the union is incorrect about the findings in the OHA letter.

Providence insisted that, because of the contracts with the five-day replacement nurses, the full-time nurses would not be put back on duty until Sunday morning, two days after the end of the strike.

When the nurses expressed concern that they turned away from work when they showed up for their shift On Friday morning, Providence clarified that it would notify nurses by phone Thursday evening whether they had been selected for their shifts.

ONA claims this is a violation of HB 2697, which “establishes safe minimum staffing levels for nurses and other health care workers.”

“Providence submitted staffing plans to OHA for approval that were never approved by the nurses and that were unilaterally adopted by management without the required approval of the Nurses Personnel Committee,” the nurses union said in a public statement. “According to OHA, this action violates Oregon Personnel Law, as the nurses represented by ONA have alleged.”

But Providence spokesman Gary Walker said in a statement that the union’s interpretation of OHA’s response was wrong at best and a “distortion of the truth” at worst.

The hospital claims that the OHA’s letter does not mention Providence in its findings. Instead, Walker claims that the union is jumping to the “wrong conclusion” when ONA leaders “deviated from the coalition of unions, health systems and hospitals that came together to write the law.”

Until Sunday: The nurses union claims that Providence’s personnel decisions forced them to extend their picket line until Sunday and to ask nurses represented by the union not to break the picket line.