Many of ONA’s primary demands do, however, affect the bottom line of hospital operations—the baseline need for adequate staffing. Understaffing is partially a function of a shortage of trained professionals—ironically, teaching nursing pays so much less than being a nurse, that there is a back-end educational crisis in which the system is failing to produce the workforce required to meet demand.

One would think this would make nurses more valuable in the labor market. However, healthcare in the US is not a ‘free market’ system—dominated by profiteering, healthcare in this country is controlled not by demand, and not by providers, by a vast intermediary “healthcare management” system comprised of insurance companies and other entities whose primary ‘value addition’ to the system lies in their ability to extract vast profit not least by denying services to theoretically ‘covered’ individuals, that is, people who have paid for medical insurance who are then denied coverage for life-saving claims.

Furthermore, Oregon is a vast and, in many places, sparsely-populated state. The bulk of Oregon’s population lives in the Portland metropolitan area, arguably stretching south along the I-5 corridor south, through the state capitol Salem to Eugene, the seat of the state’s university system. Then there’s the ‘rest’ of Oregon, southern and eastern, vast stretches where a ‘big city’ might have 50-100,000 residents and many towns and villages have residential numbers in the hundreds. Services can be hard to physically access, requiring drives of hundreds of miles, and there is little profit incentive for capitalist healthcare to provide more proximate infrastructure to the rural parts of the state.

Delivering more services with fewer staff is a Profitability 101 strategy, but unlike say package or entertainment delivery, healthcare still requires a high degree of one-on-one human interaction at all stages of its services. A profit-wringer’s alternative, then, is to vastly understaff the services being delivered, and call it good enough. Leaving aside ONA’s demands around pay equity and adequate cost-of-living adjustments, this is the real crisis underneath it. The situation is so bad that the Oregon labor movement did an end run around the bargaining process, and got the state legislature to pass hospital staff/patient ratio laws requiring that patients be provided adequate care through adequate hospital staffing. Providence, among others, has been deeply resistant to complying with these laws.

Additionally, the recent corporatization of Providence in particular has brought with it a new management that wants to more or less wipe the board (represented by collective bargaining gains over time) and ‘start fresh,’ something like when management fires everyone and makes them re-apply for their old jobs under new terms and conditions. Providence and the ONA have been bargaining for a next contract for years. Management has not bargained in good faith, meeting infrequently with ONA’s bargaining team, and offering little-to-no movement in proposals when they do. By all appearances, management seems to be in ‘last offer’ mode without actually saying so, because of course if they said so, labor law would move the process along, imposing an arbitration process that might be fairer than what management has in mind, even if arbitration threatens significant losses for the nurses, thus labor’s overall reluctance to turn the fate of a collective bargaining agreement (CBA) over to the tender mercies of arbitration.

Last summer, Providence nurses led a three-day walkout of Providence hospitals across the state, which turned into a lockout when management refused to let nurses return to work, the week before they’d contracted with scab agencies. The current strike is open-ended, indefinite, and has seen nurses picketing for going on a month now, sometimes in severe winter weather, with no end in immediate sight.

Donations to the ONA Strike Fund can be made at:
https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-the-providence-strike-fund
Even very small donations are meaningful expressions of solidarity, and add up.

The post Oregon Nurses Association (ONA) Strike at Providence Hospitals – A Brief Analysis first appeared on Labor Today.

Their contract fight has been a similar fight to nurses across the country as Safe Staffing has been a leading demand to go along with the typical fight for livable wages and safe working conditions. We’ve seen this fight over and over again throughout the country as nurses lead the struggle for proper healthcare that healthcare monopolies have consistently denied in search of ever-increasing profits, even at so-called “non-profit” hospitals and medical centers.

The fight for a first contract took a step forward last month at a one-day picket out of the hospital calling on Ascension to agree to Safe Staffing in the deal. In an interview with the Working People Podcast, Nikki Horvat RN at the hospital stated, “Safe staffing is number one pretty much across the country. They maximize their profits by not staffing safely”, she went on to add the importance of Safe Staffing, “we have so much research data that shows that high nurse to patient ratios lead to worse patient outcomes, poorer patient satisfaction, higher nurse burnout, increased risk for medical errors.”

It is also important to remember as a LUEL Mid-Atlantic member stated after we visited striking nurses at RWJ Barnabas in New Jersey last year, “It is our duty as class-oriented trade unionists to rally behind these nurses in their fight for better conditions and fair wages. After all, the cuts in staffing affect the working class more than anyone, as the bosses can afford to shell out extra money to get the best care these nurses are trying to ensure for everyone.”

The post Nurses at Ascension St. Agnes Fight for Safe Staffing in First Contract first appeared on Labor Today.