WASHINGTON — Over 1,300 Washington healthcare workers from PeaceHealth Southwest and St. John walked off the job and onto picket lines Monday morning.
The healthcare workers are members of the Oregon Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals (OFNHP), AFT Local 5017, AFL-CIO. This comes after the healthcare workers authorized a strike in early October, including service and maintenance tech workers at PeaceHealth Southwest in Vancouver, Washington and lab professionals at PeaceHealth St. Johns in Longview, Washington.
OFNHP said they have been negotiating their union contract for months over issues including pay and staffing shortages. They argue that tech, service and maintenance, and lab professionals have been faced with unfair labor practices for months.
In addition to unfair labor practices, OFNHP said after PeaceHealth violated federal law, they committed unfair labor practices after the strike was announced including postponing bargaining sessions and refusing to bargain in good faith.
Jonathon Baker, OFNHP president and lab professional, cited management's "continual unwillingness to follow federal labor law" as one of the prime reasons behind the strike.
“Instead of trying to solve these problems, they broke the law again by canceling our bargaining sessions in retaliation for exercising our legal rights and are choosing to terminate the healthcare insurance that these workers depend on," Baker said. "This is a cruel form of collective punishment directed at a group of healthcare workers they previously called ‘heroes’ when they were saving lives during the COVID-19 pandemic.”
OFNHP also said they have filed charges, since PeaceHealth has offered replacement workers at least $8,000 per week to cross the picket lines and cancel striking employees' health care insurance if the strike goes into November.
PeaceHealth Southwest will bring in 168 temporary workers to replace those on strike, according to its chief nursing officer.
"I can tell you we have rescheduled or postponed a few surgeries from today. "We'll evaluate on a day-to-day basis on what we need to do to make sure we can pull those patients back in," said Michelle James, PeaceHealth Southwest's chief operating officer nurse.
The Washington PeaceHealth workers are also joined by the 350 techs at PeaceHealth Sacred Heart in Eugene, Oregon in the bargaining process. The Sacred Heart techs have not yet chosen to hold a strike authorization vote but if a strike was authorized that would mean a total of 1,700 healthcare workers would be striking at three hospitals across the two states.
Picket lines will operate until 7 p.m. from Monday until Oct. 27 at both PeaceHealth Southwest and PeaceHealth St. John locations. Healthcare workers anticipate returning to work on Oct. 28