Union Doctors and Nurses Say Providence Talks Are Bearing Little Fruit and That Strike Is Possible

Some 5,000 doctors, nurses and other workers at 11 hospitals and clinics edged closer to a strike at Providence Health & Services after five days of expedited negotiations ended Friday without a labor agreement, the Oregon Nurses Association said in a press release.

Management and the union are in a five-day cooling off period—during which the union can’t issue strike notices—until Dec. 26. The two sides negotiated Monday and will resume talks after the Christmas holiday, the union said. If the meetings prove fruitless, the union will consider a strike, giving Providence the required 10-days notice after the 26th.

“Last week’s intensive mediation marks another chapter in a prolonged negotiation process that, for some units, has dragged on for more than 15 months,” the nurses’ union said. “Providence’s refusal to address critical concerns such as dangerous understaffing, patient safety, and competitive wages and benefits, has stalled progress and forced healthcare workers to consider all options to protect their patients and their professions.”

Management at Providence said the union’s announcement seemed “premature.”

“Negotiation teams from eight Providence hospitals and three additional bargaining units are hard at work today, with the help of federal mediators,” a spokesman said in an email late Monday. “In fact, Providence negotiators just provided updated proposals for six hospitals this morning.”

More than 3,000 nurses at six Providence facilities went on strike for three days in June , then picketed for two more days after Providence locked them out, a union spokeswoman said. That strike yielded no contracts, and those nurses are among staff negotiating now, along with doctors at Providence hospitals and staff at the system’s women’s clinics around the Portland metro area.

Any contract reached now would be the first for hospitalists at St. Vincent Medical Center and for staff at the women’s clinics. Hospitalists are doctors who specialize in hospital care. Until recently, very few doctors were unionized. They began to organize after more of them became employees of hospital systems, instead of having their own practices.