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Last month, the Pacific Northwest Hospital Medicine Association filed formal charges with federal regulators, accusing Providence Health & Services of firing a physician assistant in retaliation for helping to push a successful unionization drive among medical providers at the health system’s urgent care clinics.
A Providence spokesperson declined to comment.
The charging document, filed April 15 with the National Labor Relations Board, accuses the health system of having “discharged [the PA] because the employee joined or supported a labor organization and in order to discourage union activities.”
It does not name the PA.
Union spokeswoman Myrna Jensen said the firing occurred in March and was in response to the PA’s involvement in a successful union drive that began last December and ended in February with 73 physicians, PAs, and nurse practitioners across Providence’s eight Oregon urgent care clinics joining the union.
Providence’s Oregon employees have been unionizing at a remarkable rate in recent years, from 4,166 in 2020 to 5,765 as of early May, Jensen says. She attributed the rise to the health system’s failure to translate rapidly rising revenues into fair pay for rank-and-file employees.