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Technicians at a testing laboratory sold nearly two years ago by Providence Health and Services to a North Carolina company have now filed to join the Oregon Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals, a union spokesperson announced Friday.
In a Jan. 17 filing with the National Labor Relations Board, more than 100 technicians at Labcorp gave notice of their intent to unionize. “We decided to unionize because we want to ensure a stable, well-trained, well-staffed medical laboratory is available to our community,” said Allister Brister-Smith, who works at Labcorp’s facility on Northeast Halsey Street.
That lab performs the blood, stool and tissue testing that doctors at Providence’s Portland hospital rely on to make treatment decisions.
In May 2023, Providence Health sold its labs to North Carolina-based multinational corporation Labcorp amid a wave of health care consolidations. The shift has not gone smoothly. WW reported in July that doctors, nurses and patients at Providence had complained that long delays in receiving test results had become a pattern. Several blamed short-staffing for the lines and delays.
Labcorp also purchased Legacy Health’s laboratory and announced in September that it planned to downsize that lab and shift its operations to the Providence location. Four hundred technicians working for Labcorp at Legacy hospitals have successfully unionized.
Labcorp’s media office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Nor did Providence spokespeople.
The union drive comes at a sensitive moment for Providence, where 5,000 doctors, nurses and other medical personnel have been on strike since Jan. 10. On Saturday, bargaining units with the Oregon Nurses Association dismissed Providence’s latest offer as “a slap in the face” and said they would continue picketing outside seven hospitals.
Shane Burley, a spokesman for the Oregon Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals, the union organizing Labcorp’s technicians, said in a statement that the next step would be a vote by Halsey Street lab personnel on whether to join the union. He tells WW that roughly 117 technicians will vote in February on whether to join the union.