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Nurses at St. Charles Hospital in Bend vote to authorize strike

The outside of the St. Charles Health System campus in Bend on July 26, 2022.
Joni Land
/
OPB
The outside of the St. Charles Health System campus in Bend on July 26, 2022.

The union representing nurses at St. Charles Health System in Bend announced Monday that they have authorized a strike, possibly setting up the hospital’s first nurses strike in more than 40 years.

Nurses at the hospital — the largest employer in Central Oregon — are preparing for a strike due to what they say is chronic understaffing that endangers patients and is overworking staff.

“Management has failed to take our contract negotiations seriously. They have failed to come to the table with reasonable offers and have failed to listen to the serious concerns of their nursing staff,” Erin Harrington, an intensive care unit nurse leading the bargaining unit, said in a statement.

Around 1,000 nurses make up the bargaining unit, which is managed by the Oregon Nurses Association.

The union began collecting votes on the strike action May 16 and finished Sunday. Union leaders would not release exact results of the strike vote, but said in a statement Monday morning that the vote was “all but unanimous.”

St. Charles and the union will meet to negotiate Tuesday and Wednesday. It’s unclear if and when exactly nurses would officially launch a strike; once decided, nurses must give the hospital a 10-day notice.

If a strike is called, it’ll be the first time since 1980 that nurses at the hospital have taken such action.

Representatives of St. Charles did not immediately provide comment.

Many hospitals in Oregon have struggled with staffing and financial solvency during the pandemic. St. Charles briefly declared crisis standards of care — without notifying the public — last July, as the number of workers could not handle patient volume. The organization has also relied on temporary and fill-in nurses to fill staffing gaps.

Nurses at St. Charles have said the hospital has been winnowing its staff since long before the pandemic started.

The union said as recently as March that St. Charles had 300 nursing vacancies, resulting in many staff members picking up extra shifts on a weekly basis to help fill gaps. St. Charles said this month that they are recruiting for 84 of those positions. The health system has also given nurses a boost in pay.

Nurses have filed complaints with the Oregon Health Authority, alleging that St. Charles is violating its own staffing requirements by having so many jobs unfilled.

Copyright 2023 Oregon Public Broadcasting

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