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Oregon Medical Workers Launch Largest Healthcare Strike in State History
Over 5,000 frontline healthcare professionals walked off the job at Providence hospitals and clinics across the Beaver State.
Jan 10, 2025
Thousands of Oregon medical caregivers at Providence hospitals launched what organizers are calling the largest healthcare strike in state history Friday as they fight for improved patient care, fair wages, and better working conditions in their new contract.
Around 5,000 nurses, doctors, midwives, and other healthcare professionals began their indefinite strike at 6:00 am local time Friday, Oregon Public Broadcastingreported. Workers walked off the job at Providence hospitals including: St. Vincent Medical Center in Portland, Providence Portland, Providence Willamette Falls in Oregon City, Providence Milwaukie, Providence Hood River, Providence Seaside, Providence Newberg, and Providence Medford. Numerous clinics are also affected.
Striking nurses are seeking higher wages, better nurse-to-patient ratios, more paid time off, and lower out-of-pocket costs on their healthcare plans. Doctors want Providence to cap hospital admissions when patient numbers climb too high.
"We're asking for competitive compensation that reflects the reality of our work, the long hours, the emotional toll, and the ever-growing demands that are placed on us," Oregon Nurses Association (ONA) member Gina Ottinger, a registered nurse, told the Oregon Capital Chronicle on Friday. "We're asking for wages that keep pace with inflation."
Healthcare workers' unions are also asking for employment guarantees should Providence sell off their hospitals. The unions have also flagged contract alignment issues; Providence favors a three-year deal, while workers are seeking two-year agreements.
"This strike could have been avoided," ONA executive director Anne Tan Piazza
said at a Thursday press conference. "We need Providence to stop refusing to negotiate and come back to the table."
In a recent statement explaining the strike, ONA said: "Providence is a $30 billion corporation whose top executives make million-dollar salaries and are too focused on profits and not enough on high-quality patient care. Providence's outgoing CEO made more than $12 million in 2024."
"The corporatization of healthcare has left many Providence employees frustrated and burnt out as they are being told to spend less and less time with patients and more time trying to drive up profits," the union added. "Providence offers their employees healthcare plans that are far worse than other healthcare systems, with some Providence employees having to pay $5,000 out of pocket to receive services at the place they work."
“The corporatization of health care has left many Providence employees frustrated and burnt out as they are being told to spend less ..time with patients and more time trying to drive up profits."5,000 Oregon doctors, RNS & caregivers will be on strike starting Jan 10 www.wweek.com/news/2024/12...
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— Randi Weingarten (@rweingarten.bsky.social) January 5, 2025 at 3:54 PM
Providence officials say the company has made "competitive offers" to hospital bargaining units, "including double-digit pay increases for hospital nurses representing more than $12,000 a year for a typical nurse."
In a Friday statement referencing Oregon's mandatory 10-day strike notice period, Democratic Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek said that "Providence wasted 10 days when they could have been at the table making progress towards a comprehensive resolution of their labor dispute."
"We must take care of the people who take care of Oregonians—all hospital staff deserve a fair contract," she added. "Oregonians are already experiencing disruptions to care. All parties must return to the table immediately to resolve their disagreements so normal operations and care can resume."
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For-Profit US Health System Continues to Leave Many Millions Uninsured Each Year
"With so many unsettling questions about the future of key social safety net programs, policymakers must focus on solutions for delivering consistent insurance coverage to everyone," said one researcher behind a new study.
Jan 10, 2025
More than 10 million workers in the United States who held full-time jobs in 2023 still lacked health insurance for the entire year.
That's just one of the troubling findings from a report released Friday which fleshes out how America's "patchwork" system of employer-provided plans, individually purchased coverage through state-level exchanges, and Medicaid, are leaving many millions of Americans without care year after year.
The new study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) looked at the demographic characteristics of the uninsured population from 2018 through 2023 using Census Bureau data and found lack of healthcare coverage along class, racial, and ethnic lines, as well as disparities when it comes to levels of educational attainment.
"The Affordable Care Act has delivered insurance coverage for millions of Americans, but there are still considerable gaps in coverage—particularly for workers who find themselves too young for Medicare and who earn wages above thresholds for Medicaid coverage," said Emma Curchin, one of the authors of the paper and a research assistant at CEPR.
"These gaps leave millions of people—many of them working full time all year—unable to secure insurance coverage. With so many unsettling questions about the future of key social safety net programs, policymakers must focus on solutions for delivering consistent insurance coverage to everyone," she added.
After it passed in 2010, the Affordable Care Act—which sought to expand health insurance coverage, including by creating nex exchanges in the for-profit market—was able to reduce the share of the U.S. population that was without health insurance by roughly half between 2009 and 2023. While 16.7% of the population lacked insurance in 2009, the latest available data shows 8% of the population is without insurance. But even with the ACA, the study found that more than 27 million U.S. residents are without insurance, and almost 16 million workers have full-time jobs, part-time jobs, or are unemployed but actively seeking work.
The report, which focused on workers between the ages of 18 and 64 found that among full-time, year-round workers, Hispanic workers were most likely to be uninsured (21%). The rate of being uninsured among that group was about four times higher than the corresponding rate for Asian or white workers, which stood at 5.1% and 5.5%, respectively.
Unmarried people are more likely to be uninsured than married people, and full-time workers who live in a household with a child or children are less likely to be uninsured—which "may reflect the greater likelihood that households with children are eligible for Medicaid, because Medicaid eligibility is determined in part by income relative to household size," according to the authors of the study.
For all worker types, higher educational attainment means lower rates of being uninsured, the researchers found. Someone who works full-time and full-year but has less than a high school degree has an uninsured rate 15 higher than a worker with an advanced degree. Workers who complete some of college but do not hold a degree are almost twice as likely to uninsured compared to those who do finish with a degree.
Across racial and ethic groups and levels of educational attainment men consistently have higher uninsured rates than women.
Other findings include that uninsured rates declined as wages increased. 21.4% of full-time, full-year workers in the bottom of the wage distribution lack health insurance, compared with only 1.7% for workers who are in the top wage quintile. Whether you were born inside the U.S. and citizenship status also play a large role in uninsured rates. 28.9% of full-time, full-year workers who were born in a different country and are not citizens are uninsured, but only 6.7% of full-time, full year workers born in the U.S. are uninsured, and 8.6% of these types of workers who were born abroad but who hold U.S. citizenship are uninsured.
What's more, "lack of coverage is particularly acute for part-time or part-year and unemployed non-citizen workers: 36% of part-time workers and 39% percent of unemployed workers are uninsured," the researchers note.
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SEIU Joins AFL-CIO to 'Unleash a New Era of Worker Power' as Trump 2.0 Looms
"CEOs and billionaires want nothing more than to see workers divided, but we're standing here today with greater solidarity than ever," said AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler.
Jan 09, 2025
The 2-million-member-strong Service Employees International Union announced Wednesday that it is joining the AFL-CIO, bolstering the ranks of the largest labor federation in the United States as unions prepare to fight the incoming Trump administration.
"CEOs and billionaires want nothing more than to see workers divided, but we're standing here today with greater solidarity than ever to reach the 60 million Americans who say they'd join a union tomorrow if the laws allowed and to unrig our labor laws to guarantee every worker in America the basic right to organize on the job," AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler said in a statement.
With SEIU included, the unions that make up the AFL-CIO represent roughly 15 million workers across the nation.
April Verrett, SEIU's international president, said union members "are ready to unleash a new era of worker power, as millions of service and care workers unite with workers at the AFL-CIO to build our unions in every industry and every ZIP code."
"Working people have been organizing our workplaces and communities to build a stronger economy and democracy," Verrett added. "We are ready to stand up to union-busters at corporations and in government and rewrite the outdated, sexist, racist labor laws that hold us all back."
"By standing together, SEIU and the AFL-CIO are sending a powerful message to President-elect Trump and his allies who are trying to pit working people against one another."
While neither the SEIU nor the AFL-CIO mentioned President-elect Donald Trump by name in their statements announcing the move, Shuler acknowledged during an MSNBC appearance late Wednesday that organized labor is "going to be on defense, probably right away," as the Republican leader takes office and moves to stack his cabinet with lobbyists and others with deep corporate ties.
"We know that we've got to play a good defense game, but we also, as April and I have been talking about, we've got to be on offense," the AFL-CIO's president added. "Coming together is how we're more powerful and we rebalance the scales of this economy."
ICYMI: AFL-CIO President @LizShuler and @SEIUPres April Verrett joined Joy Reid to talk about our efforts to build on the labor movement’s momentum and build real worker power. pic.twitter.com/CssN8P74nT
— AFL-CIO ✊ (@AFLCIO) January 9, 2025
Trump's second term is expected to bring an assault on workers' rights much like his first four years in the White House, which saw rollbacks of safety rules, wage protections, and collective bargaining powers.
Among other steps, Trump is expected to fire worker champion Jennifer Abruzzo, general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board, and nominate a pro-corporate replacement after he takes office later this month. Abruzzo has led the charge to ban anti-union captive audience meetings, and the incoming Trump administration is expected to try to reverse progress on that front and elsewhere.
Unions are also bracing for Trump's mass deportation plan. Bloombergreported Wednesday that the AFL-CIO "has been working to equip its affiliates around the country to help defend immigrant workers against potential workplace raids and mass deportation efforts once Donald Trump becomes president this month."
"The union federation is also readying rapid response plans to defend federal government employees against the Department of Government Efficiency," Bloomberg added, referring to the advisory commission set to be led by anti-union billionaires Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.
Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute, said Wednesday that "by standing together, SEIU and the AFL-CIO are sending a powerful message to President-elect Trump and his allies who are trying to pit working people against one another: The labor movement will not be fractured or silenced."
"Unions are a crucial part of a robust and fair economy—and SEIU's affiliation with the AFL-CIO strengthens the collective power of millions of workers, enabling them to fight more effectively for better wages, benefits, and working conditions," said Shierholz. "It also amplifies labor's voice in advocating for progressive economic reforms that benefit all working families."
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