On strike: Oregon caregivers demand ‘patients before profits!’

Portland, Oregon

Striking Portland area health care workers, Jan. 16, 2025. Julie, quoted below, is fifth from the right. WW Photo: Lyn Neeley

In the largest health care workers strike in Oregon’s history, nearly 5,000 hospital workers from eight Portland area hospitals have been out since Jan. 10. Doctors, clinicians, nurses, social workers, midwives and other caregivers are demanding safe staffing, recruitment and retention of more workers, competitive wages and benefits and for Providence Medical Group to stop making cuts to employee health care coverage..

Julie, who has worked at Providence for 28 years, told this writer: “They don’t take care of the frontline caregivers, just the CEOs. Nurses can’t even afford health care within their system. When so many of us are receiving notices from their financial office telling us we qualify for financial aid, you know there’s a problem with their health benefits as well as their pay.”

Widespread support has come from all over the city. The Portland Fire Fighters Association organized a large barbeque for the striking workers. Other supportive groups have been Jobs with Justice and several unions, including the Teamsters (IBT), Service Employees union (SEIU), Oregon Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals, Washington State Nurses Association, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), the Oregon Education Association and the Oregon School Employees Association.

The strike has had a definite financial impact. News reports indicate that Providence is losing more than $25 million per week just with the cost of hiring strikebreakers. (tinyurl.com/mvd2sxk3)