Rafael Eduardo
Around 5,000 healthcare hospital workers are on strike after they walked off the job last Friday in what is being described by the Oregon Nurses Association as the largest healthcare strike in the state’s history. It is also the first to involve doctors, with some 100 doctors hitting the picket lines as union negotiations continue with Providence Health.
The strike comes after more than a year of failed negotiations to produce an agreement over staffing levels, better pay, and benefits.
So far Providence has hired about 2,000 temporary replacement nurses across its eight hospitals.
The hospital system tried to separate bargaining to divide the workers at one hospital from another, which was met with stiff response from the strikers. Now, after a week out on strike, the nurses and doctors who walked out on the Providence healthcare network are reaching a critical point in their fight.
Last Tuesday, Providence issued a statement that it is “ready to discuss resuming mediated negotiations” at the eight hospitals, including the Providence Portland Medical Center and six clinics across the state that are on strike. The nurses’ union responded that it is prepared to “move this process forward in order to reach a fair contract and end the strike.”
The Providence healthcare workers’ struggle comes as part of a wave of union activity that has swept across the country amid the latest economic crisis. The grievances and demands of the struggling healthcare workers are similar to other hospitals in the country because they are all rooted in the same class contradiction of capitalism. This is expressed in the hospital systems cutting staff, increasing workload, and harming quality of care for patients, unfolding simultaneously as part of imperialist attacks on the people’s rights to healthcare and on workers’ rights and working conditions.
Photo: Oregon Nurses Association on strike. Retrieved from ONA Facebook.
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