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A group of striking medical workers rejected a tentative labor agreement with Legacy Health, their union announced Saturday.
The vote signaled the workers’ dissatisfaction with a deal union leaders proposed to them in recent days, which in core ways resembled the offer their employer had been making weeks ago. Legacy itself described the proposal as “materially consistent” with the offer it had put on the table before the strike began.
The bargaining unit of about 135 advanced practice providers, or APPs—including nurse practitioners, physician associates, and others—had been striking since Dec. 2.
That the strike would soon end emerged as a real possibility on Dec. 23, when their union, the Oregon Nurses Association, announced the tentative agreement.
The union at the time had said the deal included pay raises and new pay scales, and “represents meaningful progress toward more competitive compensation.” But it also acknowledged that the agreement did not fully close the wage gap with the clinicians’ counterparts at other area institutions like Oregon Health & Science University.
And before the strike could end, members of the APP bargaining unit had to approve the deal.
A review of the agreement shows it mirrored Legacy’s pre-strike offer in core ways. For example, before the strike began, the union was pushing for a 4.5% wage increase year over year, while Legacy offered what the union at the time called “a meager 2.75% raise.”
The tentative agreement included a 2.75% annual raise.
Meanwhile, Legacy’s proposed wages remained the same as before. Under the new pay schedule, for example, a certain type of clinician with eight years of experience would in the first year of the contract make about $84 per hour. ONA wanted $91 per hour, pointing out that the same category of worker at OHSU made even more.
In the end, the tentative agreement wage scale would have given that worker an $84 hourly wage.
Legacy says it has for 20 months sought to support APPs “while maintaining the long-term financial sustainability of the organization.”
But in its statement Saturday, the union indicated the workers wanted more. “APPs rejected the agreement because of Legacy’s bad-faith bargaining, disrespect for their profession, uncompetitive wages, and bloated executive pay,” the union says. “The vote delivers a clear rebuke of Legacy’s offer, and the strike will continue with daily picketing.”
Saturday’s development comes as members of a much larger union at OHSU mulls whether to accept a tentative contract that its bargaining team established with the academic medical center earlier this month.