Health care workers in the Pacific Northwest initiated a five-day strike over low pay and understaffing.
On Monday morning, over 1,300 unionized health care workers employed by PeaceHealth Southwest and PeaceHealth St. John in Washington State walked out of their workplace to commence a five-day unfair labor practice strike in protest of low wages, chronic understaffing and management’s canceling of bargaining sessions. They are represented by the Oregon Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals (OFNHP) and consist of workers in the tech, service and maintenance, and lab professional units.
After receiving notice of the workers’ decision to strike on October 13, PeaceHealth informed the union members that it would plan to cancel their health insurance plans, which lapse in November, if the strike were still ongoing at that time. This maneuver would have left many workers unable to afford essential health care for themselves and their dependents. As a result, the union decided on a five-day strike, rather than the initial open-ended strike. According to an OFNHP press release, PeaceHealth is offering at least $8,000 per week to strikebreaking traveling workers, which is more than double what the union workers make and far more than the wage increases they are seeking. A picket line of at least 1,000 strong wrapped around the PeaceHealth Southwest building in Vancouver, Washington.
PeaceHealth is a not-for-profit health care system that operates 10 hospitals and numerous clinics in the Pacific Northwest. In southwest Washington State, PeaceHealth is the only level II trauma center serving the community. PeaceHealth issued a statement addressing the strike on its website: “To date we have proposed highly competitive compensation packages that ensure our pay rates are market competitive … our communities can be assured that PeaceHealth has taken responsible steps to ensure we are able to deliver the same safe, high-quality care our patients and families have come to expect from us every day.” No mention is made on the website about staff-to-patient ratios.
And yet, workers at PeaceHealth express that their working conditions severely undermine their ability to care for patients. Some workers — especially those in maintenance, service and custodial positions — make less than $20 an hour. As Jonathan Baker, OFNHP president who also works as a medical lab scientist on a per diem basis put it in an interview with Truthout, “The workers are thinking, ‘do I have to choose between buying a medication or buying groceries? Do I have reliable transportation to even get to work?’ When you’re in the hospital do you want your health care worker worrying about these things? That worker is distracted. They’re walking around these floors concerned.”
archive link: https://archive.ph/13arb
Ah, PeaceHealth. I got financially screwed and also treated like crap by 2/3 of the ER staff when i was there one time in Oregon. All of it was entirely unnecessary.
Frankly that’s usually the experience of most people who go to ER, when they should have gone to urgent care.
If you have a life threatening condition, have breathing issues (because those can quickly turn into life threatening) or giving birth you should go to ER.
If you just are in bad pain and need to see doctor NOW you might actually get a better experience in urgent care. You will likely see doctor sooner (in ER real emergencies will go in front of you and you might wait 8 hours or so) and also cheaper. Not to mention that in some cases after waiting for hours in ER the person just got pain killers and told to see doctor next day.
It was 11 at night, Urgent Care was closing, and they didn’t take my insurance. I was in serious pain and could barely walk due to a pilonidal cyst, which developed as a result of being bedridden sitting upright for 3 weeks, that had gotten much worse that evening. So it was not a situation where i should have waited and gone to Urgent Care the next day (I’m not sure why you assume it was).
In any event, that has nothing to do with screwing up the billing and treating me like crap. They acted like I was there to get opiates, though I had this obvious infection that was hardly something I’d cause to try to get pills. I could barely walk in or out and nobody offered me any sort of assistance such as a wheelchair or crutches. The private UC had quoted me $400 for the surgery, cash only. I wanted my insurance to pay, so I went to the hospital. They ended up billing me $1200, then somehow, though I had TWO insurance companies willing to pay the bill, they never charged my insurance. 5th time I called them the guy said “the computer is going to send it to collections in a few days. Nothing I can do”.