BEND — In what is being called a historic agreement, the Oregon Nurses Association and St. Charles Bend hammered out a tentative contract agreement early Thursday, June 8, that ensures meal breaks and wage increases for nurses and protects their employment should a change in hospital ownership occur.

The tentative settlement still needs to be voted on by the nearly 1,000 nurses represented by the nurses’ union. The accord was reached after nearly 40 hours of negotiations, said Scott Palmer, a spokesman for the Oregon Nurses Association. The agreement means that nurses will not be walking off the job on Monday.

Bend Mayor Melanie Kebler, who walked an informational picket line with nurses last month, applauded the agreement.

“Our hospital system is incredibly important to Bend and our region,” Kebler said. “Our nurses are the backbone of our system of care.”

Nurse retention

Nurses are in short supply nationwide, made worse by the pandemic, with nurses retiring early or leaving the profession.

“Every hospital is desperate to hire and to retain the nurses they have and one way to do that is to offer competitive wages and make sure your hospital has a supportive work environment,” Palmer said. “This contract addresses the workplace environment by providing assurances with rest and meal breaks.

“It’s a huge deal.”

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According data provided by the hospital, nurses missed 42,000 legally required meal breaks in 2022, Palmer said.

The tentative agreement gives the base wage for a beginning nurse a 41% boost over the life of the contract. The base wages for nurses in other wage groups jumps 48%.

The contract also attempts to address retention issues by increasing wages for seasoned workers by 33% to 36%, according to the union’s press statement.

“For our nurses, this contract is going to be a game changer,” said Erin Harrington, St. Charles nurses’ bargaining unit executive committee chairwoman, in a prepared statement. “Given St. Charles’s long-standing challenges recruiting new nurses to work at our hospital, these wins will be truly transformative for our ability to get new nurses at the bedside.”

The health system did not return phone calls or emails from The Bulletin on Thursday, but did issue a press statement reiterating that a tentative agreement has been reached.

Key issues addressed

From the union’s standpoint, key issues were language in the contract that protected nurses’ employment in the event that St. Charles Health System is sold to another hospital system, higher wages to help with recruitment and safe staffing level requirements.

Negotiations had been ongoing for six months.

St. Charles Health System has experienced nearly two years of financial losses, related to higher wages paid to traveling employees hired to fill in gaps in staffing. In 2022 it laid off about 105 workers at the four-hospital system and its CEO stepped down. However, the health system reported a positive balance sheet for the first quarter of 2023.

But staff shortages and low retention have plagued the health system. The union has repeatedly said the health system has 300 nursing vacancies.

St. Charles Health System, which is the largest employer in the region, gave nurses a $5 hourly wage hike earlier this year. According to the health system, the average wage for a nurse is $108,000. However, the union has maintained that fewer than a third of the nurses earn that salary.

The agreement cancels what would have been the first strike for nurses at the Bend hospital since 1980 and the first nurses’ strike statewide since 2001, when nurses at Oregon Health & Science University walked off the job for 56 days. In 2019, during contract negotiations, the nurses took a strike vote as well, but a settlement was reached and no strike date was ever set.

The pay raises will help nurses afford to live in Bend, where an income of $80,000 qualifies for publicly subsidized affordable housing, said Phil Chang, Deschutes County commissioner. Working people in the county cannot afford a home on the wages paid, Chang said.

“Our hospital is world class,” Chang said in an interview. “They have had a great challenge of trying to recruit and retain nurses to maintain that in a community where the cost of living is just far beyond the grasp of normal working people.

“It sounds like with this agreement, St. Charles has taken some significant steps to make it possible for front-line workers to live here.”