PeaceHealth union members overwhelmingly voted to authorize a strike at St. Joseph Medical Center. If they choose to strike, the union’s bargaining team is required to give the hospital 10 days’ notice.
“We’re back at bargaining next Monday and we’re calling on management to bring proposals that would stop us from having to strike,” said Jose Reta, an MRI technologist at St. Joseph and a member of the bargaining team. “We don’t want to, but we will if we have to.”
A “super majority” of members participated in the process, Reta confirmed Tuesday, April 8. Voting started Thursday, April 3 and finished April 8.
The vote comes after more than a dozen sessions between Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Healthcare 1199NW bargaining team members and PeaceHealth since September. The contract expired in November.
SEIU represents a sweeping group of more than 900 PeaceHealth employees, including technicians, lab professionals and service workers. Their last wage increase went into effect in September 2023.
“No one takes this decision lightly, and our goal is not to strike, but to reach an agreement,” union president Jane Hopkins told Cascadia Daily News last week.
The two sides remain far apart on several key issues, including wages and medical leave. PeaceHealth spokesperson Amy Drury said caregivers “deserve the opportunity to vote on our offer,” noting the union has not presented PeaceHealth’s most recent offer to its members.
“While we hope a strike can be avoided, PeaceHealth has contingency plans in place to ensure we can deliver the same safe, high-quality care our patients and families have come to expect should a strike be called,” Drury continued.
Union workers last went on strike in 2015, voicing their frustration with wages, health care costs and staffing levels, according to The Bellingham Herald. Many of the issues are the same as those raised now.
County council member Barry Buchanan previously told CDN he walked the picket line with SEIU.
“I’d do it again,” he said. “I tend to stand with organized labor.”
PeaceHealth is in negotiations with three unions representing three different groups of caregivers at St. Joseph. It continues to challenge the collective bargaining rights of a fourth group of medical providers, who unionized under the joint employer umbrella of PeaceHealth and Sound Physicians.
Isaac Stone Simonelli is CDN’s enterprise/investigations reporter; reach him at isaacsimonelli@cascadiadaily.com; 360-922-3090 ext. 127.
Source: cascadiadaily.com
