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Another 200 nurses at Legacy Health hospitals in Oregon and Washington voted to join the Oregon Nurses Association last week, pushing the union’s representation to a new high in the hospital system.
The new members work in Legacy’s “resource pool,” meaning they rotate among hospitals, filling in as needed in various departments. They filed union authorization cards with the National Labor Relations Board in May and voted 109-16 to join the ONA on July 8, according to the NLRB.
Including the new members, more than 3,200 Legacy nurses are now part of the ONA. The surge marks a turnaround for organized labor at Legacy, where unions have had far less clout than at Oregon Health & Science University. The union has been adding members at Legacy since August 2023, when OHSU announced its intent to buy Legacy, a deal that was supported by union leaders before it collapsed in May. The vote by resource pool nurses shows that union membership is still enticing as Legacy goes it alone.
Tristan Drury, a Legacy resource-pool nurse, said the OHSU deal and its demise were “one of the biggest motivators” in the nurses’ decision to unionize.
“It’s weird to be an employee for a corporation and hear that corporation is merging, and then to not have a seat at the table and understand how our role will be impacted, how our wages will be impacted, how patients’ safety will be impacted,” Drury said in an interview.
The biggest union push at Legacy came in February, when more than 2,000 nurses voted to organize at Good Samaritan Medical Center, Emanuel Medical Center and Randall Children’s Hospital. That surge prompted the resource-pool nurses to take the same step, said ONA spokesman Kevin Mealy.
Jeff Poulsen, a resource-pool nurse, said wrenching changes in health care prompted him and others to organize. Already under pressure, hospitals are expected to suffer steeper budget shortfalls because of cuts to Medicaid in President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.”
“Our ability to fill in the gaps and make sure patients don’t feel the pain of nurse shortages is essential,” Poulsen said in a statement. “Looking around you can see health care is changing locally and nationally. Without a union, we don’t have a say in how those changes impact our patients or our staff.”
Nurses were also likely eyeing a contract signed between the ONA and OHSU in late 2023 that made the university’s nurses among the highest paid in the state.
Union protection is expected to be key as consolidation continues in the health care industry, Mealy, the ONA spokesman, said. In larger institutions, the gap between management and labor yawns.
“You no longer have the ability to make those minor day-to-day changes,” Mealy said. “As the decision-making layer has gotten further and further away from the people providing the care, I think it becomes more and more important that folks do unionize in order to have a say.”
Legacy respects the right of employees to organize, the company said in a statement to WW. “We are confident in our ability to remain focused on our shared commitment to the health and well-being of both our employees and patients,” Legacy said.
Drury says Legacy must demonstrate that two-pronged commitment.
“Time will tell as the process unfolds and we get to the negotiating table whether or not Legacy is willing to negotiate with the union in good faith,” he said. “I hope they are. I love being a Legacy employee and I want to stay a Legacy employee with a seat at the table and an ability to provide quality patient care.”
