In a major show of collective power, more than 2,000 NUHW members at Providence hospitals and hospices throughout Northern California held their first region-wide Day of Action on February 12 to call attention to severe understaffing and sharp cuts to health services in communities that are dependent on Providence for their medical care.
Following years of successful organizing, NUHW members are teaming up on a unified campaign to make Providence provide competitive salaries and benefits so it can restore safe staffing levels and limit Providence’s ability to slash services in the wake of a series of closures.
“It’s really heartbreaking how we have fallen so far in the past 10 years,” Psyche Clark, an obstetrics technician who has worked at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital for nearly three decades, told the Santa Rosa Press Democrat. “Every time you turn around they’re closing something. And we’re so short staffed. We’re the trauma center. We should be the best.”
Gabriela Caro, a scheduler in Queen of the Valley’s imaging center, agreed that care under Providence has suffered since they took over operations from St. Joseph a decade ago.
“They’ve been closing departments and cutting staff,” Caro told the Press Democrat. “Patients are waiting longer for care. We need this contract to be able to preserve services so we can be a hospital that the community can continue to believe in.”
In addition to the Press Democrat, which wrote two stories about the local picket lines, the action was covered by Northern California Public Media, Napa Valley Register, KSRO, KRCR, Eureka Times-Standard, Lost Coast Outpost, Redwood News TV.
Providence, the nation’s fifth-largest nonprofit hospital system, gained a foothold in Northern California with its 2016 takeover of St. Joseph Health. It now owns six hospitals in the region, five of which have members represented by NUHW: Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital, Petaluma Valley Hospital, Queen of the Valley Hospital in Napa, and Redwood Memorial Hospital and St. Joseph Eureka in Humboldt County. Providence also has two hospices in Sonoma County, both represented by NUHW.
Providence has $7.8 billion in financial reserves and a $150 million venture capital arm, but it has still laid off workers and sharply reduced available medical services since taking over the Northern California hospitals. Since 2020, Providence has closed its outpatient labs in all three counties, closed birthing centers in Humboldt and Sonoma counties, shuttered the only acute rehab unit in Humboldt County, and closed two urgent care clinics in Sonoma County.
It has also laid off hospice workers in Sonoma County, while increasing caseloads for caregivers so they have less time for patients.
“I need to be able to give quality care to my patients when they’re dying,” Jennifer Harrison, a hospice worker based in Petaluma, told Northern California Public Radio. “If that means that I see five or six patients in an 8-hour day, it’s a full day, and I’m not able to really give patients the care that they deserve.”
Providence’s quest to maximize profits stretches beyond Northern California and has landed it in the crosshairs of state authorities. In Oregon, nearly 5,000 nurses, represented by the Oregon Nurses Association, were on strike for more than a month over concerns about “systemic understaffing.”
In Washington State, Providence is refunding $21 million in medical bills and erasing $137 million in medical debt to settle charges filed by the Washington State Attorney General’s office that the company sent patients who qualified for charity care to collections. And, in California, then-Attorney General Xavier Becerra rejected a proposed merger between Providence and Adventist hospitals in Northern California citing a ”potential to increase health costs, and potentially limit access and availability of healthcare services.”
To improve staffing levels, reduce turnover, and safeguard services, NUHW members are fighting to win pay and benefits that are comparable to Providence’s biggest regional competitors, Kaiser Permanente and Sutter Health, while also requiring Providence to provide at least five months advance notice before it closes a service so workers and community members have an opportunity to rally against it. Providence has so far rejected being forced to provide advance notice of service closures and is proposing annual raises of less than 2 percent for nearly all workers.
“Providence is not offering us market wages for our work,” Erica Goldsmith, a physical therapist at St. Joseph Eureka, told a local television station. “A lot of people move for places that pay better. And a lot of people are here because they just love being here and love serving this community like myself.”
Every picket line outside a Providence hospital included a rally with local elected leaders.
NUHW’s rally in front of Memorial Hospital Wednesday drew at least a half-dozen local elected officials, including: state Assemblymembers Chris Rogers, D-Santa Rosa and Damon Connolly, D-San Rafael; Rohnert Park City Council member Jackie Elward; Santa Rosa City Council members Natalie Rogers and Caroline Bañuelos; and Sonoma County Supervisor Chris Coursey.
According to the Press Democrat, Coursey told workers they had the support of “local community,” during a brief speech where he recalled the memory of his late wife, who worked as a registered nurse at Memorial Hospital. Theresa Coursey died on New Year’s Eve 2010 after a yearslong battle with cancer.
“She said her last words to me and her kids over on One East. This was 14 years ago,” Coursey said. “She worked here for 20 years before that. She knew that the jobs that you do are what make this hospital run right. She knew that you are the backbone of this hospital. You are what makes Providence stay open here.”
