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About Portland observer. (Portland, Or.) 1970-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 24, 2024)
Page 4 January 24, 2024 Addressing Ongoing Staffing Crisis A Civil Rights Legacy to Remember Continued from Front They met in 1997 at a Nash- ONA nurses and allies hold a community-wide informational picket outside PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Home Care Services Eugene offices Nov. 29. Photo Courtesy of the Oregon Nurses Association (ONA) Continued from Page 2 patients and their families transi- tion into the final stages of life. Despite their essential work, PeaceHealth continues to low- ball local home care nurses with inequitable compensation offers during bargaining. The compen- sation PeaceHealth has offered nurses is less than other similar home health agencies and less than what PeaceHealth agreed to with Sacred Heart hospital nurs- es in Eugene/Springfield. Peace- Health’s offers also fall below inflation and ignore the standard practice of compensating hospi- tal and home care nurses equal- ly; which is done at Providence, OHSU, PeaceHealth Peace Har- bor, and was done at PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Home Care Services for many years including in its most recent contract agreement. “We need wage equality to keep nurses and hire new ones. Nurses cannot afford to take a pay cut to come work here. To recruit and retain nurses we need equal- ity,” said Heather Herbert, an ONA member and hospice nurse at PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Home Care Services. “We are not asking for more or special treat- ment, just what we have always had and the standard that all other PeaceHealth hospitals have had in Washington and Oregon.” ONA home care nurses first bargaining date with PeaceHealth was nearly a year ago on Feb. 14, 2023. Local nurses elected to the bargaining team have sacrificed their personal time to meet with paid PeaceHealth executives 40 times to try to reach a fair con- tract agreement–including sever- al meetings with a federal medi- ator. Nurses have also led public rallies and informational pickets on April 10 and Nov. 29, held a community education event De- cember 16 and held a bargaining unit wide strike vote December 27-28. All in an effort to reach a fair agreement. Throughout negotiations, nurses’ have made it clear their priority is to reach a fair contract agreement that addresses Peace- Health’s nurse staffing crisis, raises safety standards, increas- es recruitment and retention of skilled caregivers, protects pay equity and ensures all Orego- nians have access to safe, afford- able and accessible home health care. Community members can visit RespectOurNurses.com now to learn more about ongo- ing negotiations sign a commu- nity petition in support of the nurses and clinicians, donate to support striking nurses, and get information about the impacts of a potential strike. family’s intellectual property. In addition to serving as chair- man of the King Center, he was also president of the King estate. Dexter King and his siblings, who shared control of the family estate, didn’t al- ways agree on how to uphold their parents’ legacy. In one particularly bitter disagreement, the siblings ended up in court after Dexter King and his brother in 2014 sought to sell the Nobel Peace Prize their father was awarded in 1964 along with the civil rights leader’s traveling Bi- ble used by President Barack Obama for his second inaugu- ration. Bernice King said she found the notion unthinkable. The King siblings settled the dispute in 2016 after former President Jimmy Carter served as a mediator. The items were turned over to the brothers, but other terms of the settlement were kept confidential. Decades earlier, Dexter King made headlines when he publicly declared that he be- lieved James Earl Ray, who pleaded guilty in 1969 to mur- dering his father, was innocent. ville prison amid an unsuccess- ful push by King family mem- bers to have Ray stand trial, hoping the case would reveal evidence of a broader conspira- cy. When Ray said during their prison meeting that he wasn’t the killer, Dexter King replied: “I believe you and my family believes you.” But Ray never got a trial. He died from liver failure the following year. Dexter King is survived by his wife as well as his older brother, Martin Luther King III; his younger sister, the Rev. Bernice A. King; and a teenage niece, Yolanda Renee King. Coretta Scott King died in 2006, followed by the Kings’ oldest child, Yolanda Denise King, in 2007. “Words cannot express the heart break I feel from losing an- other sibling,” Bernice King said in a statement. Martin Luther King III said: “The sudden shock is devastating. It is hard to have the right words at a moment like this. We ask for your prayers at this time for the entire King fam- ily.” A memorial service will be announced later, the King Center said. The family planned a news conference Tuesday in Atlanta.
