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.