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FAQs

updated 2025-08-28

table of contents

page is a work in progress, but here are just a few of the most FAQs! =)

What is AURN?

Our bargaining unit at OHSU is called AURN (Association of University Registered Nurses) which is represented by the ONA (Oregon Nurses Association). A union is workers coming together to make positive changes in their workplace (a bargaining unit is generally the specific workplace). This gives us a voice to our working conditions. Our voice includes bargaining for a contract that addresses our needs, the needs of our patients, and the needs of the community that we serve; as well as a democratic process for organizing our union. Union nurses have a strong history of organizing and bargaining better conditions for our patients and our profession. By using our voices within our workplace we can make positive, meaningful change.

AURN has bylaws (on our website) which outline the structure of our union. We have an Executive Committee, a Board of Directors, Chairpersons and members of different committees and unit reps which are all made up of nurses here at OHSU. We also have labor reps on staff with ONA who work closely with us to represent our interests and advocate for nurses.

What are Weingarten Rights?

Union Protection
As unionized nurses, we have more protection than our non-unionized colleagues when it comes to conditions of our employment and protection from unscrupulous managers. Federal, state and local labor laws offer some protections to non-unionized nurses in the form of protection against discrimination for being a member of a protected class and overtime regulations. Unionized nurses have additional protections in the form of their Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) that dictates the terms for discipline and termination. Nurses in non-union environments are generally considered “at-will” employees. This means that non unionized nurses can be terminated or treated unfairly at their employer’s will with little direct recourse. AURN nurses have additional protections in our CBA that define the disciplinary process, holds management accountable to hospital policy and generally goes far above and beyond those protections offered by law.

Just Cause
Just/Proper cause requires an employer in all but the most egregious cases to use several progressively escalating levels of discipline over time in an effort to correct a nurse’s performance or behavior before terminating the nurse. These steps are typically defined in a CBA and can be found in Article 6.10 in our contract.

ONA Representation
ONA-represented nurses have the right to be represented during any questioning about or investigation into their performance or activities as employees. These rights are called “Weingarten Rights” and are only available to unionized workers. Management is not required to inform you of these rights or offer you representation and they may not identify a meeting as being disciplinary in nature or provide content for the meeting beforehand. It is always appropriate to ask if any given meeting you are asked to sit with management may result in discipline. It is important for ONA members to assert their Weingarten rights as soon as they feel that an interaction with management could lead to discipline or termination, however you can invoke your Weingarten Rights at any point in the disciplinary process, even if you had not invoked it at a previous step. Assert your rights by stating you would like to have an ONA representative present, or simply saying “I am invoking my Weingarten rights”. Once invoking your Weingarten Rights, the meeting must be put on hold until representation can be found and scheduled for you. This often means a meeting will need to be rescheduled for a future date to allow for ONA representation availability. For AURN, the person who represents you in a disciplinary meeting may be a labor rep or a Nurse Representative; a peer nurse who has been trained in participating in disciplinary proceedings. The AURN Grievance Committee makes efforts to ensure that the Nurse Representative supporting members facing discipline are familiar with the practice area, particularly in instances where a nurse’s practice is being called into question.

Please remember, you do not need to be the focus of a disciplinary proceeding to remind your fellow nurses of their rights! Stewards are encouraged to keep an eye out for all our nurses and remind them of their rights in the event they get called into a disciplinary meeting.

The role of your representation is primarily to ensure that the provisions of our CBA and hospital policy are being followed and to request appropriate information to guide the process. Where appropriate, your representative may request additional information from your manager, such as unit wide compliance of a specific practice, to ensure that our members are not being singled out. If a violation of policy or our contract occurs, or if the facts of the case do not satisfy just cause provisions for discipline, your representative can help file a grievance to ensure your rights are protected.

The Nurse Representatives sitting on the Grievance Committee are dedicated nurses who work hard to ensure your rights are protected in the event of a disciplinary proceeding. We do our best to ensure that management is following hospital policy and our CBA, offering substantiated evidence, providing opportunities for improvement over disciplinary actions and making sure they are acting ethically and in line with federal, state and local law. Please do not hesitate to reach out to your labor rep, a steward or the Grievance Hotline for any questions regarding disciplinary proceedings on your unit!

How do I get ONA representation??
Call the Grievance Hotline at (503) 494-6880
Get in contact with your Union Steward and/or Labor Rep directly or email aurnlaborreps@oregonrn.org

Please make sure you know our contract!

What is a grievance?

What exactly is a grievance?

Simply put, a grievance is a way to formalize a complaint that OHSU must listen to and take seriously. Things we can file a grievance over include violations of:

1) our Union contract

2) OHSU’s policies

3) Municipal, State, or Federal law

The grievance process is a way to make sure rules are being followed and to make sure OHSU treats people fairly. This process has steps built into it that escalate the grievance to people higher up in OHSU management and ultimately to a mutually agreeable outside decision maker to resolve conflicts.

What is not a grievance?

Issues between AURN nurses are not grievances. The exception to this is if you have reported the conflict to your manager and they failed to take action. This would be a grievance against management for failing to act; not against your fellow union member.

Your boss being short, curt, or direct with you is not a grievance. They are allowed to manage the workplace and have no obligation to be super nice or polite. The exception to this is if your boss is being abusive or engaging in discrimination based on a legally defined protected class (race, sexual orientation, religion, national origin, gender identity, etc).

How do I start the grievance process?

The first step in the grievance process is usually to have what is called a “pre-grievance meeting.” Many of us at OHSU have good relationships with our immediate supervisors and sometimes issues such as errors in pay or scheduling can be resolved by flagging the issue for your manager as a potential grievance and talking through the problem in a sit-down meeting with them that can include your steward. This needs to be done no later than 30 days from when you realized the violation happened. Make sure to communicate through email so there is documentation!

(The exception to this is if you are suspended, demoted, or fired; in these situations, you should contract your steward, nurse rep, or labor rep immediately.)

What if my manager disagrees with us after the pre-grievance meeting?

If your manager disagrees with you, you have the ability to advance the matter and hold a more formal meeting with your director that includes representatives from AURN, ONA, and Human Resource. We call this a Step 1 grievance meeting.

What happens if we don’t come to an agreement at the formal Step 1 meeting?

If we can’t come to an agreement with management, we have the ability to escalate the issue to involve members of management at the executive level at a Step 2 grievance meeting. It’s a similar meeting, but the hope of this is that people higher up understand that we should not be having a conflict over the issue brought forward in the grievance.

What happens if the executives and bean counters don’t agree with us?

This is where arbitration happens, which is a fancy way of saying we appeal the case to an expert on labor and contract law. Before an arbitrator hears the case, we have ONA’s labor cabinet (a board of democratically elected nurses from across ONA) review each case based on its merit to ensure that we are being responsible with your dues dollars, which pay for the costs associated with arbitration.

Can you tell me about resource nurses at what that means at OHSU?

A resource nurse is “a nurse who has not been assigned an FTE status and is not regularly scheduled for any designated number of hours per pay period” according to our collective bargaining agreement (CBA) with OHSU (“Article 5 - Definitions”).

Other facilities use other names for this type of nurse (per-diem, casual-part-time, on-call nurse, and casual nurses) and confusingly other facilities have an entirely different definition of a resource nurse.

Basically, our facility uses “resource nurse” to mean a nurse who is not guaranteed any shifts (0.0 FTE) nor benefits but whose primary function is to fill scheduling gaps whether that is related to leaves on a unit, skill mix, or additional staffing on a unit.

At other facilities a resource nurse is someone who has specialized in a care area and is available to provide additional resources on the shift and may be an FTE position.

At OHSU, “per diem” nurses are traveling nurses (non-bargaining unit nurses) who are called-in on the day of to fill emergent gaps in scheduling.

Importantly, resource nurses should not be used for baseline staffing, nor should per diem nurses or traveling (agency) nurses.

Each unit needs a staffing plan that accurately reflects the needs of their unit.

Each unit’s respective Unit Based Nursing Practice Committee (UBNPC, or “unit base” for short) makes this plan.

As a reminder, unit base is a group of union nurses who create the plan in collaboration with management.

Management does not lead the unit base, but a union represented staff nurse leads as chair, and:

“All clinical decisions relative to nursing practice remain the province of the staff nurse, operating under accepted standards of care and hospital policy and procedure” … “All unit based decisions that have a fiscal impact upon the Employer remain the province of the Employer, provided that this clause shall be interpreted and operationalized in a manner that is consistent with Oregon’s nurse staffing law and the Collective Bargaining Agreement. It is the intention of the parties that managers will actively seek the input and recommendation of staff nurses on all fiscally based decisions.” (27.2)

Unit base is a great way to be involved in improving your unit function and we encourage you to seek election or appointment to your unit base!

With that out of the way, let’s talk more about resource nursing!

Article 24 in the contract is all about resource nurses.

It talks about the requirements that are expected of resource nurses (like minimum required shifts or MRS), optional temporary assignments,
pay, seniority, and more.

We are summarizing the specs of the resource nurse here, but just know that reading the whole contract is important for context (also control-f to search through the electronic version is super helpful).