🌻 AURN August 2025 Newsletter

What’s inside:

• All about resource nurses!
• Bargaining Survey Coming Soon…
• Changes to PNCC and UBNPC funding
• Updates on OHA investigations and BOLI complaints
• Watch Party for the September Nursing Town Hall
• Special message from AURN president Elisa Youngman
• Bargaining Team Updates

Contract Corner: Resource Nurses

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).

• FTE: 0.0, no shifts are guaranteed to nurses
• Benefits: no
• Sick time: yes, actually (14.1)! According to Oregon’s sick time law, here’s the breakdown:
  • You can earn a max of 40 hours per year
  • Will accrue at 0.0333 hrs for each compensated hour
• Can become eligible for health benefits: yes, (16.3.2)
  • If ≥ 780 hrs in 6-month period immediately post hire
  • If ≥ 780 hrs in ongoing 6-month period (Dec through May or June through November)
  • May not contribute toward benefit coverage
• Hours required per fiscal year: 360 hrs (24.1)
• Hours required per 4-week work schedule: 24 hrs (this is the minimum required shifts or MRS) (24.1)
• Must submit availability to scheduler: at least 2 weeks in advance of schedule going up, providing at least the MRS (24.1)
• Does mandatory education count toward the required hours above: no (24.1)
• Weekend requirements: 12 weekend shifts/yr if work available (24.1)
• Holiday requirements: 2 holidays/yr if work available (other provisions apply, UBNPC may institute some rules, see 24.1c)
• Clinical nurse instructors: exempt from working requirements above (24.1)
• Can potentially get guaranteed shifts: actually yes, through a “temporary resource assignment” (24.2) to cover FMLA or posted vacancies
• Eligible for differentials: yes! (24.3)
• Eligible for CNI: special requirements, but yes! (see 10.11) (24.3)
• Special pay: resource nurses have a different and higher pay schedule than FTE nurses (15% more than base wage of FTE nurses) (see appendix A)
• Difference in pay based on education level: no, Appendix A shows a base wage, BSN, MSN, and NP rate with the resource rate in its own column
• Special resource nurse differentials: yes! (on top of wage scale above!) (24.3) (not available to float pool resource nurses, 10.9.2)
  • if working ≥ 36 hrs in a pay period you get a 3% differential
  • if working ≥ 48 hrs, 7% differential
  • if working ≥ 60 hrs, 10% differential
• Eligible for education leave and cert pay: yes, but only if worked 1040 hrs in the last fiscal year (24.4)
• Gets access to staff development fund: yes, but it’s a separate one than the FTE bank (21.5)
• Accrues seniority: No, but can get previous seniority back if taking an FTE position without a break in service (24.5)
• Cancelled shifts count towards MRS: yes (24.6)
• Employer must call if it appears no work is available: shall make “reasonable effort” to release the nurse > 2hrs before the shift (24.7)
• Posting of resource nurse positions: according to the “specific scheduling needs” of unit (24.8)
• Open resource positions awarded: based on length of service on unit (24.8)
• Can convert from resource to FTE: yes, but (24.8)
  • nurse must request review of amount of FTE vs. their hours worked over the last 4 months
  • director and unit base determine if more FTE is necessary
  • Importantly, hrs worked by the resource nurse to relieve vacation, sick leave, or other leaves will not be considered
• What happens if you don’t meet the requirements: will be considered voluntarily resigned after 14 day written warning (special circumstance apply) (24.9)
• Can work an interim position (defined in 5.8): yes! Also accrues seniority and can keep working as resource on top of that if they wish (24.10)
• Can take a personal leave: yes, up to 2 months each year, with each month separated by 3 months unless management allows otherwise (24.11)
• On-call conditions apply: yes, see 7.7.6
• Eligible for double back: yes, see 9.2
• Eligible for specialty float pool differential: must work ≥ 6 shifts in a 4-week schedule at employers request and will get additional $4/hr
• What happens to vacation time when switching to resource from FTE: (12.4.2)
  • You can cash out
  • You can retain up to 120 hrs if you plan to return to FTE later
• Can cover vacation requests after posting of schedule: if management agrees to it (13.9)
• Can convert to resource if laid off FTE: yes, may without required posting if sufficient work is available to necessitate a resource nurse (20.5)
• Cancellation and curtailment: important to keep in mind (7.12.7) as resource nurses not working overtime actually are sent home after volunteers of the unit.
• Scheduling: 7.22 outlines the order of scheduling and unit base has a lot of leeway into how this will look on each unit as long as they follow the order in the contract

The Bargaining Survey is Coming Out Soon!

We are getting ready to go back to the bargaining table to win a better collective bargaining agreement (CBA/contract)! Our bargaining survey will be coming out near the end of August and we want to make sure we provide you all with some of the terminology you may see and what it may pertain to when it comes to bargaining.

1. Safety
We made history by getting a safety article in our last contract however, OHSU has not followed through on the agreements we made in this article. Nurses continue to have the burden of maintaining safety for ourselves and our patients. The safety assessment was not shared with staff and measures to improve safety are barely getting started. Safety is a very broad topic that includes safety training opportunities, deescalation tactics and education, ensuring no weapons are being brought on site, protection from violence in the workplace, chart flagging for all staff safety, and appropriate responses when an event has occurred to make the situation safer. Safety may impact ambulatory and home infusion differently with escalation to discharge being faster and ensuring patients are transferred to campus where we have access to Public Safety when their home is unsafe for nurses to visit.

2. Job Protection
Since our last contract, our nurses have experienced layoffs, restructures of departments, cutting of education hours, and closing of departments. Additionally, we are seeing a lot of hospitals across the nation incorporate AI into hospitals to “increase productivity” and avoid hiring more staff. Job protection goes beyond layoffs; it ensures the hospital does not give our work away to others, whether it is protection from travelers taking our hours or AI.
Additional things that fall into this category include

3. Staffing
We have been building on staffing since our 2020 contract cycle and finally have unencumbered meal and break time. The ED got their staffing grid protected in our contract and also achieved temporary staffing stabilization differentials for the units with the highest turnover and shortest staffing. Now that our staffing has improved significantly, we continue to work hard to ensure we are staffing to patient acuity and workload intensity. Things that have come up from our members as some additional needs for staffing include penalties for violating staffing plans and ensuring adequate staffing in other ancillary support roles to allow nurses to work at the top of their practice.

4. Union Rights/Management Rights
Union Rights and Management Rights are defined broadly under Oregon labor law, and more substantively in our union contract. “Union Rights” are our ability to organize, collectively bargain, and uphold our contract. Management rights, by contrast, are the Employer’s right to manage the production, logistics, and hiring of their business. To put it plainly, anything our contract doesn’t explicitly speak to, Management has the right to change. As OHSU continues to expand its operations, our contract has been unable to meaningfully address OHSU’s changing of nurses’ work schedules, work locations, and work roles. Strengthening “Union Rights” and narrowing “Management Rights” gives nurses broader say over their working conditions while limiting the Employer’s ability to change nurses working conditions.

5. Wages
Our last CBA brought us up to market for cost of living and inflation. We continue to need COLAs (cost-of-living-adjustments) to keep up with inflation and the cost of living in Portland. Wages refer to our hourly wages and step scales.

6. Sick and Vacation time
Last time around we were able to preserve up to 120 hours of vacation time for nurses who moved to Resource positions for them to hold in a bank for return to FTE positions. We have not had increases to our sick or vacation accrual and bank maximum in quite a long time. In our last contract cycle we identified that vacation hours were not being fairly allotted and aligned with our contract to ensure newer nurses were getting time off work and not just nurses with high seniority. AURN has worked hard to keep sick and vacation time separated through many contract cycles to allow us to negotiate them separately and get the maximum time off of work without being penalized for using ill days.

7. Benefits
Benefits are non-wage compensation provided by OHSU; these typically include retirement and health insurance.
In 2023 negotiations, we made significant gains in shifting the cost of our health care to be covered by our Employer (EPO). However, access to health care has been an enduring, if not worsening issue for our nurses. The majority of our health care benefit decisions are made in the EBC, which creates additional barriers to improving our benefits and expanding coverage.
In 2017 negotiations, our UPP Retirement Plan became two-tiered: Nurses hired before 6/30/17 could receive a maximum match of 12% on their retirement contributions whereas those hired after 6/30/17 could receive a maximum match of 6% on their retirement contribution.

8. Education & Career Advancement
We used all of our Education Funds this last fiscal year! These hours and dollars are used for us to keep up with national standards and support maintaining our certifications. Not only have conference costs gone up, but so have travel costs. Additionally, we have portions of our contract outlined to support career advancement, including tuition support to go back for a BSN or for an advanced degree.

9. Differentials & Incentive Pay
Differential pay refers to the additional pay we get for being nationally certified in our specialty, being charge nurse, precepting, and working weekends and night shifts. We have made significant strides to this by changing many of these to percentages instead of flat rates. Some of our differentials remain a flat rate per hour.
Incentive pay typically refers to working in addition to our FTE as Critical Need Incentive (CNI). Incentives can also be considered when we look at receiving holiday pay as an incentive to work the sometimes harder to fill shifts.

PNCC

Our Chair/Co-chair virtual workshop is planned for October 15, 2025 from 10-2.

Rules and suggested guidelines from PNCC:

Funding breakdown - Each unit is allotted $275 per 1.0 FTE. This is not per RN. Broken down per FTE it looks like this: 0.9 - $247.5, 0.8 - $220, 0.7 - $192.5, 0.6 - $165, 0.5 - $137.50, etc. It has always been this way. We just wanted to highlight that.

Equipment - UBNPC/PNCC funding should not be used to buy equipment anymore. We know this was something done historically, but PNCC wants to prioritize education seminars, online training, conferences, etc. If equipment is needed for education for a unit, then that needs to come out of the unit budget. Even if your UBNPC approves funding for equipment HR rep will not be able to reimburse this expense. This is due to OHSU P-Card restrictions.

Conference guidelines - The PNCC encourages your unit to look at sending people to conferences or online education seminars. Keep in mind conferences are ranging from $2k – $5k in total expenses. There will be a shift this year in that RNs should not expect to have their entire conference expenses covered with PNCC funding.

The PNCC also encourages your unit to create a system that equitably allows for different people to attend conferences. An example of a rule is that if you have attended a conference in the last 2-3 years, then UBNPC will not be funding your request. This allows for less senior people and more people to get education. We recommend at least 2-3 years as conferences are more expensive than they have been in the past. If a RN has attended a conference in the previous FY, then PNCC will not be prioritizing funding for that RN.

In regards to conferences, when submitting a request for prepayment, please be sure to also submit a request that includes all of the costs for travel. This can even be estimated costs of flight, hotels, etc. This helps to give PNCC a better picture of what the nurse is requesting. Also, please consider making sure people are rooming with another person to help cut down on lodging costs.

Bulk Memberships - PNCC recommends submitting the bulk membership via the request form and UBNPCfunds can register and cover the cost. If a RN chooses to register many people and pay for it themself, then keep in mind that UBNPCfunds can only reimburse one person.

As of 7/23/25 the PNCC has decided on the following rules for approving additional funding:

FTE nurses will have a limit of $1000 they can receive per fiscal year from the PNCC.

Resource nurses will have a limit of $750 they can receive per fiscal year from the PNCC.

Note for Resource Nurses: as they do not get any unit funding. We made this determination by looking at the total amount allotted for resource RN’s and divided it by the number of resource RN’s employed. This value is calculated based on the number of hours worked by resource rns. When approving funds, the PNCC will match what was approved by the unit, up to $1000. (Ex. If your unit approves $400, the PNCC will approve $400. Or if your unit approves $1500, they will approve $1000. Fiscal year PNCC fund per nurse limits apply).

Nurses from units who have been allotted $2000 or greater as their beginning balance, the PNCC will match what was approved by the unit, up to $1000. (This is assuming the individual nurse has not met their $1k limit).

Nurses from units who have been allotted $1999 or under as their beginning balance will have the PNCC match what was approved, then give an additional amount up to $1000 per request. (Ex: If your unit approves 400 the PNCC will approve 1400. Assuming you have not met your $1k limit for the fiscal year) If you received a significant amount of funding in the immediate preceding fiscal year ($500 or more), you will be less likely to be approved for funding in the current fiscal year.

The PNCC has set a monthly budget based on funding allotment and then dividing that number by 12, so that we can more accurately track our budget, and not overspend. PNCC will look at how much has been approved by units and PNCC each month and see what is left of the monthly budget and approve less/more based on that number. The PNCC meets the 4th Wednesday of each month. They will only be looking at requests that the event date is the current month or 1 month in advance.

If your request was not fully approved with UBNPC and PNCC funds. You have the following alternatives:

Submit for the remaining funding to see if your unit can then approve the additional amount.

If your unit is not able to cover the additional amount, you have the potential to receive additional funding at the end of the fiscal year from the unused funds that are left over. (fund availability applies and all of your receipts need to be submitted to UBNPCfunds@ohsu.edu within 60 days after the event to qualify for reimbursement in June.)

We know this is a big change from how it has historically been done and many have benefitted from having their entire conference expense or other education expenses covered. The PNCC has been intentional about educating everyone about the ed funds, and many more RNs are accessing this benefit. This has resulted in less money being available for RNs to use to cover an entire conference expense. Conferences and education items have become more expensive as inflation has risen. We understand this change is frustrating, but it is what we have to do so that we don’t run into the problem of overspending the budget like we did last year. PNCC plans to re-evaluate our methods every month to ensure that we are meeting our goals. If our guidelines change, then we will send further notification about this.

Hospital Nurse Staffing Committee

This month has seen a flood of OHA investigations related to the staffing complaints that we have been filing. The pressure seems to be paying off because we are passing staffing plans, including a number of plans that have come to our committee over and over (looking at you 14C!).

Keep up the good work filing staffing complaints, this is one way to affect real change!

We’ve also heard of ongoing confusion around penalties for missed meals and breaks.

BOLI is enforcing hospital penalties of $200 per nurse per missed break in instances where there is no contractual language ensuring a financial remedy for missed breaks. Since our contract stipulates that we are paid for missed breaks in alignment with the law, BOLI is not currently enforcing penalties to OHSU.

We are engaged with BOLI in discussions about whether paying straight time pay for time worked really constitutes a penalty to the hospital. That said, please continue to fill out OHA complaints for missed meals and breaks because this information is shared with ONA and it helps us build a record to use as leverage while bargaining this issue!

There are also other ways to hold the hospital financially accountable for missed breaks.

If you work in a unit with an approved staffing plan, you can submit a staffing complaint for failure to comply with staffing levels in the staffing plan when there is not sufficient break nurse coverage. If you work in a unit without an approved staffing plan, you can submit a complaint if lack of break nurse coverage leads to buddy breaks or charge nurses providing break coverage on units with 11+ beds. In this case, the complaint is for failure to comply with legal RN to patient ratios. In both of these cases, the hospital is subject to fines up to $5,000 per day. While this isn’t a remedy to the individual nurse, it is more financially impactful to the hospital and will be noticed.

Fill out your staffing complaints here: OHA staffing complaints

NRNSC

We continue to see good plans being submitted that just need a few minor fixes. Management should never be your first step to filling a nurse vacancy.

We are still working on determining which areas do not operate under the OHSU hospital license, but continue to submit your plans. Any place where there are nurses working needs to have a staffing plan.

Watch Party for the September Nursing Town Hall

Join your AURN friends for popcorn, button making and community building while we watch the September Nursing Town Hall together.

What: Watch party for the next Nursing Town Hall
When: Tuesday, September 16 at 4pm
Where: Mac Hall room 3198

Membership

New schedule for ONA New Employee Orientation sessions!

If you precept in your area, please make sure you are encouraging those new folks to attend an ONA NEO session to learn about their benefits and rights that come with union representation. This is paid time protected by our contract.

Please take note that in person sessions will align with OHSU in person onboarding at 1430 on the first day of each pay period, which is always a Monday. Alternating weeks will be virtual sessions on Wednesday mornings at 0800.

Upcoming NEO sessions:

Monday, August 25 at 1430 in the BICC gallery
Wednesday, September 3 at 0800 via Zoom link
Monday, September 8 at 1430 in the BICC gallery
Wednesday, September 17 at 0800 via Zoom link
Monday, September 22 at 1430 in the BICC gallery

Or send your newly hired colleagues this link to become a full dues paying member of ONA and stand together in solidarity with over 80% of their fellow nurses at OHSU: https://www.oregonrn.org/page/apply

A Short Note from Our AURN President Elisa Youngman

Hello AURN members,

Thank you all for your dedication and support these last three years. I am stepping down from the AURN President role in September. This decision was very difficult to make, but due to some upcoming life events, I need to adjust the number of responsibilities I have. I always want to give 100% to all the things I do in my life, and I know that I wouldn’t be able to give AURN and upcoming CBA negotiations the attention it deserves. It has been a real honor to advocate for AURN and we are only where we are, because each of you decided to join our collective voice advocating for ourselves and our profession. I will still be an active member and steward of AURN and participate in actions and events when I am able. Thank you all for helping me along the way and making this union better than I could have dreamed. Thank you to the AURN Board of Directors, multiple Committee Members, and Bargaining Team for continuing the work - you will continue to do incredible things for the nurses at OHSU!

In Solidarity,
Elisa

Bargaining Team Updates:
We have made a couple changes to our bargaining team due to some of our members having some life changes. Here are the awesome members of the 2026 Bargaining Team:

Duncan Zevetski, 13K
Bill Erickson, PACU
Corinn Joseph, SOR
Kartika Vasavada, CHH2 Oncology
Evey McKellar, ED
Dani Chiero. ACFP
Erin Boni, MICU
Ellen Miller, ACFP
Grace Schoenlank, Perinatal Float Pool
Adam Maag, Family Medicine-Scappoose
Katie Dahlberg, 9K
Patrick Hennessy, TSICU
Lisa Incognito, CHH2 Oncology

Now Accepting Consents to Serve:
AURN Vice President
Safe Patient Mobilization Committee (1 seat)