The contract covering nearly 3,200 nurses at Oregon Health & Science University expires June 30, 2026 — 18 days from now — and no new agreement has been announced. The Oregon Nurses Association represents the largest nursing unit at OHSU, Oregon's only academic medical center and Level I Trauma center in Portland. If bargaining doesn't produce a tentative agreement before the deadline, nurses will be working without a contract while the two sides continue negotiating — or, if ONA authorizes a strike, the countdown to a walkout begins.
The current contract was ratified in late 2023 following a summer of acrimonious negotiations that included a formal impasse declaration in August and a strike authorization vote. That agreement delivered wage increases of 15% in year one and 6% in each of years two and three. Nurses also won safe staffing improvements, paid training provisions, and enhanced workplace safety protocols including lockdown procedure updates. Those gains now serve as the floor going into the 2026 renewal cycle.
What the 2026 Bargaining Environment Looks Like
Oregon nurses are negotiating in a fundamentally different environment than 2023. Three structural changes have shifted the landscape: First, HB 2697 — Oregon's mandatory hospital staffing ratio law, effective June 1, 2024 — establishes legally enforceable minimums that the employer cannot waive in contract negotiations. ICU ratios of 1:2 and med-surg ratios of 1:5 are now the floor, not a bargaining chip. Second, the Providence Oregon strike of January-February 2025 set a new pattern ceiling: Providence nurses won 16–22% immediate raises and total increases of 20–42% over the contract life. Every ONA bargaining unit in the state is using that settlement as a reference point. Third, OHSU itself has faced financial pressure from state Medicaid reimbursement rates — the academic medical center has publicly cited operating margin constraints — which creates the conditions for a prolonged standoff if management's opening position is far below ONA's asks.
An ONA spokesperson confirmed that bargaining sessions are scheduled but declined to characterize the current negotiating posture. OHSU's communications office did not respond to a request for comment before publication.
Oregon's Ratio Law Changes the Bargaining Math
In most states, nurses negotiate staffing ratios as a union benefit. In Oregon, they're now a legal floor — but that doesn't mean management can simply comply with minimums and call it safe staffing. ONA's contracts typically include language that goes above the statutory floor: charge nurse ratios, break relief provisions, float pool limitations, and acuity-adjusted assignments that the ratio law doesn't cover in detail.
The OHSU contract will also need to address the financial implications of HB 2697 compliance. Meeting mandatory ratios requires maintaining adequate per-shift staffing buffers — which means OHSU cannot legally run as lean as it did before June 2024. The cost of ratio compliance is built into OHSU's labor budget whether ONA's contract is settled or not. Nurses see this as creating additional leverage: the employer is already spending more on staffing. The question is whether that money comes in the form of better pay and benefits.
OHSU's APPs Unit Reached Agreement in Late 2025
A separate ONA bargaining unit — the roughly 700 Advanced Practice Providers (NPs, physician associates, and nurse midwives) at OHSU — reached a tentative agreement in December 2025 after a strike authorization vote in October. That agreement provides a data point for what OHSU has been willing to settle at, though the RN unit is larger and its leverage profile is different. The APP settlement is believed to include wage increases in the range of the Providence pattern.
OHSU nurses negotiated the last contract with strike authorization and still had to go to impasse to move management. The Providence Oregon pattern and HB 2697 have both strengthened ONA's hand going into 2026 — but OHSU management has cited financial constraints as a limiting factor. June 30 is a hard deadline. Watch for ONA's strike authorization vote if bargaining stalls past the expiration date. A strike at OHSU — Oregon's only academic medical center — would have statewide implications.