Respect is a contract: Tualatin healthcare workers rally

Decrying Legacy Meridian Park’s “stall tactics” in bargaining, healthcare technicians took action last week to escalate their fight for a fair contract

The following is an excerpt from OFNHP-AFT Local 5017:

TUALATIN, OR (August 20, 2026) — Dozens of healthcare workers, patients and community supporters gathered outside Legacy Meridian Park Medical Center on August 12 to stand with Meridian Park Techs as they continue their fight for a fair second union contract.

A huge proportion of the Tech bargaining unit turned out for the rally after months of negotiations in which Legacy has continued to push back against some of the workers’ central priorities, including fair wage increases, differential parity with Legacy RNs, and basic union security language that is standard in private-sector healthcare union contracts.

But before workers headed outside for the rally, they took their concerns directly to Legacy’s new CEO. Techs attended CEO Joe Yoder’s town hall at Meridian Park, where they pressed him on the problems they are experiencing and invited him to come directly to the bargaining table. Yoder declined to commit to attending bargaining that Friday.

Photo: OFNHP

“Legacy’s lawyers are using stall tactics at every table and with every union to delay bargaining and make it as difficult as possible to reach a fair deal,” said Sean Weiss, an X-Ray Technologist, chair of the Meridian Park Technical Unit and member of the bargaining team. “For a company purportedly struggling to make ends meet, Legacy seems happy to spend money on lawyers who do little but rack up billable hours.”

For Weiss, the problem goes beyond any individual proposal at the table. Techs organized because they wanted a meaningful voice over their working conditions, and they wanted Legacy leadership to respect that decision.

“As Legacy employees, we want Legacy to live up to their purported values, and we think that starts with them respecting their employees’ decisions to form unions and by sending actual decision makers to negotiate with us,” Weiss said.

For Techs, the rally was an opportunity to demonstrate that they are not facing Legacy alone. Workers came from across Legacy and from other OFNHP bargaining units, while members of other unions and community organizations joined them to make the same point: the standards Techs are fighting for affect healthcare workers throughout the region.

Rhea Hindemit, chair of OFNHP’s Kaiser Technical bargaining unit, said the Meridian Park fight felt immediately familiar.

“We just came off of a two-year bargaining campaign with Kaiser, and I am having déjà vu,” she said, pointing to many of the same problems around wages, recruitment and retention that Kaiser Techs confronted.

But she also offered Meridian Park workers a picture of what sticking together can accomplish. After their long campaign, she said, Kaiser Techs won the highest raises for a Tech bargaining unit across Kaiser nationally.

“I know the fight you’re fighting feels really hard, and the employer will tire you out,” she said. “We were exhausted, but guess what? At the end of the day, we got the highest raises in all of Kaiser National for our Tech bargaining unit.”

The Techs have reached an agreement in principle on a traditional step system for the first year of the contract, but Weiss said Legacy’s wage proposal for the following years would provide increases of just 2% and then 1%—and would require Techs to give up their class action grievance over step increases they say Legacy wrongly denied them under their first contract.

OFNHP President Sarina Roher emphasized that Meridian Park Techs have the backing of thousands of OFNHP members throughout Oregon and Southwest Washington.

“We work for different employers. We have different contracts, and we have different jobs. But at the end of the day, we are one union, and this is one fight,” Roher said. “When one group of members has to fight to be valued and respected, that’s a fight that belongs to all of us.”

Roher said the Techs’ proposals are straightforward measures that would help Legacy recruit and retain the experienced workers its patients depend on: competitive wages, differential parity and basic union security.

“Appreciation is not measured by those words,” Roher said of healthcare employers calling workers “heroes” and “essential.” “It’s measured by whether workers are paid fairly, whether experienced healthcare professionals can afford to stay in the jobs and the communities that they love, and whether the employer truly values their skill and dedication.”

“Respect is not a slogan,” she said. “It’s a contract.”

This article was edited by The STAND for length. The full text of this article can be read on the OFNHP website. Oregon Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals-AFT Local 5017 is a union of more than 6,000 nurses and health professionals in Oregon and Southwest Washington.