How To Save Our Union Contract
Text of email from 12/15/2025
Hello,
I'm Chris Bergsten. For the past five years or so I've worked as an MLS at Emanuel Lab. Before that I was an MLT at Salmon Creek for five years, where I also helped with AM draws. I was Emanuel's primary organizer leading up to the union elections, when I launched mousepower.net to help educate my coworkers about unions and the election process, and I represented Emanuel on our bargaining team from August to October 2024. If you've seen the "Demand Fair Wages" pamphlet, that was also me.
Sorry to email you out of the blue like this, but I've been keeping a close eye on what's happening with the union and the bargaining process and we have a big problem:
Our bargaining team proposed wages that are way too low. If OFNHP gets its way, we're going to get stuck with low wages for at least two more years.
Short version: we can put the brakes on this plan and get a contract we actually deserve by voting NO on the contract and sending the bargaining team back to the table to demand a better deal. The bad news is... well, some of us have known all along that it would take a strike to beat LabCorp. If we vote NO, we will definitely need to strike. And we can't get a strike without 90% support. The only way we're going to get that is if more of us start volunteering, planning, staying aware and engaged with what's happening, and actively talking to OFNHP and each other about how we can win this fight.
This is gonna be a long read, but please make the time. Everyone needs to understand what's happening - and what might happen next.
1. Wages
You probably know that lab workers are underpaid all across the country (except, perhaps, in California). Lab techs make less than nurses and even less than many hospital techs, even though we have equal or greater qualifications. Lab assistants and phlebotomists are barely paid more that fast food and retail workers, and many couldn't survive without a second job or outside support, even though these are adults working full time at a job that serves a critical public need.
Low pay doesn't just hurt us. It hurts our families. It hurts patients and their families when labs can't attract and retain enough qualified, experienced staff to do the job right. It hurts our community - if LabCorp is keeping more of the money we earn, that's money that's leaving our area instead of supporting local businesses and public spending that support us. It hurts our profession when schools can't fill their lab programs because students are choosing better-paying careers, or when local labs don't have enough staff or expertise to place students in clinical rotations. And low pay at one lab gives other employers an excuse to lower wages or freeze raises at their own lab. Kaiser is already pointing at LabCorp as a reason not to pay their workers more, and I hear from colleagues with their eye on the local job market that wage offers all over the metro area are falling to LabCorp levels.
Those of us who were here a year and a half ago got to take a bargaining survey asking how we felt about our jobs and what our priorities were. Our top priority was wages. Those weren't new LabCorp hires, they were former Legacy workers who were still earning the wage they had when the lab was sold and knew that wages would be a critical issue when LabCorp took over.
Here's what some workers make at Legacy, OHSU, Providence, and Kaiser:
Registered Nurse: $47.19 - $92.02/hr Imaging (MRI or X-Ray) Tech: $40.66 - $69.35/hr Respiratory Tech: $35.29 - $58.14/hr Legacy MLS (from 2023, with inflation): $39.85 - $56.99/hr Kaiser MLS (since 10/1/2024): $45.67 - $53.05/hr Our team's proposal for MLS: $37.00 - $44.22/hr Surgical Tech: $31.66 - $48.51/hr Kaiser MLT: $30.13 - $39.74/hr Our team's proposal for MLT: $31.00 - $37.05/hr Kaiser Lab Assistant/phleb: $27.12 - $32.64/hr OHSU LA/phleb (update 12/18/25): $22.30 - $30.14/hr CNA: $20.19 - $30.26/hr Our team's proposal for LA/phleb: $20.00 - $23.90/hr
Note that the only role on this list that actually requires a Bachelor's degree is the MLS! All of the other techs and RNs only require an Associate's degree and certification.
(update 12/18/25) Also note that AFSCME has just won a $25 minimum wage for OHSU employees, meaning that no OHSU employee will be paid less than $25/hour. This raises the starting wage for OHSU lab assistants and phlebotomists to $25. I don't know yet what their new wage range is, though.
People have asked what Kaiser MLSs are asking for in negotiations. They started out asking for a 38% increase over the next contract. Last I heard (a couple months ago), Kaiser was offering 21% and their union was trying to get to 25%. I don't know where they're at now. I'll let you do the math on that.
Let's look at another side of this equation: housing costs.
Average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Portland is about $1500. If we observe the common standard that housing should cost no more than 30% of gross income so that someone can afford food, bills, savings, and other expenses, a single person without dependents would need to earn $84,000/year before taxes (that's $42/hr for a full time worker) to afford that apartment. For a $1300 studio, you'd need $72,000/year ($36/hr).
Our bargaining team is saying that professionals with Bachelor's degrees working full time should barely be able to afford an apartment, and that MLTs shouldn't be able to afford one at all until they're several years into their career!
Even if you tried to save on rent by taking a roommate, you'd need two bedrooms (unless you live with a partner). Two-bedroom apartments run around $1900. Each roommate would need $50,000/year ($25/hr) to afford that. Yet our bargaining team proposed starting our LAs and phlebs at $20. Are they supposed to live in their cars? (Can they even afford cars?)
A couple months ago, OFNHP told us our bargaining team was “fighting for a contract that reflects the value of our work and the realities of our lives, on the job and off” - but they're actually proposing less pay than Legacy was paying for techs in 2023, and far less than we deserve. They didn't seek parity with our higher-paid hospital-based peers. The wage they proposed for lab assistants and phlebotomists isn't even enough for most of them to live on. This doesn't address our top concern, it doesn't reflect the value of our work or the realities of our lives, it doesn't help us attract and retain great employees, and it doesn't stop pay standards from falling across the region. This proposal is a failure on every count. We must do better.
Why did the people we sent to represent us sell us short, and why do they refuse to raise their ask? I think a lot of that has to do with OFNHP.
2. OFNHP has not always been a great partner
Most of us have never worked at a union job - let alone organized a new union, bargained a union contract, or campaigned to pressure an employer at the bargaining table. Throughout this process, we've been relying on OFNHP to educate, strategize, and lead. How have they done this?
May 2024 - We crushed our elections. OFNHP told the volunteers who worked to win those elections that we'd be taking a short break. Instead of a "short break", we had almost no news, plan, or instructions from OFNHP for almost four months. (Meanwhile, critical staffing issues dragged on at Emanuel with no help in sight. Several months later, an OFNHP organizer would claim they had no idea it was happening, even though I was emailing OFNHP in June to tell them that our staffing was a death spiral.) A bargaining survey went out, and we briefly bargained with LabCorp to get us the same raises that non-union employees got, but otherwise they seemed to have fallen off the planet.
August 2024 - Bargaining started by establishing ground rules for future meetings, but quickly refocused on the impending Central Lab layoffs. One of OFNHP's people told me that they hadn't intended to start bargaining yet, but the layoff forced them to start early. I wonder when they originally intended to start and what they were waiting for.
Central Lab bargaining was frustrating. We didn't have any leverage at the table, and they kept rejecting our proposals. I said that we needed to take a more aggressive stance and do something to press LabCorp, but Lizard Flud and Marylou White (OFNHP external organizers) didn't want to do that, and the rest of the bargaining team and contract action team only wanted to follow OFNHP's lead. In the end, we moved some of the laid off workers into other open LabCorp positions, but otherwise the deal we got wasn't much better than the one they offered us.
October 2024 - There was supposed to be a big in-person meeting at OFNHP's office to plan out the campaign and decide on different actions and strategies that we could use to pressure LabCorp. As far as I can tell, that meeting never happened and no plan was ever made.
April 2025 - There was a public Zoom meeting during Lab Week to talk about where we were in the process and what the next steps might be. I called in and listened to several minutes; Lizard was asking us what we thought we could do to press LabCorp. Nearly a year after our elections, they still had no plan for the campaign!
August 2025 - Our bargaining team was finally making economic proposals. OFNHP sent out an email talking about all the great things they proposed: a wage step scale, extra pay for trainers, raises for casual workers, PTO for 7/7 workers, 5% annual cost of living raises, and so on. But one important piece of information was missing: what wages did they actually propose?
I heard from a coworker that MLSs were to get $40-50 DOE, with higher-paid workers staying at the wage they had. I told Cassidy Becker, Emanuel's bargaining team representative, that this proposal (if true) was way too low. He tried to suggest that it wasn't really that bad, even if it wasn't the best pay in the area. It didn't seem like he was going to ask the team to increase their proposal.
September 2025 - OFNHP asked for volunteers to help pack the bargaining room (a common tactic to pressure employers by making them face more of their employees). When the day came they switched to federal mediation, meaning we wouldn't be able to be in the same room as LabCorp's representatives, so the event turned into a public meeting. I spoke up about the low wage proposal, and Boyd McCamish, an organizer with OFNHP's parent body, American Federation of Teachers (AFT) who's working on a public campaign to put a spotlight on LabCorp's behavior, tried to spook me by saying that if we pushed for more, we might have to go out on strike for months. It was strange to hear something that sounded like anti-union rhetoric from a union representative.
I also told OFNHP organizers that they needed to release the wage proposals; we deserved to see them, and we needed to know what we would be fighting for. As I recall, someone (was it Dave Oppenheimer? OFNHP internal organizer) agreed that we were at the point in the bargaining process where they should release those numbers. (But they didn't release them.)
A couple weeks later, I met in person with Dave to discuss doing some volunteer work as a CAT for Emanuel. During that meeting, he showed me the wage scales our team proposed. He wouldn't let me keep a copy, but the numbers were as bad as I feared. He told me that it would be illegal for us to raise our proposal as that would be "regressive bargaining".
After the meeting, I read up on regressive bargaining. It's not illegal unless it's being done in bad faith, like if you try to sabotage negotiations by making outrageous demands or try to strongarm the other party by making worse and worse offers. Increasing your proposal because the employees you represent demand it isn't bad faith! And when they say it's "illegal", all that really means is that LabCorp would be able to whine to the National Labor Relations Board, the federal agency that oversees unions. The NLRB has little enforcement power, so all they would do is shake their finger at us and tell us to play nice.
Was Dave wrong about regressive bargaining because he was misinformed, or was he lying? Either one is a problem. The next time I spoke with him I pointed out what I'd read, and rather than defend or explain his answer he dismissively said it was up to the bargaining team.
November 2025 - With the government shut down, we had no federal mediator, and OFNHP called again for volunteers to pack the bargaining room. I went to that event and handed out about twenty "Demand Fair Wages" pamphlets to other LabCorp employees, trying to raise awareness. Dave and Marylou White (OFNHP external organizer) were there, and they told us that packing the bargaining room had been surprisingly effective: every time we do it it seems to scare the pants off the LabCorp reps.
I said, great, if they're so vulnerable to pressure, why don't we demand better wages?
Marylou tried to tell me that regressive bargaining is illegal, same as Dave did, which I already knew to be wrong. She insisted that the higher wages I suggested in my pamphlet were "impossible" without supporting her claim. She also tried to make me look unreasonable for criticizing our proposals ("I don't understand, why are you doing this? What do you think this achieves?") and at one point complained that she felt "offended" that I was criticizing my bargaining team. Both of them kept saying that the proposal on the table was "fair", even though it's grossly inadequate.
When I talk to my union about our wage proposals being too low and bring some evidence to back up that claim, I expect an adult discussion - not theater, lies, and crying about hurt feelings.
At this point, I've tried over and over again to get OFNHP and our bargaining team to correct their proposal. I've provided numbers to show that our proposal is inadequate. I've floated the idea of sending out another bargaining survey to see if people think our proposal is good enough, or creating some sort of petition to demonstrate that people actually want better pay. I've asked if we will increase our proposal if we have to strike. Every time, they've dismissed my concerns, rejected my ideas, and given me empty promises about fixing the wages “next time” (even though they seem to think they're already "fair"). And to date, they still haven't officially released our wage proposals.
This isn't a mistake or an accident. They know the wages suck, and they tried to hide that from us for months, hoping that we wouldn't notice or care.
Why aren't they fighting harder for us? I can only guess, but I think they don't believe in us.
3. Union Leverage
Imagine a scene in a mob movie in the aftermath of a gang war. The bosses of all the different gangs are sitting down in a dim, smoky room to negotiate a truce. Every boss there wants peace (at least for now) - but they also want to get the best deal for themselves.
What gets them the best deal? Maybe they're the biggest gang. Maybe they have better connections. Maybe they have blackmail on the other bosses. Maybe they're willing to scare the other bosses with threats... and maybe they're bluffing. Whoever has the most leverage wins.
Contract negotiations are like that. The union and the employer are both trying to get the best deal. They way they get that is by having the most leverage.
The employer leverages its money and capital. They own the business, they control all the accounts, they're the bosses. No single worker has any hope of standing up to the employer. Easy.
But employers don't do the work that generates the profit and keeps the business running, workers do. Workers actually have the most power, because they can shut the business down - but only if they act together. That's where our leverage comes from.
Strikes are enormously powerful tools for winning concessions from employers. Thirty years ago, Kaiser's techs struck. Kaiser held out for two months before they broke - and Kaiser techs won the best pay and benefits in the area for almost 30 years. More recently, Providence's nurses struck for 46 days. Providence broke, and they won wage increases as high as 42%, new policy around staffing levels, and movement toward a union-administered healthcare plan. Most of you know that in the last decade, UPS workers won huge wage increases by striking, and so did auto workers. Teachers in the Midwest struck and won, even though as public employees they weren't technically allowed to! In most cases, when workers strike until the employer cracks (especially skilled workers), they win - and win big.
The problem is that most workers are afraid to strike. They worry about lost income, retaliation, or being replaced. Some of them are bamboozled by scary stories and anti-union propaganda. Long strikes can sap morale as employers put on a brave face, pretending they can't be beaten. Getting the workers to use their power by walking off the job together (and staying off until the employer surrenders and agrees to a good contract to get them back to work) is one of the biggest challenges for a union bargaining over a contract.
Remember, whoever has more leverage wins at the bargaining table. The union has more leverage as long as the the workers will strike. But if the bargaining team calls for a strike and the workers don't strike, the employer will realize that the union is toothless, which means they don't have to offer the union anything.
There are ways to find out if a bargaining unit might be ready to strike. They're called "structure tests". A structure test is basically when the union asks people to do something - wear a pin, sign a petition, attend a rally. When OFNHP tried to get us to sign our membership forms, that was a structure test. The picket pledge is a structure test. If and when they call for the picket, they're going to see how many people actually show up, and that's a structure test. Anything that requires action and commitment can be a structure test. But we haven't had a long series of escalating actions to use as structure tests, because OFNHP has had no plan and they've been reluctant to put up a fight.
We're a new union. We've never been tested. And after two years of avoiding the inevitable and doing nothing to get us fired up and ready to strike, OFNHP is afraid we might not. They're worried that if they push too hard in negotiations, LabCorp will call our bluff and we won't be able to answer.
4. OFNHP's interests and ours
So far, everything OFNHP has done for us has been free. They paid organizers to work with us, they hired a lawyer to be our lead negotiator and help our bargaining team with the contract. They hold meetings and events and visit us at our hospitals and give away free food. They've given out t-shirts and other swag and printed forms and flyers for us.
This isn't charity; it's an investment. Once we ratify a contract (more below) they get to start collecting dues. Dues are 1.4% of our pay, and LabCorp pays about $30M/year for all 500-ish employees in our union - so that's about a half million dollars a year they get in dues. (They don't get to keep all of that money; some of it gets passed up the chain to AFT.) They also get bragging rights: LabCorp says that no new union has ever successfully negotiated a contract with them before. Boyd McCamish (AFT) has said that they're interested in using us as an example to convince other LabCorp labs across the country to unionize: "if they're making $30, and they see you're making $40, they're going to want that too."
OFNHP really wants to win a contract here - but they don't need a good contract. For them, settling for whatever contract they can get is safe, and it's still a win. But for us, it means leaving millions of dollars that we earned in LabCorp's pocket to fund their expansion and executive bonuses.
I don't think OFNHP is our enemy. The non-economic parts of the contract are mostly good, and if we get a better contract, it helps them too. But we all need to understand that OFNHP hasn't been a reliable ally, they don't have the same interests as us, and if we don't make sure that they're looking out for our interests, they'll look out for theirs instead - which is exactly what's happening now.
What about our bargaining team? Technically, they're the ones who have the power to make or approve any proposal, not OFNHP organizers. If they wanted to, they could start demanding the wages we deserve. But our team is made of lab workers just like us, and most of them have never been in unions or negotiated a union contract. They depend on OFNHP organizers and their lawyer for guidance. They're not going to rebel. They've also been coached not to say too much about proposals, because they're subject to change and OFNHP doesn't want to confuse people or mismanage expectations.
I don't know where they got the numbers for their wage proposals, or why they thought those wages would be acceptable. I've asked Cassidy and he gave me vague answers. I wouldn't be surprised if OFNHP provided the numbers, and I wouldn't be surprised if they told the bargaining team that aiming low is the only way to win and that they need to stick to the narrative ("we know the wages aren't the best, but they're fair, and we can try again next time") if anyone complains. At least, I certainly hope that's what happened, because if OFNHP isn't influencing them, then they sold us out all on their own.
5. Contract bargaining and ratification
When a union and an employer bargain over a contract, there are "mandatory subjects of bargaining" that they have to talk about, per federal law. Generally, these are anything that have to do with compensation or working conditions: scheduling, discipline, grievance processes, leaves, vacations, pay, and so on.
For the past 17 months, our bargaining team and OFNHP's lawyer John Karebian have had weekly Zoom meetings where they discuss our contract proposals and any new proposals or counterproposals LabCorp has made. Each proposal covers some mandatory subject of bargaining. Usually John writes these; they might be based on typical union contract language, or something that the team found in another union contract, or even on LabCorp's own policies. The team is welcome to ask questions, raise concerns, or offer new ideas. (I was the one who pushed for what they're calling Critical Shift Incentive, based on the old Legacy Shift Incentive. LabCorp has always said no, but it seems like the team is still asking for it.)
Bargaining meetings with LabCorp happen a couple times a month. Some are in person, others are virtual. We present any new proposals or counterproposals and discuss them with LabCorp; they can also present new proposals to us, although this happens less often. The goal is to reach what's called "tentative agreement" (TA) on a proposal for every subject of bargaining.
If we reach a TA on every subject, then OFNHP will ask us to vote to approve the contract. It's a simple majority vote and only people who've signed up for union membership will be allowed to vote. If the majority votes YES, the contract is "ratified". It will go back to the lawyers for a final polish pass to clean up any typos, vague or ambiguous language, etc, and then that will be our official contract until it expires in a few years and we go back to bargaining.
If the majority votes NO, then the bargaining's not over! The bargaining teams have to return to the table and try to fix the contract until it's good enough to win a majority vote.
At this point, we've made enough proposals to make a full contract. Some of those proposals have TAs. Many of them, particularly the economic proposals, still don't.
Read this next part until you understand it, because it's very important.
Sometimes we're not able to reach an agreement on a proposal. One side might propose something that's completely unacceptable, or maybe they're not willing to meet in the middle. If a good-faith attempt to bargain over a proposal fails and no more progress can be made, this is called impasse.
When impasse is reached, a few things happen. First, mediators and fact finders enter the picture. Their job is to find some new information or a different compromise that might be acceptable to both parties. They can't force either side to take a deal - they can only offer suggestions. Second, the employer gains the legal right to impose the last terms they proposed - called the Last, Best, and Final Offer (LBFO).
This is what's happening right now with our health insurance: we tried to get them to let us have a Kaiser plan that was better and cheaper, and they said no. We tried to get them to let the union run the plan and they said no (because LabCorp actually makes money from our insurance). Then we tried to get them to cover the cost of their plan and they still said no. The only thing they're willing to do is give a partial stipend to former Legacy and Providence workers, not any new hires - and that's not good enough for us. So we've reached impasse on this issue, and LabCorp is imposing their LBFO.
"So wait, LabCorp just has to keep saying no, and then they can do whatever they want?"
Not exactly. First, they have to make a good faith effort to reach an agreement. Who decides what's good faith? The NLRB does. If the employer tries to declare impasse and impose its terms, and the NLRB rules that it hasn't bargained in good faith, they can undo the imposition, order the employer back to the bargaining table, demand that employees be paid back for any lost wages and benefits or other harm, and seek federal court orders to force compliance.
Second, once bargaining breaks down and one or more proposals reach impasse, this is usually when workers strike - and they can do so with full legal protections. The strike forces the employer back to the table with a better offer, or sometimes the union demands specific terms to end the strike.
6. The solution: STRIKE
There's nothing we can do to force our bargaining team to do what we want; they're free agents. We could hold elections and elect new bargaining team members, but I would rather not as it would be enormously disruptive to the process (and most units had enough trouble finding volunteers to be on the bargaining team to begin with).
But OFNHP really wants that contract, and the bargaining team will do what OFNHP tells them - so that's where our leverage is.
If a majority of each bargaining unit pledges to vote NO on the contract unless the wages are increased, that gives us the power to keep OFNHP from getting a contract. If we have the power to block the contract, they can't ignore us anymore. They'll have to give us what we want to earn our YES votes.
But remember, we have eight bargaining units - one for each lab. We've been bargaining as one team, for one contract, but it will actually be eight contracts and eight separate votes. If only some of the units vote no and the others vote yes, I see very little chance of getting a better contract; LabCorp will just say "it was good enough for those units, take it or leave it." The whole system needs to be united on this.
Also, we're going to need more than a simple majority. We're going to need 90% - enough to win a strike vote. Because when we vote no, LabCorp will probably move to declare impasse, and we'll have to strike or else they'll just impose their LBFO, which is even worse than our proposals.
So the reality is that we need to know we're ready to strike when it's time to vote NO.
I don't know what's going to happen with bargaining from here. Our bargaining team seems willing to go lower and lower in hopes of reaching a compromise so bad that LabCorp will agree to it. It's possible that they may eventually bring us a truly awful contract to vote on a few weeks or months from now. Or, it's possible that LabCorp will get fed up, declare impasse on the rest before we reach an agreement, and then we end up (hopefully) striking anyway.
Either way, now is the time to get ready. Save money and make plans.
Some of you are already ready to strike and you've been waiting for your chance to walk out. Others may be afraid to strike, or you may depend on your income to pay for your home or support your family. I'd like to speak to your concerns, but let me say this first.
I think we're actually in an excellent position to strike because of the contract between Legacy and LabCorp.
Remember, when Kaiser made their techs strike for two months, that was Kaiser's bosses deciding their own company could limp along without their techs - and then they broke.
When Providence made their nurses strike for 47 days, that was Providence's bosses deciding that they could limp along without their nurses - and then they broke.
Imagine if we did strike. Legally, as healthcare workers, we'd have to give a ten-day warning. But LabCorp doesn't have an empty Portland warehouse full of techs and lab assistants standing around waiting to be activated. They'll have to hire hundreds of temps, including travel techs, from all over the US, at tremendous expense - and they'll all have to travel here on short notice.
Then LabCorp has to onboard them. Anyone who's was around from the pre-LabCorp time, or who's been hired recently, knows how utterly inept LabCorp is at onboarding new employees.
Then LabCorp has to train them - even if they've worked at other labs, including LabCorp labs, they don't know our equipment, our procedures, or our hospitals. There's a ton of paperwork that has to be signed off for compliance purposes. And there'll be no one to train them but our managers and supervisors, many of whom don't know how to run a technical bench anymore anyway. Or they can send out testing - a handful of managers and supervisors struggling to bag up hundreds of specimens, redirect testing for all of them, while turnaround times go from hours to days.
This period of chaos will last days if not weeks. And what happens to Legacy in the meantime? ED goes on divert. Elective surgeries get cancelled. Acute patients needing STAT lab support have to be shipped out to other hospitals. Births have to go elsewhere. It's an apocalyptic mess. And it's going to cost Legacy millions of dollars and a bad reputation... all so some greedy corporation can screw some workers out of what's rightfully theirs.
Yes, patients will suffer temporarily, and I know that will weigh heavily on some of you. But whose fault is that? All LabCorp has to do is agree to some genuinely fair terms and this could be over before it starts. Patients are already suffering right now thanks to understaffing and brain drain secondary to low pay and bad benefits. LabCorp is already hurting the people you want to save because it makes them money, and they're going to go on hurting them if they're not stopped. The short-term pain of a strike will give us and patients a long-term fix.
Do you think that Legacy will watch their hospitals burning (metaphorically) and still happily limp along without lab services? Hell no. They have a contract. Their lawyers are going to be pounding down LabCorp's door demanding a resolution. LabCorp might be callous enough and rich enough to freeze us out on strike for months, but Legacy isn't gonna have it. They'll break, just like Kaiser and Providence - and they'll do it faster. When Legacy breaks, so will LabCorp.
Now, I know some of you are worried about LabCorp simply firing you and replacing you. Let me assure you that the chances of that are almost nil. First, it would be illegal to fire you for striking - and the NLRB will make LabCorp hire you back, pay your lost wages, and cover any extra expenses you incurred because of lost wages. (It could take a while to grind through the system, though.) Second, although they could try to replace you temporarily, they would have to hire you back once there was an opening - they wouldn't be able to hire someone else and cut you out. And third, remember that Kaiser and Providence didn't fire their employees. They had them on strike for weeks, but they didn't fire them. And who would they hire, anyway? Travel techs working for strike wages don't want to settle down for LabCorp's normal chump wages.
For those of you worried about finances or health insurance, the news isn't as rosy, but there are resources to help.
Under Oregon and Washington law, strikers will be eligible to collect unemployment payments after January 1, 2026. The laws are slightly different but in both cases I think there's a two-week waiting period, and then you can collect a couple months worth of payments.
OFNHP has also offered us interest-free loans to cover expenses while we strike. I realize the thought of getting a loan that you have to pay back is concerning, but if we can win better wages by striking, you can use them to pay the loans back (and then everything you earn after that is gravy). If you have more questions about this (terms, limits) you'll have to ask OFNHP.
If we're out on strike more than a month, we will temporarily lose our health insurance. We should be able to get COBRA during the strike. I know COBRA is expensive; typically one of the demands a union makes to return to work is that the employer compensates employees for the cost. I will say that I can't guarantee this will happen, and you should talk to OFNHP if you want more information. If you rely on medical devices, treatments, or medication, make a plan to top up before a strike if at all possible.
Finally... we have each other. Look, I know we're not a family. We're just coworkers. We don't want to rely on each other for help with food or bills and we don't want each other in our business either. Some of us don't even like each other. We don't have to be a family, but we do have to be a team. We have to be a gang. We have to be an unbreakable bundle of sticks, and that can only happen if we stick together. Some of us can afford to give a little to see LabCorp crack like an egg. Maybe we can start arranging some private strike funds or something. Maybe our local communities would help.
If you have concerns about how you will survive or support your family during a strike, please reach out to someone for advice or support - OFNHP reps or a coworker you trust. If you have questions, get them answered. Don't be afraid to ask your family or friends for temporary help - we're stronger when our social groups support us, and we need everyone to dig deep and find that support. Don't just say "I can't strike". Help solve the problem. Help us help each other. We can win this together.
7. Final thoughts
For those of you who are active with the union at your site, it might be a good idea to get together with the other folks who've been organizing and volunteering at your workplace and quietly poll your unit (if you're not already). Find out who's ready to strike, who isn't, and what's holding them back. Communicate those numbers with OFNHP, your bargaining team representatives, and people you trust at other sites, but be careful who you share it with because this is information that we do not want LabCorp to have. I don't even like writing about it, but the more and sooner we know how ready we are, the better.
I've emailed this out to as many addresses as I know about, but I know I won't reach everybody. I only have the email addresses the union's collected. Please share this with your coworkers if they don't get it (or in case it goes to spam, they don't check their email, etc). You can forward them a copy.
When I get time I'll put this whole thing on my website, https://www.mousepower.net . I'll also have some neat little signs that you can print off and stick on your union board or your locker or really anywhere you like. Very agitate, much union!
Here is an article from an organizer with 25 years experience speaking in favor of regressive bargaining:
https://labornotes.org/2020/12/when-youre-winning-streets-dont-lose-bargaining-table
And here's one about a union winning a better contract after voting NO twice:
LabCorp has been buying up and ruining labs for years. None of us wanted them here, and none of us had any choice in our labs being sold off to them. But we had a choice when we voted to unionize, and now we have another choice: avoid the fight that we've been waiting two years to have, or rise to it and accomplish something no one else has done yet. We're not just fighting for ourselves, we're fighting for our families, our patients, our communities, and all the labs and laboratorians in the region - but we are the ones who must do it.
Make yourselves proud.
In solidarity,
Chris Bergsten