Providence St. Luke’s Rehabilitation Medical Center

You may have noticed that our WSNA Chair, Jeff Dubrawski (picture above), has not been at work. With Jeff’s permission, we want to share with our members, that Providence St. Luke’s terminated him in late June. It appears to us that the allegation is unsupported, and we feel, targets Jeff for his continued union association and activities. Our union is taking all action within our ability to support Jeff through the grievance pathway and through filing complaints with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and the Department of Health (DOH).

This is not the first time our union has had to file complaints with regulatory agencies like the NLRB and DOH against Providence St. Luke’s regarding what we believe is targeting, discrimination, and retaliation against our members for their union association and activities.

Between May 2024 and June 2024, our union filed multiple grievances after the Employer appeared to target our union officers including the following

• 2 grievances for due process violations (Article 19 of our contract) against WSNA grievance officer and WSNA treasurer
• 1 grievance for discipline without Just Cause for a union officer against WSNA chair
• 1 grievance for failure of the Employer to relieve a union officer of shift for contract negotiations against WSNA co-chair
• This is despite the Union giving at least 14 days’ notice and HR not responding multiple times to our follow ups

In August of 2024, our union filed a formal complaint with the Department of Health (DOH) for what appeared to be a failure of St. Luke’s to follow SB 5236 regarding how direct care nursing staff were chosen for the staffing committee. Despite the DOH releasing multiple statements stating their position on how members are chosen when there are unions in the facility, St. Luke’s actively fought against our union’s ability to choose members other than registered nurses to support this work.

• This complaint went alongside a grievance our union filed in February of 2024 for management providing unrepresented staff for the committee. Additionally, management was stating that the co-chair was to be a vote of the committee, which violated our contract language. Coincidentally, the member we were putting up for co-chair of the committee was our WSNA Chair Jeff Dubrawski and we felt it wasn’t a surprise that management was resisting this.
• Only after our union filed the formal complaint, did the Employer ask in a staffing committee meeting if the selection process could be changed to come in alignment with DOH interpretation of the safe staffing law.

As recently as February 2025, our union sent a certified letter to nursing leadership demanding that the perceived continued discrimination against union officers stop immediately.

Did you notice that it appears that most workers in the building being talked to by leadership and/or being disciplined are union officers?

It’s also worth mentioning that St. Luke’s was charged in 2012 by the National Labor Relations Board for an unfair labor practice.

What’s the point of all this activity from St. Luke’s? 

Our nurses have certain rights as union workers under section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act and in short, some Employer’s don’t enjoy that. We’ve had nurses reprimanded for alleged aggressive workplace conversations. Through the grievance process, the Employer could not provide specific examples aside from nurses discussing filing unsafe staffing forms. We’ve had nurses told they can’t wear their WSNA shirts to work despite other workers being able to wear sweaters or Hawaiian style shirts. We’ve had the Employer allege in staffing committee that nurses are bullied into writing ADOs and have had to ask the Employer to retract that from the complaint log when nurses came forward to say that wasn’t accurate.

When employers display these behaviors and attempt to target specific workers who are strong supporters of our union either for termination or promotion, it removes strong advocates from our bargaining unit. If Employers can weaken our union, they may get away with bad behaviors and make changes to the workplace that may go unreported because people are too afraid to speak up.

What does it mean to be a union officer and have a union?

Jeff Dubrawski has been your WSNA Chair and an advocate for the nurses of St. Lukes for a very long time. We’d like to share with you some of the work he did as an officer as we continue to fill our open officer positions.