Rehab Employees Raise Concerns
Interviews with employees of OHSU’s Rehabilitation Services Department have raised concerns about staffing, patient care and pervasive contract and labor-law violations. In addition, issues of internal equity and managerial ethics were also raised. This is the first in a series of posts about these allegations. All names will be kept confidential in these reports, though more specific information has been shared with OHSU Human Resources and will continue to be shared as things develop. For now, our union is attempting to work with OHSU as we did in the EVS cases, but should grievances and other legal action become necessary, we won’t hesitate to pursue them.
Employee Status & Health-Care Benefits
Local 328 staff representatives were initially contacted by Rehab employees who were concerned that they were being unethically denied full-time health-care benefits by Rehab Services management.
As background, according to our contract, there are four types of represented employees at OHSU:
Regular FTE employees (who may be full- or part-time)—these employees receive health-care benefits based on their FTE: 0.75 FTE or higher receive full benefits (the maximum employer contribution) and 0.5 - 0.75 FTE receive part-time benefits (the same health plan but with a significantly lower employer contribution and, therefore, much higher out-of-pocket costs).
Relief employees—these employees receive health-care benefits based on how many hours they worked in the previous six months.
Flex employees—these employees do not receive health-care benefits.
Limited-duration employees—these employees receive the same benefits as regular FTE employees.
The Situation in Rehab Services
For the last few years, Rehab Services management has frequently hired therapists as 0.50 FTE employees, with the notice that extra shifts may be available to be worked. However, for many employees, those extra shifts were not merely available — they were expected, and the extra work resulted in several “part-time” employees working full-time hours for indefinite periods of time without full-time health-care benefits. Some employees raised concerns about this without any action from management. Others worried that even though they were losing significant money on their health-care benefits, they might face retaliation (losing their extra shifts) if they protested about this.
We were given one example of a member who was initially hired as a flex employee in 2015 and was told that a flex position was a way to track hours worked and validate the need for more FTE in the pediatric rehab setting. Her position soon changed to relief and she was able to earn full-time benefits. In September 2017, an 0.95 FTE employee changed to 0.8 FTE, making an 0.15 FTE position available. The relief employee was told that if she wanted to maintain her seniority and hours worked, she would have to take the 0.15 FTE position — otherwise a new hire would have seniority and would likely take her hours. In October 2017 she took the 0.15 FTE out of fear of losing hours — as a result, she routinely worked 30 to 40 hours a week for a year without health-care benefits.
Another example is an employee who was an 0.5 FTE employee but worked full time for more than a year. He asked for an FTE increase, as he needed full-time benefits for his family and himself — he was told no by management. He recently quit to go work for Shriners Hospital, where he now receives full-time health-care benefits.
Here are some quotes from union members we interviewed:
“I was hired for Saturday/Sunday and always worked more than that.”
“People are being hired under the pretense that these are part-time jobs and know they are going to work you more than that and not give you benefits.”
“They don’t hire people with experience because they cost more. They hire new grads because they are cheaper and will put up with not getting benefits.”
“They create unsustainable positions — for example, Saturday/Sunday only with 10-hour shifts. Only desperate people take these jobs and they don’t stay.”
The number of Rehab Services employees consistently working over their FTE has dropped recently, but for many, over the previous years they lost hundreds of dollars a month in health-care benefits starting the day they were hired. Management frequently frames full-time benefits as a privilege and not as a benefit for actual hours worked. It is, perhaps, excusable to hire employees and not anticipate the number of hours they will actually have to work. However, it’s an intentional and unethical act to keep them working for months or years in excess of their FTE and not upgrade their FTE status, while having full knowledge of the negative impact this has on employee health-care benefits.
Our Demands
Rehab Services management must end the practice of unethically hiring employees as part time and then working them full time in order to save OHSU money on employee health-care benefits.
Rehab Services management must further end the unethical practice of keeping employees who have a history of working full-time hours listed on the books as part-time employees.
The next post in this series will discuss pervasive wage and hour violations in Rehab Services.