Budget Talks Update #7 -- What's the Status?
As you’re aware, Local 328 has been in discussions with management regarding proposals related to OHSU’s budget crisis. OHSU’s original proposal can be found here, and our union’s counterproposal can be found here. We encourage our membership to check our blog regularly for additional information. Until we have new information to share about the process, we’d like to review some of the issues at hand.
OHSU is facing serious budget difficulties as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, and our union recognizes the employer’s need to ensure financial stability during this time of crisis. Our members want to help OHSU weather this storm, but we also want OHSU to honor the financial commitment it made to us. We don’t agree OHSU needs to borrow our pay without interest to make ends meet, and we don’t agree that laying our people off is the only other alternative.
We’d first like to express that OHSU hasn’t seemed to be taking this process seriously, in terms of both timeliness and preparedness. The first OHSU Now post about the budget impact of COVID-19 was on April 7. OHSU had its plan for unclassified employees and faculty ready by April 23, yet didn’t ask until April 28 to open budget discussions with our union. OHSU didn’t present its proposal to us until May 18, after several delays. At our first meeting with OHSU, on May 22, OHSU was unable to answer many of the questions we had sent in advance. At our second meeting, on May 28, we were told that there hadn’t been time for our proposal to be thoroughly reviewed. To date there has been no indication that the employer has given any consideration to our suggestion re: early retirement other than committing to discussing it with stakeholders.
While much of this process has reminded us of the lack of consideration the employer showed for our membership during bargaining in 2019, we’re more concerned about the effect of the delays. Almost two months have gone by that OHSU could have been working collaboratively with our union to develop an effective plan to help address the current budget issues. Instead, we’ve now reached a point where OHSU urgently wants our union to agree to concessions on a very short timeline. It makes us feel a bit like these discussions were undertaken for appearances only, and that OHSU will do whatever it has always intended to do.
We acknowledge that OHSU has taken a hit and that the economy is suffering greatly as a result of the pandemic. We understand that OHSU will need to make adjustments to its financial decisions and be prepared for any further downturns in the economy in the coming years. We simply don’t agree that the employer needs to borrow money from our members to weather this crisis. OHSU has more than $1.4 billion in cash and investments. For the past decade, OHSU has told our union that it needed to maintain its reserves for a rainy day and couldn’t offer our employees pay increases that keep up with cost of living. For the past decade, OHSU has made record profits, balking at employee-related expenditures that only would have slowed the pace of making record profits — however, as we all know, being able to save only $60 instead of saving $100 doesn’t mean one has lost $40.
If a global pandemic isn’t enough reason to tap into a huge rainy-day fund to help preserve jobs, what is? In addition, OHSU has just announced that it would pause its planned hospital expansion — a $460 million project — for the upcoming year. To be clear, we’re not trying to downplay the seriousness of the economic downturn for OHSU or in general — we’re trying to encourage OHSU to tap other sources for the funds it says it needs to prevent layoffs.
On the subject of layoffs, one of our union’s main objections to making the type of concessions OHSU asked for in its proposal is that the employer could not guarantee that there wouldn’t still be layoffs. While some of our members have indicated support for delaying our July 1 across-the-board increase, in almost all cases the support hinged on layoffs being off the table. Unfortunately, given management’s behavior over the past year, we don’t feel we can trust the few numbers we’ve been given or that OHSU won’t just pull the rug out from under us later.
Under the current parameters of these discussions, our union could agree to financial concessions to prevent X number of layoffs, but then still see X number of layoffs happen later — nothing would keep OHSU from saying “Oh, you prevented the pandemic-related layoffs — these layoffs are related to the Accelerate OHSU activity assessment.” It is deeply disappointing that an employer that has stressed a “people first” philosophy during this time is now stating that hundreds of our represented employees could lose their jobs unless our union agrees to delay a much-needed pay increase.
Our members are among the lowest-paid employees at OHSU, and we know that many of our folks have been struggling to make ends meet — even before the pandemic struck. More than 1,000 of our represented employees have received financial assistance from OHSU’s hardship fund and our union’s own fund. We find it difficult to square this reality with the idea of delaying a contractually guaranteed pay increase. While some of us could certainly delay this increase without too much trouble, the increase will lift many of us up out of hardship. Members of our bargaining unit have been treated as expendable in the past — the first ones on the chopping block for layoffs (while higher-ups get bonuses), while tolerating contract takebacks that made it hard to keep up with the cost of living in the Portland metro area. Last year we finally said we’d had enough, and got our first fair contract in a decade. Less than a year later, OHSU wants to change the terms of that contract. Agreeing to this now would set a precedent that it doesn’t matter what we fight for and win during bargaining, because the employer can just come around and ask for it back. OHSU is looking to ensure stability during the coming years; our union is as well.
Some of our fellow unions turned down OHSU’s budget ask outright, while others are currently bargaining contracts in which they will or may receive pay increases. We agreed to discuss options with OHSU, in keeping with the spirit of the ULP settlement earlier this year, even though the independent investigation hasn’t yet been completed. While wary, we went into these discussions with open minds. It’s been disappointing to see the employer focus on layoffs and barely acknowledge our suggestions on other ways to save money.
Finally, we’re concerned about the way OHSU has rushed this process. The powers that be haven’t seemed invested in taking the time to come up with a collaborative letter of agreement that will meet both parties’ needs. We had hoped to see some of the philosophy embodied in the billboards seen around town, letting us know that OHSU is “here to do what hasn’t been done.” Why hasn’t management used the last two months to take a scalpel to this problem, instead of delaying things and then just falling back on using a hammer? OHSU’s most recent financial presentation to its board of directors said that “April should be the bottom.” Indeed, OHSU is already seeing some recovery.
Our union disagrees that the employer needs to lay off our members — much less on an urgent basis — before OHSU has a better idea of how it’ll be performing later this fiscal year. In fact, at the same time OHSU is holding layoffs over our heads, management is already anticipating being able to pay back some of the faculty pay cuts this fall. Our union went into this process hoping we could work together with OHSU to save the employer money and our union jobs. We still hope that OHSU will decide to develop a thoughtful, creative, less punitive way to help address its budget crisis, rather than do it on the backs of the essential workers who’ve been keeping the institution functional during modified operations.
Our union’s proposal included a number of voluntary options to help OHSU with its budget issues. We raised the possibility of worker-led, department-specific solutions to layoffs, rather than a punitive, one-size-fits-all solution; e.g., workers in a department choosing as a group to take furlough days or FTE reductions in order to eliminate the need for a targeted layoff in their department. We acknowledge that the verbiage in our draft letter of agreement is unlikely to cover the entire amount of savings the employer feels our represented employees should be responsible for, which is why we also suggested options such as early retirement and an innovative “People First” OHSU Foundation fundraising campaign to save jobs. We hope that OHSU will expedite a review of this suggested campaign and give it serious consideration.
It’s ultimately up to OHSU to choose whether to preserve the livelihoods of the front-line employees who make OHSU work. We call on OHSU to be as innovative in solving this crisis as it is in everything else it does. We call on OHSU to honor the language of the ULP settlement it agreed to earlier this year — acknowledging the importance of having a positive relationship with our union and reaffirming its commitment to continuing to develop a collaborative relationship with our union.