Finding My Voice

During the early part of 2018, I was approached about running for the AFSCME Local 328 2019 bargaining team. It was an intriguing suggestion, which I mulled over for the next few months. It was around this time that another OHSU colleague put a bug in my ear about OHSU’s Black Employee Resource Group — I had worked at OHSU for 17 years at this point, yet had no idea that the BERG existed.

I ran for and was elected to the bargaining team, and as 2019 moved along, negotiations became a part of my weekly life. My fellow bargaining-team members became my workplace comrades just as much as my coworkers in my department. One day there it was mentioned that nominations for our union’s 2019 - 2021 executive board were coming up, should anyone be interested in running. I decided to toss my hat in the ring to become our union’s treasurer. As with the bargaining-team election, I was amazed that I won. It’s not that I don’t believe in myself, but elections like this require others to believe in you, and that’s a different story.

The BERG was also going through transition with its leadership at this time — a new board had been elected, and I noticed that they were bringing a new, resilient energy to the table. Being a Black woman, it is important to me to be wise as to how, when and where to use my voice — and so, I started attending the monthly BERG meetings.

Then came 2020, the year that one day may fill the longest chapter in U.S. History textbooks. While our country was facing one challenge after another, at OHSU, the BERG’s voice was rising. Slowly, the employer began to see that BERG was going to be a force they would have to reckon with. OHSU was not going to be able to ignore or sidestep their requests, their suggestions or their demands. 

The more I attended the BERG meetings, the more I felt there was an opportunity for me to begin to build a relationship between AFSCME Local 328 and the BERG. I didn’t know how it was going to work. I didn’t even know if I could make it work. But I made an effort and reached out to the BERG co-chairs to start a conversation. It is important to understand that while these two groups largely have largely agendas, they have several goals in common. The first boils down to this question: what is best for OHSU employees and how do we go about advocating for it? For the BERG, the primary focus is Black employees. For Local 328, the primary focus is the employees in the bargaining unit, who make up about 40% of the entire OHSU workforce. More than 50% of minority employees at OHSU are part of the Local 328 bargaining unit! 

Our union’s leadership had already been in discussion about what could be done to better support Black employees when the traumatic murder of George Floyd flooded the news and our social-media platforms during the summer of 2020.

On August 31, 2020, the BERG sent a well-written 14 Points of Action document to OHSU’s leadership. This document included not only suggestions as to how OHSU could move toward becoming an anti-racist institution, but also metrics by which to measure its success. It was after OHSU flagrantly insulted the BERG by replying to these points indirectly, via the Lund Report, that I reached out to the BERG co-chairs in effort to see how Local 328 could support the BERG. Our union has a seat at various tables, via meetings with OHSU leadership and multiple committees — Local 328 recognizes the voice this gives us and that there are times we are called to share this space.

This conversation went well, and in time the BERG leadership offered me a seat on their board. We are still ironing out what this will look like, but I very much see myself as a connector of sorts between the two groups — someone who is able to keep communications open, as I, personally, have a vested interest in both. After all, I am a union member who holds the office of treasurer on our union’s current executive board and I’m a Black OHSU employee.

As I near 20 years of employment at OHSU, the greatest gift I can give myself, other employees and the employer itself, is to give my all to make things better for OHSU employees — those who are at OHSU now, those whose tenure will continue after I leave OHSU and those whose OHSU employment will begin long after I’m gone. We are all born with a voice. When, where and how we learn to use our voice depends on the course that our life takes. As the search for the power to do greater things bubbles inside, I encourage everyone who is reading this to remember that one doesn’t need AFFLUENCE in order to INFLUENCE