Kicking the Can Down the Road
On Tuesday, April 12, Local 328 made a number of proposals to protect workers from harassment, discrimination and violence on the job. OHSU’s counterproposal to decline to address this during bargaining, in favor of turfing it to the Covington implementation and oversight committees was infuriating, disappointing and unsurprising.
I’d like to share a timeline of how we got to this place. I was in the room, observing bargaining, in 2019 when Section 6.1.3 Complaints of Discrimination or Harassment was agreed to by both parties:
“Employees are encouraged to file all complaints alleging discrimination or harassment of a protected status as identified above with the Employer through its Affirmative Action Equal Opportunity (AAEO) Department. Alternatively, employees may file a complaint with the Union, Integrity Department, the Human Resources Department, the employee’s manager, or the appropriate state or federal agency for resolution. If filed with the AAEO Department, the complaint shall be processed under the Employer’s rules pertaining to discrimination complaints. If the complaint is not satisfactorily resolved by the AAEO Department’s process, it may be submitted to the appropriate state or federal agency for resolution.”
Our union had proposed this language in response to management stonewalling several of our efforts to address bullying and racism through the grievance process, so we were pleased that it would be added to our contract. Before we were done celebrating, our chief steward, Haley Wolford Davis, and I talked about how it was an amazing first step, but that we needed to find ways to do more. We knew this language wouldn’t do enough for enforcement or accountability, but it would give us a foot in the door so our union could get a better sense of just how bad the problems at OHSU were.
In November 2019, staff representative Ross Grami and I met with Laura Stadum, then head of OHSU’s Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity office, to discuss creating new processes as our members came to us more often with these issues. We worked closely with AAEO and AFSCME trainers to put together a class for the stewards we planned to train to handle these sensitive and often difficult cases. The pandemic threw a wrench in those plans.
By the time we got the stewards together for their online training in August 2020, it was already clear that our partnership with AAEO had been a step in the wrong direction. With guidance from AFSCME staff representative Vee Lewis, we’d begun talking to members about pursuing options outside of OHSU channels, because it was clear that those internal processes were insufficient. Too many cases went unexamined, too many recommendations were ignored by management and too many of our members were leaving OHSU tired of waiting for justice they were unlikely to receive. This was when we started recommending members go to the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries or the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission if they wanted a serious investigation into what they’d gone through.
In preparation for bargaining in 2022, it was decided that a few of us would begin working on strengthening our rights within our contract. In November 2020, the chair of our DEI committee, TJ Acena, worked with Oregon AFSCME Council 75 to assemble pertinent language from five other union contracts. Around the time that OHSU commissioned Covington and Burling LLP to investigate whether the institution had a problem with harassment and discrimination, March 2021, our union’s DEI committee was already writing language to address the problem.
Our contract proposal was carefully crafted to address these issues within the confines of what we our union can act on. OHSU’s Code of Conduct and its application are ultimately the employer’s purview, and we can’t dictate the structure of Human Resources, but we wanted to ensure that our contract could hold managers accountable. Our union can’t keep an angry patient from being admitted, an abusive manager from being hired or a coworker from making inappropriate comments. Instead, we focused on holding OHSU’s feet to the fire in the event it failed to protect our members from discrimination, bigotry, violence and unwanted sexual advances.
By shunting our recommendations to the newly formed — and untested — Covington committees, OHSU is taking our union’s power away from us and asking for a level of trust that is, frankly, unearned. Management’s counterproposal was presented to us as a way to escalate these important issues and give them more time and attention. Anyone who’s been at OHSU for more than a few years has heard this refrain before. We made these proposals because “we’ll have a committee work on it” has gone nowhere — adding the language to our contract would give us the power to hold abusers and racists accountable.
We’ve explained to OHSU’S bargaining team more than once that the trust has been broken between the employer and its employees and students. It is disheartening and disappointing to see management make yet another misstep by asking us to trust them without having done anything to earn that trust back. There’s always talk of doing things differently, but when actually given an opportunity to show a commitment to change, OHSU goes right back to the same old ineffective tactics. All you have to do is look at how OHSU leadership has handled employees’ concerns at Richmond Clinic. Racism and bullying have reared their heads at Richmond; instead of making difficult, but necessary changes, OHSU is making a show of addressing concerns before ultimately sweeping them under the rug. It’s as if OHSU’s leaders have learned nothing from the Covington investigation.
We have to stand up and tell OHSU that this is unacceptable. Make sure management knows you’re paying attention and that you won’t stand for the employer kicking the can down the road yet again. The time for aspirational posters and ineffective committees is over. It’s time for action, OHSU.