Local 328’s April 26 Proposal Presentation to OHSU

Our bargaining team is committed to making our members’ voices heard, and we’re committed to meeting as many of our members’ bargaining priorities as possible. We’re asking for a lot with our financial proposals — more than what we’ve asked for in the past, and more than what management may be expecting given the latest publicity regarding OHSU’s finances.

The pandemic has challenged all of us in many ways — how much stress and burnout we can tolerate, how hard we can work, how long we’ll accept being undervalued — and what may have been acceptable in the past is unacceptable today. We’re used to seeing OHSU invest in shiny new buildings instead of the people who keep those buildings operational. We’re used to seeing OHSU focus on faculty recruitment while doing little to fill debilitating vacancies within our bargaining unit. We’re used to seeing OHSU spend millions on consultant after consultant and make the same missteps over and over again instead of simply listening to employees. And, quite frankly, we’re sick of it.

It’s time for OHSU to listen to us and invest in us. OHSU has thousands of employees who have had enough of the status quo. They want to know when OHSU will invest in them and their families. They are wondering when they will be a priority of this employer. So yes, we are asking for more than we ever have before, and we believe we are 100% justified in doing so. If OHSU truly respects these people, the work they have done, all they have been through and accomplished, your team will show it in a meaningful way by thoughtfully considering all of the proposals we’ll be making today and have made over the past month and make counteroffers that prove it.

We know that your team will come back to us with presentations about OHSU’s finances, but we’ve already seen them. While many across OHSU are suspicious of the timing of these announcements, we recognize that OHSU’s financial challenges are real. We also recognize that many of them are self-inflicted. It was OHSU’s leaders, not our members, who understaffed the hospitals and clinics for years prior to the pandemic. And now that strategy has finally come back to bite the employer, in the form of unsustainable labor costs. Let us be clear: OHSU’s high labor costs are due to management throwing money at travelers and paying out overtime instead of addressing understaffing. OHSU’s woes certainly aren’t due to paying our members a wage that keeps up with the ever-rising cost of living, and they’re definitely not due to making OHSU an appealing place to work so that vacancies are filled quickly.

Instead of listening to its employees and their unions, OHSU’s leadership has chosen to undervalue the work of our members for years, and it’s never been more obvious than it has been during the pandemic. It has also never been more obvious just how out of touch OHSU’s leaders are with the day-to-day reality our members face, both at work and at home. These are not normal times — our members have been through two of the most difficult and traumatic years experienced by workers in generations, and now we’re being hit with economic conditions not seen in forty years. Portland has the 10th highest housing costs in the country, with rental costs increasing 40%. Fuel prices have increased 48% since last March, and food prices have increased almost 8% since last February. The West Region CPI was 8.7 in March, and Salary.com reports that the cost of living in the Portland Metro area is almost 18% higher than the national average.

OHSU’s recent financial presentations have talked about taking “a different approach going forward,” but the recovery plan seems like more of the same — investing in buildings, understaffing by design (and even more so than in the past!) and expecting rank-and-file employees to settle for unsustainable workloads and financial struggle. We suggest that OHSU’s leaders put together a recovery plan that not only helps the bottom line recover but also helps OHSU’s employees recover — the alternative is that both will continue to suffer.

Again, let us be clear: it’s time for OHSU to invest in us. Our members aren’t going to settle for scraps, not after the past two years. Our people are struggling just to make ends meet, and they want to know that their employer gives a damn. We don’t expect to get everything we’ve asked for, but we do expect a lot more from OHSU than we’ve gotten in the past, because our members demand it and our members deserve it.