No Quit, All Fight
As the great Woody Guthrie once said, “Some will rob you with a six-gun, and some with a fountain pen.” In our case, it’s the latter. OHSU’s insulting opening economic counterproposal was the opening salvo in what looks to be a long and tough bargaining fight this summer. In a move likely meant to cut at the foundations of your solidarity and your morale, OHSU proposed a 2% raise each of the next three years, and rejected or made only minor counters to the proposals that our union brought forward.
An employer bargaining this way in normal times would be frustrating but expected. An employer making these proposals in the current environment, to folks who risked their lives and kept OHSU functioning during a pandemic, is the truest show of what many of us already know: OHSU’s executive leadership does not care about the employees, only about the profits. They are apathetic to your suffering and well-being, to your livelihood and financial needs, to your hard work and loyalty, to your contributions to OHSU’s success.
Through everything that has happened over the last two-plus years, our members have shown incredible resolve and righteous anger, and many will show this same resolve and anger during our fight for the contract we deserve. However, for some of our members, OHSU’s blatant corporate indifference to its employees has elicited despair and the sense that they might as well just quit or give in.
For those of you who feel angry, disgusted and driven to action: welcome! For those who feel saddened, embarrassed and hurt by OHSU’s economic proposals: we share your pain. For those who feel like giving up to work elsewhere: we understand, but want to offer an alternative.
Our members have a choice: capitulate to suited executives who would drive us into poverty and further burnout, or fight them for every possible gain we can get in this contract.
In that fight, we will do two things:
Expose OHSU’s shortsightedness and disdain for its own workers.
Discover our own power, which is restrained only by our own perceptions of its limits.
If we stand together — if we do not falter, factionalize or break — we will win. The only way forward is together. You will have to make your own decision about whether you want to give in, quit or strike, but as for our union: we got no quit, only fight!