OHSU: Rejecting Opportunities to Help Employees Advance in Their Careers
AFSCME Local 328 has long recognized how valuable career-advancement opportunities are for OHSU workers. At an academic medical center like OHSU, career advancement is often based on attaining a degree or certification in a specialized area. We see career advancement as a workplace-equity issue at its core — it is about leveling the playing field, so that those who had fewer opportunities before they came to OHSU get support from OHSU in pursuing new opportunities.
In 2015, AFSCME Local 328 decided that in order to make progress on the career-advancement issue at OHSU, our union needed to make it a priority for contract bargaining.
In 2017, our union came together with OHSU to participate in the NW Promise grant, which had the potential to advance the careers of 40 OHSU employees, giving opportunities to workers in entry-level roles to access training and support to become medical assistants, sterile-processing technicians, PAS specialists and other similar roles. When the grant money was spent, the program ended.
In the fall of 2021, AFSCME’s Training Trust approached OHSU with a request to partner on a similar grant, with a goal to train 230 OHSU workers for roles as medical assistants, sterile-processing technicians, PAS specialists and information-technology staff. The Trust was interested in taking more responsibility in developing and implementing the program — meaning that OHSU Human Resources would not have as much of this responsibility and it would be even easier for them to participate in than the previous grant was.
This work would build off the previous success of the NW Promise grant, focusing on many of the same occupations. The Trust presented an innovative strategy to rely on the AFSCME Free College Benefit for instruction in many cases, so that it would be easier and more cost effective for employees to pursue career-advancement opportunities. By using this benefit, the Trust was presenting OHSU with a strategy that had much more potential to endure beyond the length of the grant. Saving money on instructional costs would mean more OHSU workers can use this benefit.
OHSU's response? It boiled down to “No thanks. We would rather not partner on this, even though it means we will help fewer employees advance in their careers.” What are other area health systems — Kaiser, PeaceHealth, Legacy — doing? They are partnering with the unions so that their employees may pursue training opportunities through this grant. In fact, Kaiser and Legacy don’t end this partnership when the grant money ends — those health systems have agreed to spend their own resources to partnering with the union to provide career-advancement opportunities for their employees.
A good employer is one that recognizes that its employees need to advance in their careers — and one that finds opportunities to support employees in their efforts to do so. This leads us to wonder:
Why would OHSU reject an educational program designed to help its own employees advance in the health-care field?
Why does OHSU seem unwilling to remove barriers for its employees who wish to move out of lower-wage jobs?
Is OHSU committed to workplace equity for its employees?
Is OHSU committed to supporting its workers?
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