Pushing Back Against Harassment and Discrimination
In January, the Lund Report published an article referencing OHSU’s 2019 climate survey of more than 5,300 employees. This survey reinforced what our members have been telling our union for years: OHSU has a problem with harassment and discrimination.
“The results echo those from a 2017 staff survey but they’re much more in-depth. One-third of staff and students who responded said they’d experienced sexual misconduct in the last five years; 34% said discrimination was somewhat, very or extremely problematic at OHSU; 20% said they’d witnessed discrimination within the past year; 15% said they’d personally been discriminated against in the past 12 months; and nearly 60 percent said they feared they would be retaliated against for reporting a problem.”
Anyone who works in health care can speak to its being a field where harassment and discrimination are unfortunately widespread. As an anonymous OHSU employee who was quoted in the article stated, “The reason (sexual harassment) is so high in medicine is that it comes from every direction. In other settings, it’s mostly co-workers and supervisors. In health care, it’s coming from every direction — colleagues, supervisors, family members and patients — there are so many potential sources of harassment.”
AFSCME Local 328 stewards and staff can tell you the stories we’ve heard and the experiences we’ve witnessed ourselves that bear this out. For every case that becomes high profile enough to be reported in the press (like this one or these), there are many other situations that our members are counseled through that are never shared. Whether it’s harassment, discrimination or full-blown assault, our union always does our best to be a comfort and a resource to those who come to us for help. We have helped members find assistance through OHSU’s AAEO office, Public Safety, outside counsel and the larger community. Most of the offices we’ve partnered with and referred members to have done exemplary work, but we’ve noticed a troubling trend over the years.
Even as awareness has increased through broader campaigns (like the Me Too Movement or TIME’S UP Healthcare) and the work of other advocacy organizations, we’ve seen the cases referred to OHSU Human Resources be met with silence far too often. And, unfortunately, far too many members have simply left OHSU rather than continue to face abuse. Many times, Local 328 has engaged with OHSU in good faith and been told that an issue with an abusive manager, ongoing sexual harassment or workplace discrimination was very important to OHSU and that HR would do everything it could to resolve the issue. OHSU’s words align with its Code of Conduct, but its actions that we have witnessed include managers being blindly defended, witnesses or complainants being terminated for infractions that others have never even been disciplined for, responses being delayed (seemingly in the hopes that the issue will be forgotten with enough time and inaction) and promises being made that anything that may have happened was just an isolated incident.
Over time, it has become clear to our union that there is a problem within the highest levels of OHSU’s HR department — a culture problem that impact the entire institution. Last summer, it was revealed that the now-former vice president of HR, Dan Forbes, and another member of OHSU’s bargaining team were using anonymous identities to troll Local 328 and our members, spread misinformation, pretend to be members themselves and more. As shocking and disappointing as it was to uncover this behavior, it supported our union’s belief that all of the “isolated incidents” of harassment, abuse and discrimination at formed an undeniable pattern. With the change in leadership after Dan Forbes’s resignation, our union saw an opportunity to pursue positive change from OHSU.
In an attempt to better serve members who are experiencing harassment, abuse and discrimination, Local 328 is developing a training program for a subset of stewards to enable them to deal with these more sensitive cases. We want to build a team that will have a greater understanding of how protected classes intersect and that can provide trauma-informed assistance to members who come to us at a time when they are at their most vulnerable.
Union stewards are volunteers, so the success of this program will depend on partnerships we’re forming with other organizations within and outside of OHSU. We’ve been encouraged by the assistance and welcome that we’ve received so far. We hope to have more details and better care available for you soon.
There have been encouraging moves recently within HR and OHSU senior leadership that we are cautiously optimistic about. Better cooperation and honesty seem to be on the horizon, but only time will tell. In the meantime, Local 328 hopes that this institution we love realizes just how much its actions have let down its employees, staff, students and community. The breach of trust won’t be healed quickly or without real effort, transparency about what’s wrong and significant, measurable change. While our union waits to see what comes next, we remain committed to the safety and well-being of our represented employees and the larger OHSU community.