Richmond Rally Follow-up
The follow email was sent to OHSU and Richmond Clinic leadership on Monday, March 14. A reply from Richmond leadership that “discussions are happening this week” was met with the following response from our union on Wednesday, March 16: “The employer should understand we did not get to this point due to a lack of conversation or discussion. Our actions and list of demands are in fact the result of over a year of discussions, reports, committees, foot-dragging and continued harmful behavior on the part of the employer and managerial staff at the Richmond Clinic. We believe our email and list of demands clearly and unambiguously states our position and expectations regarding this issue.” You can help our coworkers at the Richmond clinic by emailing OHSU Labor Relations and telling them that it’s well past time to address the clinic leadership’s issues with racism, retaliation and inaction. Thank you for your support!
Dear Dr. Jacobs, Dr. DeVoe, Ms. McGhean and Labor Relations,
Richmond Clinic employees have suffered racism, discrimination, favoritism and other harms — at the hands of clinic leadership — that have gone unchecked for far too long. Not only have these harms been created by those tasked with leading culture-change work, but employees have seen no meaningful change or progress since clinic leaders were assigned the duty of changing the clinic culture a year ago.
For far too long, OHSU leadership has chosen inaction, stalling tactics and performative changes that have had little to no impact on our members’ safety and well-being. Therefore, AFSCME Local 328 has collaborated with Richmond Clinic staff to develop a list of demands required to start the clinic on its journey to becoming a safe and healthy workplace free of discrimination, racism and other harms.
The full list of demands is attached. Below are five key items that must be implemented by Monday, March 28. Our union and our members believe these steps to be of the utmost importance and that they must occur immediately:
Remove Rob Trachtenberg, Stein Berger and Stephanie Wiebusch from leading culture-change work.
Send an RFP to the the following workplace-change organizations:
Issue a verbal apology to the full clinic and to individuals, in which the specific harm inflicted on employees and the clinic culture is acknowledged. (The individual apologies are to be handled through the third-party facilitator, unless the harmed individual is comfortable for them to be done as part of clinic-wide cultural-change work.)
Pay a 5% work-out-of-class differential to all trusted colleagues and those who support culture-change work, for all hours they spend engaging in this work or serving as a trusted colleague.
Provide to AFSCME Local 328 the entire, unredacted Pia Bloom report.
We believe it is entirely feasible for the employer to meet these demands by Monday, March 28. Our union is planning another action in two weeks — it’s up to the employer to determine whether the action will (a) acknowledge that OHSU leadership has taken the correct first step in reconciling the harms created at the Richmond Clinic or (b) again point out OHSU leadership’s failure to protect the employees and, by extension, patients at Richmond Clinic.
A Richmond Clinic board member was present at last week’s solidarity rally and informed our union that they were unaware of the issues at the clinic. Therefore, lastly, we believe it is crucial that Richmond Clinic’s board of directors be apprised of this situation. You may do so by (a) forwarding this email to them and providing us with confirmation it was received by them or (b) providing our union with contact information for the Richmond Clinic board for us to notify them ourselves.
Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter.
Sincerely,
Michael Stewart, President
AFSCME Local 328