Solidarity with BERG — Point of Action #9: Require All Leaders to Participate in D&I Initiatives

To the BERG: Our union sees, recognizes and values the incredible leadership and perseverance of our Black colleagues at OHSU. We stand in solidarity with the BERG. AFSCME Local 328 has been reflecting as a union, and we recognize our ability to do much better.

As stated in our December 2020 letter to the OHSU Black Employee Resource Group, AFSCME Local 328 has committed to stand and bear witness to the BERG’s letter sent to OHSU leadership and the board of directors on August 31, 2020, which called out concerns around OHSU’s racist practices, particularly those impacting Black employees. This month we address the ninth of the BERG’s 14 Points of Action, which is to:

Require all leadership, managers and supervisors to be active participants in OHSU diversity and inclusion initiatives and tie success in those initiatives to compensation. Define what D&I means and how and what types of participation represent success. End OHSU association with leadership, managers, supervisors and employees who are unable or unwilling to either get out of the way of progress or incapable of understanding why progress is no longer optional.

OHSU's response stated that leaders, managers and supervisors are all expected to meet D&I objectives. How is their participation in these objectives verified? Is it self reported or via feedback from the employees they supervise? What determines if OHSU’s D&I initiatives are effective, and how will this be measured? Because it has been determined to tie leadership and management  compensation to participation in D&I initiatives, Local 328 suggests that OHSU integrate regular and anonymous employee feedback on manager performance as it relates to D&I, to ensure that employees’ voices are not lost in these efforts.

OHSU stated that it will define what success looks like, track metrics and build the necessary accountabilities. What are objectives and metrics that leaders and managers must meet? What defines success in OHSU's eyes? Who creates this definition? Most importantly, how will the BERG and other BIPOC employees be involved in defining these metrics, and how will OHSU hold leaders accountable for maintaining D&I initiatives? 

OHSU's response also stated that "All leaders are expected to thoroughly and fairly address concerns raised by their employees about discrimination, harassment and racist behavior, and they will be held accountable in this regard." The failure with this thinking is that it assumes that leadership is not the culprit behind discimination, harassment and racism at OHSU. It assumes that hiring managers are unbiased and make fair hiring decisions, which was shown to be untrue by the recent employment-practices data that was released on OHSU Now. According to these metrics, OHSU fires Black and Hispanic employees at higher rates than their colleagues, compared to their numbers in OHSU’s workforce. This illustrates that OHSU leaders, managers and supervisors must be held accountable by parties other than themselves. 

OHSU must make it a policy to terminate the employment of leaders, managers and supervisors who impede D&I success at OHSU, especially those who have perpetrated or enabled racism and harassment. Managers who violate this policy should be terminated without exception. OHSU cannot create workplace trauma simply because it doesn’t train managers sufficiently or because managers fail to comprehend the importance of D&I and help participate in making OHSU an anti-racist institution. 

AFSCME Local 328 continues to hold the entire OHSU community accountable (including but not limited to members of our bargaining unit, OHSU leadership, students and researchers) to do their part — individually and collectively — in remaking OHSU into an anti-racist institution. In order for this to happen, we must all be accountable and demonstrate transparency. As such, we stand with the BERG and their call for OHSU to require all leaders to be active participants in OHSU diversity and inclusion initiatives.