Surgical Techs Get Some Much-Needed Relief

In early June, Local 328 bargaining-team member Aaron Kawamoto reached out to AFSCME staff representatives to share some of the concerns he had heard from surgical techs over the previous couple of weeks. One of the major concerns is that they’ve had incredibly high turnover in their department. Turnover rate is a key indicator that the market pay is not enough to retain employees. After hearing the surgical techs’ concerns, AFSCME staff representatives agreed with Aaron that our union should reach out to OHSU’s compensation department.

We reached out to OHSU on Thursday, June 9, sharing the surgical techs’ concerns about the high turnover rate in their department. Compensation responded that they would reach out to surgical-services management and discuss our concerns. A couple of weeks later, OHSU’s compensation department informed our union that they wanted to give these employees a $2.00 pay increase based on recruitment and retention needs. The Local 328 executive board approved the increase, OHSU was notified and the increase will go into effect on Monday, July 4.

This is a really great win for our represented employees in Surgical Services. We couldn’t have gotten this done without the surgical techs sharing their stories with Aaron, or without him in turn sharing those stories with AFSCME staff. Thank you to everyone involved! We know that it could have been more, but it’s a good start that we hope will help address the problems with retention and recruitment within the department.