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November 6, 2020 | NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
NORTHWEST
LABOR
PRESS
...OHSU fights union campaign at Hillsboro hospital
From Page 1
(International Standard Serial Number 0894-444X)
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CLARIFICATION
Library workers were
offered recall
Our Oct. 16 article about turmoil in the
wake of position cuts at the Multnomah
County Library failed to mention that the
library DID offer recall to staff who earlier
accepted voluntary layoff.
ing. But private sector hospitals,
under the National Labor Rela-
tions Act, can drag out the
process, hire union-busting con-
sultants, and insist on an election
before which they have seven
weeks or more to campaign in
the workplace.
That anti-union campaign in
the workplace has already begun,
says Shellie Powers, a 10-year
employee at the hospital. Powers
works 12-hour graveyard shifts
checking patients into the Hills-
boro Medical Center emergency
room. Powers says a manager
who oversees housekeeping and
food service workers has been
telling workers one-on-one that
unionizing would be a big mis-
take. The manager told workers
if they unionize she won’t be al-
lowed to schedule them beyond
8 hours in a shift, or approve their
vacation requests except by sen-
iority. [Having worked union at
Kaiser, Powers knows both of
those statements are false. In fact,
nurses at OHSU Hillsboro Med-
ical Center are represented by the
Oregon Nurses Association
(ONA) and routinely work
longer shifts.]
The manager even told one
worker he should look for a job
elsewhere if he’s not happy, and
that she’d be posting his position.
Oregon AFSCME is preparing to
file charges over that illegal
threat.
By late September, a majority
of the workers had signed cards
saying they want a union. On
Sept. 21, a delegation of workers
tried to meet with CEO Lori
James-Nielsen to ask for volun-
tary union recognition. Instead,
they were intercepted by a secu-
rity guard and told to get off the
property.
It was Powers who first con-
tacted Oregon AFSCME, in
April, after her and her co-work-
ers’ frustrations had reached a
boiling point and she started talk-
ing to co-workers she hadn’t met
before.
“I found out that I wasn’t
alone,” Powers told the Labor
Press. “And my department was-
n’t alone. Every single depart-
ment had complaints.”
The biggest complaint: no say,
no voice, in the decisions that af-
fect their working lives.
“We voice our concerns, but
then they go nowhere,” Powers
said.
Having no voice meant no
Personal Protective Equipment
when the COVID-19 pandemic
first hit, even though employees
HELP THEM WIN A UNION
Union supporters will hold a public
rally on Wednesday, Nov. 11, 11
a.m. at the main hospital entrance:
335 SE Eighth Avenue, Hillsboro.
The union is also collecting signa-
tures on an online petition de-
manding that OHSU Hillsboro Med-
ical Center follow the law and stop
threatening its employees:
https://bit.ly/3kI4dGU
were clamoring for protection.
Workers also had their hours cut,
and exhausted their reserves of
paid time off. Workers got no
raise this year. They also get no
hazard pay, even when they in-
teract with COVID-19 patients.
Twenty-one staff members have
tested positive for COVID-19 as
of Oct. 27. Wages and benefits
are also lower than those of
union members doing the same
work at other OHSU locations.
Oregon AFSCME submitted
the union cards Oct. 5 to the Ore-
gon Employment Relations
Board (ERB), which administers
the public sector union law. On
Oct. 29, the last day OHSU could
legally respond to that submittal,
an attorney for Bullard Law filed
a petition with the National La-
bor Relations Board requesting a
union election—on behalf of Tu-
ality Healthcare.
“They’re Tuality Healthcare
when it suits them,” says AF-
SCME organizer Sarah Thomp-
son.
An OHSU spokesperson said
by email that Tuality and OHSU
are affiliated, but each has a dif-
ferent board of directors, and
they’re distinctly separate entities
with regard to employment and
labor.
“I guess they think they’re
calling our bluff,” Thompson
said.
To avoid delay, Oregon AF-
SCME may just agree with the
hospital’s proposed election
timeline, in which mail ballots
would go out Dec. 9 and be due
back Jan. 13. Like the AFSCME
bargaining unit at OHSU, the
proposed unit would include
many kinds of workers, includ-
ing pharmacists, medical lab sci-
entists and social workers; respi-
ratory therapists, diagnostic
technicians and other medical
technologists; skilled mainte-
nance employees; and service
workers like CNAs, housekeep-
ers and food service workers.
“Our interest is in having peo-
ple be in the union as soon as
possible,” Thompson says.