From Evan Bowman, co-chair of the HELU Media & Communications Committee and IT Chair of AFSCME Local 328.
In a university-wide email sent late in the afternoon on Thursday, June 6th, Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) President Danny Jacobs and his executive team provided “An update on our ongoing Strategic Alignment work, including necessary reductions in workforce.”
What followed was a lesson in double-speak worthy of an Orwell character. To paraphrase:
Healthcare costs too much! We tried to make more money, but it did not work. Because healthcare.
We are sending this for the sake of “transparency.”
We are legally required by the WARN Act to let the people we are going to lay off know that we are planning to lay off at least 500 people over the next 90 days. More to come in the coming weeks!
Also, that thing last week about buying 11 hospitals? It’s happening. We are excited and it will be transformational. You might ask why? Because strategy.
We know this is hard to hear.
For many of the 21,000+ employees of OHSU this was the beginning of the Summer of Precarity.
Our union, AFSCME Local 328, is one of the founding members of Higher Education Labor United. We represent over 8,000 front-line healthcare, academic and research workers (remember the 2020 heroes?) and we stand in solidarity with our members and the entire Portland community. OHSU is the largest employer in Portland and the 3rd largest in the state. We do not know how many will be affected by this short-sighted financial “strategy.”
As of this publication, we have received little further information from the executives, outside of publicly available documentation from poorly advertised meetings.
You can follow our struggle here: https://www.local328.org/lo-information