The GW
HATCHET
September 23, 2024 Vol. 121 Iss. 7
AN INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER • SERVING THE GW COMMUNITY SINCE 1904 • ONLINE AT GWHATCHET.COM
Granberg reckons with calls for community input, divestment after first year in office HANNAH MARR NEWS EDITOR
When University President Ellen Granberg entered office last year, she hoped to set a higher standard for community involvement in University decision-making to ensure that faculty, staff and students had a voice in handling “critical” issues at GW. But on Wednesday in her second sit-down interview with The Hatchet since her inauguration, Granberg said she regrets not consulting a broader range of community members on the University’s daily and big-picture choices when she reflects on officials’ handling of the pro-Palestinian encampment on campus last spring. Granberg said during the two weeks of protests that called for GW to disclose investments and divest from companies supplying arms to Israel, she believed she was adequately consulting and communicating with GW officials and other stakeholders, including presidents of other universities with encampments. But she said “it was clear” that those feelings weren’t shared by the community at-large upon receiving feedback after the Metropolitan Police Department cleared the encampment in May. She said she couldn’t say for certain that fielding input from different groups would have changed the outcome of officials’ decisions but that adding an “additional frame” of reference changes the way people think about a situation. If protests continue this semester, officials will seek input from a wider array of community members beyond campus leaders, Granberg said. “What would be different this fall is that there would be a much more
Faculty suggestions not ‘recognized’ in delayed diversity plan debut SACHINI ADIKARI CONTRIBUTING NEWS EDITOR
DANIEL HEUER | ASSISTANT PHOTO EDITOR University President Ellen Granberg poses for a portrait in her office in 1918 F Street.
programmatic outreach beyond those folks, rather than those folks representing their communities,” Granberg said. Faculty senators pressed Granberg in May on officials’ “scant” communication and lack of consultation with faculty on handling the encampment. Students last week also called on Granberg to increase her visibility and engagement with the student body as she enters her second year. Despite her communitywide regrets, Granberg said officials from the Division for Student Affairs, the Division of Safety and Facilities and faculty representatives engaged in thorough dialogue with students in the encampment. “My understanding from the folks who were responsible for carrying that out, is it was pretty rich, and there was a lot of communication back and forth,” Granberg said. “The place where I became the most aware of communication being not enough was with our community.” Granberg did not visit
or communicate directly with any protesters during the two weeks of demonstrations. A representative from the pro-Palestinian student coalition that set up the encampment — who requested to remain anonymous because of a fear of doxxing and repression from GW — said they believed Granberg’s “primary mistake” was her lack of direct communication with the student protesters. In response to protesters’ ongoing demands of divestment from companies that supply arms to Israel, Granberg reiterated the University’s position that GW is not considering divestment. She said it is “virtually impossible” to divest from a specific industry, which became clear to trustees and officials over the last five years after GW committed to divesting from the fossil fuel industry in 2020. She said the way universities invest in companies has changed “so much” in recent years and deferred to Chief Financial Officer Bruno Fernandes when asked for specifics on the shift,
saying he could answer the questions “factually.” “I’m actually going to have to punt based on ignorance, because I don’t want to act like I know,” Granberg said. Fernandes declined to comment on how investments have changed in recent years. Granberg said she is potentially interested in considering limitations on adding new investments to their portfolio but did not specify what investments she would consider limiting. “What I’m interested in is, are there ways that we can think about this, not from what we remove but from what we add?” Granberg said. The coalition representative said they were “glad to hear” that Granberg was considering this strategy, which the coalition had proposed to officials during talks with Office of the Provost staff but said they were previously unaware officials were considering it. See GRANBERG Page 5
Members of a University-wide diversity review team said the Office of the Provost’s diversity, equity and inclusion plan released earlier this month after a yearlong delay excluded several recommendations from faculty. The plan comes nearly three years after a Diversity Program Review Team began assessing GW’s diversity climate in 2022, a process that included using results from a survey conducted with students, faculty and staff that year to develop a set of final recommendations to improve diversity at GW. Professors within the review team’s faculty subgroup said the final plan — which comes after officials submitted a draft report of the team’s recommendations to an external review team months later than initially promised — is generic and leaves out suggestions that faculty outlined in the plan’s development. “I understand that you want to keep it succinct, and I understand that you can’t address everything that came out of every subcommittee, but it’s so general that it almost reads like you could’ve written it without all of that analysis and input,” Jennifer Brinkerhoff, a member of the faculty subgroup, said at a Faculty Senate meeting earlier this month. Provost Chris Bracey first announced that the provost’s office would conduct a yearlong review to improve campus diversity in August 2021.
In February 2022, Bracey announced the creation of the Diversity Program Review Team, a group of 26 faculty, students and administrators, who that spring conducted a diversity climate survey for faculty, staff and students. Officials in March 2023 held community forums to share survey findings, which revealed that half of survey respondents experienced a negative experience on campus, with LGBTQ+ respondents experiencing the most negative identity-based treatment. In April 2023, the faculty subgroup of the review team submitted their draft report to officials, who compiled a comprehensive report to include plans from every subgroup. Officials originally projected to submit the comprehensive report for external review in spring 2023 and receive the plan back for its final release in summer or fall 2023, according to web archives. But the provost’s office website now slots external review for fall 2023 and report submission for spring 2024, months later than originally planned. Officials changed the website’s timeline as early as Feb. 27, 2023, according to web archives but did not formally announce the delays. Bracey declined to comment on the delayed timeline and why it took an additional year for officials to publish the plan. He also declined to say how the office plans to address concerns about recommendations that went unaddressed in the final plan. See FACULTY Page 5
Inside the ongoing efforts to unionize at GW Hospital, UHS-owned facilities RORY QUEALY NEWS EDITOR
Union leaders at GW Hospital have engaged in yearslong, deadlocked battles with the hospital’s owner over union recognition and bargaining in what experts say is part of an ongoing nationwide trend of union avoidance. GW Hospital’s nurses’ union and service workers union filed unfair labor practice charges against Universal Health Services, Inc. the hospital’s owner and provider, in 2023 and 2018, respectively, alleging UHS attempted to thwart union presence by discouraging participation and engaging in bad faith bargaining. Both unions won elections among hospital employees — the nurses in 2023 and service workers more than two decades ago — but UHS doesn’t recognize either union, so officials won’t come to the bargaining table. UHS is a for-profit Fortune 500, and one of the country’s largest hospital management companies. GW and UHS first partnered in 1998 to operate GW Hospital, and UHS became the sole owner of the hospital in May 2022 when the University sold UHS its minority stake. The National Labor Relations Board, which enforces U.S. labor law, is taking UHS to court on Oct. 21 after escalating three of the nurses union’s unfair labor practice charges. The board ruled in May the UHS engaged in bad-faith bargaining and ordered its leaders to resume good-faith contract negotiations with the service worker’s union. GW Hospital spokesperson Susan LaRosa said GW Hospital is pursuing “all legal rights” related to the nurses’ union election. She said if the NLRB again certifies the election — after UHS in June appealed the regional labor board’s decision to certify the union — GW Hospital will engage in good-faith negotiations with the union. “GW Hospital denies the allegations of any unfair labor practices and is defending against those charges vigorously,” LaRosa said in an email. Experts in labor history said
UHS’s legal moves signal union avoidance — a legal approach employed by corporations and hospitals to slow union progress by attempting to stop union election wins because they view unions as a threat to profits and management prerogatives. “It’s a legal specialty in advising managers how to avoid bargaining with the union. That’s become kind of the norm in both the corporate world, including both for-profit and nonprofit hospitals and also in university administrations,” said William Jones, a professor of history at the University of Minnesota. Just over a third of newly organized unions obtain a collective bargaining agreement with their employer within the first year, and about two-thirds secure a deal within three years, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Here’s a breakdown of union battles at GW Hospital and other UHS-owned facilities:
GW Hospital nurse’s union
Nurses initiated union organization with the D.C. Nurses Association in February 2023 after previous repeated attempts to work directly with leadership to address the hospital’s lack of staffing and a lack of “lasting systematic improvements” following the COVID-19 pandemic. GW Hospital in February also laid off 60 employees, or 3 percent of its staff. David Zonderman, a professor of history at North Carolina State University and an expert in American labor history, said low staffing worsens working conditions in hospitals, often triggering nurses to organize unions. “The for-profit entity wants to increase its profits,” Zonderman said. “It’ll cut staff and/or cut wages, benefits.” Edward Smith, the DCNA’s executive director, said after nurses announced plans to unionize, UHS leaders’ anti-union practices were immediate. DCNA filed five unfair labor practice complaints in March 2023, alleging UHS officials suspended a nurse for participating in union organizing, installed surveillance cameras in staff spaces and discouraged union participation in
The GW Hospital on 23rd Street, emblazoned with the Universal Health Services logo.
private meetings with nurses. UHS suspended and then fired registered nurse Angelo Estrellas in March 2023, which the nurses’ union said was due to his involvement in the union organization. “They’re probably one of the most anti-union health care companies I’ve dealt with,” Smith said. Smith said he believes UHS officials weren’t aware of nurses’ plan to unionize until about two weeks before DCNA launched its union campaign. As nurses waited for the NLRB ruling that allowed them to hold a union election, union leaders said GW Hospital management removed pro-union signage and put glass frames over bulletin boards in the hospital to prevent union representatives from posting material. In June 2023, the union set election dates for the end of that month, and nurses voted 310-207 to form a union. Smith said part of the reason why the association won the vote was because UHS didn’t have time
DANIEL HEUER | ASSISTANT PHOTO EDITOR
to dissuade people. UHS objected to the election results within a few weeks, contesting the union’s messaging, voter identification and brief presence of supervisors at the election. The regional NLRB director quashed the objection in June — which Smith said UHS has appealed. “I was 100 percent positive they would fight,” Smith said. “It’s not rocket science. No, all you need to do is look at this company’s history with labor unions.” The regional NLRB in late May ruled to dismiss one of UHS’s charges, which alleged that Estrellas was a supervisor — a position that labor laws bar from participating in union efforts. The NLRB’s decision affirmed that Estrellas was not a supervisor and couldn’t have coerced nurses into joining. UHS has since appealed the decision. “It affected me finding work, emotionally, psychologically and financially,” Estrellas, who worked at GW Hospital for more than a decade, said in June.
The NLRB regional director ordered a court hearing for Oct. 21 over three unfair labor practice charges, including Estrellas’ termination.
GW Hospital service workers’ union
The 1199 Service Employees International Union had represented more than 150 GW Hospital cleaning, ambulatory and food service workers for more than two decades before the hospital received a decertification petition in October 2018 — which 81 of the 156 employees in the bargaining unit signed. UHS officials notified the union that they were immediately withdrawing recognition of the union, claiming it had lost support of a majority of employees in the bargaining unit. UHS officials then canceled all future bargaining sessions and implemented a new compensation structure and employee wage rates. See HOSPITAL Page 5