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Trainers at Oregon Health & Science University’s fitness center sent a letter to the human resources department recently, saying they had long been in the “practice of receiving gifts of monetary value” from clients “with no negative action taken by management.”
They sent the letter because OHSU is taking disciplinary action against one of their own, the letter says: a trainer named Hananiah Mays, who happens to be Black and a union organizer.
“This policy has never been enforced until they hired a Black person,” says Benny Hendricks, Mays’ representative at American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 328.
Worse yet, OHSU is violating its own “progressive discipline” policies by sending Mays straight to a pre-dismissal meeting this week, Hendricks says.
The union’s collective bargaining agreement says an employee must be given a documented verbal warning, then one in writing, and after that a suspension of pay or seniority rights, or a final written warning.
Trainers who sent the letter on behalf of Mays are in jeopardy now, too, Hendricks says. OHSU has summoned them to disciplinary hearings today and tomorrow, one after the other, she says, calling the move a “retaliatory act.”
The matter began in February when Jason Yoder, a manager at OHSU’s March Wellness & Fitness Center, opened an envelope left for Mays by an elderly client, Dawne Wilkins, Hendricks says. He opened three in total, she says.
Yoder confronted Mays, Hendricks says, and around the same time sent an admonishing email to Wilkins. “We know you have been giving cash gifts to Hananiah Mays,” Yoder wrote to Wilkins. “Please reference the attached letter regarding OHSU’s policy related to gifts.”
Wilkins, 83, says the email shocked her. She had been leaving envelopes at the front desk for Mays for a year. “At no time was I asked if there was any remuneration in them,” she says.
More importantly, she’s concerned that an exceptional employee is being unfairly targeted. “He’s a very special person,” she says. “If a new member walks into the class, he makes them feel like it was incomplete without the new person’s presence.”
OHSU declined to comment on the matter, citing employee confidentiality.
In a statement, Mays said the ordeal has left him feeling adrift.
“I have been working as a personal trainer for over two years now, and my clients are my community, some of them as close to me as family,” Mays said. “Being cut off from them has made this situation even harder to bear. The loneliness and uncertainty have taken a toll on my mental and physical health, and it feels like I’m losing not just my job, but the connections and support that have always kept me grounded.”