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About Northwest labor press. (Portland , Ore.) 1987-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 6, 2006)
K ramers/metro mailing service 3201 N.W. YEON PORTLAND, OREGON 97210 (503) 274-1638 FAX (503) 227-1245 THE ONLY UNION MAILER IN OREGON Visit our Website at www.kramersmailing.com MEMBERS OF TEAMSTERS LOCAL 223 — Eric Brending, Owner — MOBILE SHOE STORE Locally-owned and operated. Servicing Willamette Valley & Lincoln County Union Made We’ll Bring The Store To You! We specialize in proper fitting of steel-toe boots Call our retail outlet for more information and to set up an appointment NO D LAY SHOE STORE 541-928-7651 339 2nd Ave. SW, Albany, Oregon 97231 DCU members ratify Portland school pact — it expired Dec. 31 In voting held Dec. 15- 20, school employees narrowly ratify a deal that took 20 months to bargain. Twenty months of contentious bar- gaining between the Portland Public School District No. 1 and the District Council of Unions (DCU) ended last month when some 300 employees nar- rowly ratified a contract in voting held Dec. 15-20. The school board will vote on whether or not to accept the contract at its regularly scheduled meeting Jan. 9. Then the sides get to start all over again, because the contract’s expiration date is Dec. 31, 2005. That’s right. The “letter of ratifica- tion” the union coalition sent to the school district also included an “open the contract” letter to secure bargaining dates in 2006. “It sounds crazy, I know, but that’s how it worked out,” said Gene Black- burn, spokesman for the DCU, a group of 16 union locals that bargain jointly with the school district. Blackburn is a business representative of Teamsters Local 206. The previous contract expired in June 30, 2004. The school employees had been working under that contract while bargaining dragged on. 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Dental 4052 S. 6th St. Klamath Falls, OR 97603 541-883-7706 Mo Biria, D.M.D. Northwest Dental Associates, P.C. Bright Now! Dental 17186 SE McLoughlin Blvd. Milwaukie, OR 97267 503-659-2525 Trang Nguyen, D.M.D. Linh Tran, D.M.D. Katherine Farrell, D.M.D. Adam Ho, P.C. Bright Now! Dental 3580 SE 82nd Ave. Portland, OR 97266 503-777-0761 Allen Tam, D.M.D. Nathan Halstead, D.D.S., M.S. Khoa Hoang, D.M.D. Adam Ho, D.D.S., P.C. Bright Now! Dental Network Dentists – serving unions for over 25 years Bright Now! Dental 831 Lancaster Mall Dr. NE Salem, OR 97301 503-362-8359 Ian Phan, D.M.D. Anthony Simon, D.M.D. Brian Kallus, D.M.D. Northwest Dental Associates, P.C. plicated. First comes “main body” bar- gaining, under which all the unions are involved. Then locals break away for job-specific talks that represent em- ployees — sometimes from different unions — in eight job classifications. For instance, the Teamsters represent warehouse workers and truck drivers under Appendix A of the contract. This appendix is bargained with its own set of wages, raises and language regarding working conditions. Bus operators bar- gain their own set of standards under Appendix F, as do maintenance and craft workers, classroom assistants, and so on under separate appendices. The sides reached a tentative agree- ment on the main body of the contract relatively early in bargaining. The main body included a $764 cap on district- paid health insurance premiums. Any costs above that would be borne for the first time by employees. Then, one by one, appendices were tentatively agreed to, until only two re- mained — those for the bus operators, represented by Amalgamated Transit Union Local 757, and maintenance and craft workers represented by a group of locals from the Columbia-Pacific Building Trades Council. At that point, the sides were far apart on health insur- ance co-payments and contracting out language. Months of wrangling ensued. In Oc- tober 2005, the school district declared an impasse in bargaining and filed an unfair labor practice complaint against the unions. Under state law, the sides had a 30-day “cooling off” period, after which management could implement its last offer and/or the unions could give notice to strike. One round of mediated bargaining took place during the cooling off period. There were some slight improvements made, Blackburn said, but not enough to seal the deal. On Dec. 12, 2005, the school district announced it was implementing its fi- nal offer of October — unless the rep- resented employees voted by Dec. 20, whereby the school district would pres- ent the slightly improved contract nego- tiated in November. Some union officials from the DCU were at odds as to whether or not to hold a vote, since a contract had already been implemented. In the end, they chose to present “the better offer,” and it narrowly passed. Under terms of the ratified contract, each of the groups represented by the DCU will receive a one-time stipend or a wage increase in January, which will cost the school district about $375,000. Health insurance co-payments will vary widely among employees, de- pending on what insurance plan they select, how many family members they cover, and which trust fund they are in. Co-payments reportedly can range from $5 to $193 a month. Local 757, an outspoken critic of the co-payment plan, said the school district contract was the first in the last 14 they’ve negotiated that contains takeaways. “We are not happy about this at all,” said Jon Hunt, a business representative of the union. 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NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS (Our legal staff are proud members of UFCW Local 555) JANUARY 6, 2006