Think Again •
By Tim Nesbitt
Channeling Sam Gompers
A
dvice to state candidates who
want to speak to working fami-
lies on schools, health care and jobs:
Try channeling that old labor war
horse Samuel Gompers.
Listen to what Gompers, the first
president of the American Federation
of Labor, said in 1893: “We want
more schoolhouses and less jails;
more books and less arsenals; more
learning and less vice.”
To Gompers’call for more schools
and jobs that pay a fair wage, you
might want to add affordable health
care and retirement security. But, with
those few updates, you pretty much
have a political agenda that would get
the nod from 90 percent of working
families in the 21st century.
Still, it’s not the list of issues that
matters so much as how you present
them.
Fast forward 113 years and ask
Gompers to comment on our school
funding problems. Do you think he’d
say anything like the following?
“We want more schoolhouses, if
we can enact systems development
charges to build them; more books, if
we can divert the corporate kicker to
buy them; more learning, if we can es-
tablish a sales tax to keep our schools
open for a full school year.”
No way. But that’s exactly how
progressive politicians in Oregon of-
ten talk about their “agenda for work-
ing families.”
Progressives have been sucked in
to the supply side of politics, the terri-
tory of taxes and balanced budgets,
where the anti-government forces
have all the advantages. The supply-
siders cut the taxes that support edu-
cation; then they blame teachers’
health and retirement benefits when
we have to close schools. They cut the
funds that support the Oregon Health
Plan and promote high-deductible
health insurance schemes to shift
more costs to working families.
Then, they ask those who support
good schools, affordable health care
and all the things that government
should be able to do for working fam-
ilies, “How are you going to pay for
it?” And, because you want to be fis-
cally responsible, you take that ques-
tion seriously and try to answer it.
At the federal level, the Bush Ad-
ministration has had no such com-
punctions about cutting taxes for the
wealthy and financing its war in Iraq.
As a result, they’ve racked up new
debts totaling $23,000 for every
household in the country. Those debts
will burden our children and grand-
children. But imagine if every house-
hold’s $23,000 was used instead to
make college affordable for working
families and guarantee health care for
all children? We lost an opportunity
to make life better for future genera-
tions because we didn’t demand these
things first and figure out how to pay
for them later.
Back at the state level, where we
have to live with balanced budgets,
progressives agonize over “unfunded
mandates.” How can you propose
smaller class sizes, for example, with-
out detailing how you’re going to pay
for them? That’s a valid question, but
it is also a crippling one. When you
accept the constraints of a state budget
continually eroded by special-interest
tax breaks, you never get to make a
compelling case for what government
can and should be doing for working
families before it cuts taxes for corpo-
rations.
To his credit, State Rep. Mitch
Greenlick is channeling Gompers
with an initiative for universal health
care that he is sponsoring for the No-
vember ballot. His initiative would
establish health care as a constitu-
tional right and tell the Legislature to
figure out how to pay for it. That’s an
unfunded mandate that’s worth a full
legislative session to work out.
And when it comes to schools, say
you want a full school year, up-to-date
textbooks and classrooms that are not
overcrowded — and that you won’t
leave Salem without them. We had
that kind of education system a gen-
eration ago in Oregon, so why not
now?
By the way, our state constitution
doesn’t say that that you have to bal-
ance expenditures to match available
revenues. It says just the opposite (in
Article IX, Section 2) – that “the Leg-
islative Assembly shall provide for
raising revenue sufficiently to defray
the expenses of the State.” In other
words, first figure out what we need,
then figure out how to pay for it.
And, if you have to talk about
taxes, say, “We don’t need new taxes,
we need old taxes, when the rich and
the corporations paid their fair share
for our schools and our health care.”
We are a far richer country today
than we were when Gompers con-
cluded, “We do want more, and when
it becomes more, we shall still want
more.” But, as the productivity of our
workers and the wealth of our country
have increased, demanding more has
given way to doing more with less
and settling for smaller and smaller
shares of what Gompers called the
fruits of our labor.
So, this is not the time to become
entangled in debates about how we’re
going to pay for the things that can
make life better for working families.
Listen to Gompers. This is the time to
stoke the demand side of politics. De-
mand more, because America’ work-
ing families deserve more.
Note: In my March 3 column,
“The ABCs of Health Care Reform,”
the A-E designations I used to de-
scribe the categories of health care
coverage in Oregon were accidentally
deleted in the final formatting of my
text for this newspaper. As a result,
my descriptions of these categories
were difficult to follow. For a more in-
telligible version of that column, with
the letter designations restored, go to
this newspaper’s Website at
www.nwlaborpress.org and click on
“Opinion.”
Oregon State Rep. Diane Rosenbaum (seated at the head of the table) leads
a discussion on political lobbying during a workshop at the Tradeswomen
Leadership Institute.
Women learn leadership,
advocacy skills at institute
Thirty-seven tradeswomen from 12 local unions attended the Tradeswomen
Leadership Institute last month at the Sheet Metal Training Center in Northeast
Portland. The institute was designed by Oregon Tradeswomen Inc. and the Labor
Education and Research Center of the University of Oregon to help build the
leadership and advocacy skills of union women working in the construction, me-
chanical and utility trades.
In attendance were apprentices and journey-level craftswomen carpenters,
electricians, elevator constructors, laborers, operating engineers, plumbers,
roofers, sheet metal workers, steamfitters, utility workers and welders.
Participants heard leadership stories from a panel of tradeswomen that in-
cluded Jodi Guetzloe-Parker, an organizer for Laborers Local 320, Cyndi Chan
of Sheet Metal Workers Local 16, Jill Tracy, a foreman and member of Plumbers
and Fitters Local 290, and Christie Kern of Carpenters Local 247, who formerly
taught at the Willamette Carpenter Training Center and is now a compliance offi-
cer for the Fair Contracting Foundation.
Other workshops focused on political lobbying, identifying leadership skills,
public speaking and how to conduct a meeting.
Guest instructors for the lobbying workshop were State Representatives Diane
Rosenbaum and Chip Shields, State Labor Commissioner Dan Gardner, Deputy
Labor Commissioner Annette Talbott, and Terry Richardson, labor liaison for
Portland City Commissioner Sam Adams.
“It was such a success, we plan to make this an annual event,” said Connie
Ashbrook, executive director of Oregon Tradeswomen Inc.
Tim Nesbitt is a former president of
the Oregon AFL-CIO.
UA Local 290 holds family safety seminar
The Ninth Annual Donald Dunn Memorial Safety Semi-
nar was held recently at the Plumbers and Fitters Local 290
Training Center in Tualatin.
More than 200 members and spouses attended the day-
long event, which started in 1998 after Local 290 member
Donald Dunn was killed in an industrial accident. His
widow, Jeannie, and her attorney, Jeffrey Mutnick, ap-
proached the training center with an idea for a safety train-
ing program that included family members, since families
are so deeply affected by on-the-job accidents.
Together they set up a nonprofit trust to ensure the semi-
nar would always be funded. Trustees are Local 290 mem-
ber Tony Barsotti of Temp-Control Mechanical, Clark Ver-
million of Hoffman Construction, Bob Kimes of the Local
APRIL 7, 2006
290 Training Center and Mutnick.
This year’s seminar was entitled “Work Life and Be-
yond: A Psychological View ”and featured keynote speak-
ers Dr. Drew Broadkin, a clinical associate professor in the
Departments of Occupational and Environmental Health
Sciences & Medicine at the University of Washington, and
Dr. Autumn Krauss, an assessment scientist at Unicru, a
technology company located in Beaverton.
Dr. John Rosecrance and Dr. Peter Chen of Colorado
State University co-produced the seminar with Local 290’s
Training Center. Rosecrance has worked with Local 290 for
many years doing carpal tunnel research.
In the photo to the right, participants undergo carpal tun-
nel testing.
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
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