...Incumbent Kulongoski
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that it violated a union contract the state
had bargained with its employees. The
stock market has also partially recov-
ered, which has reduced the system’s
unfunded liability.
Kulongoski defends his shift on
PERS as a tough decision he had to
make if he was to protect government
services from cuts and protect public
employees from plans by some Repub-
lican leaders to terminate their defined
benefit pension and turn it into a 401(k).
Talk to labor folks and you’ll hear
other complaints: He had a no-show rep-
utation in the Legislature, undertook few
initiatives and dodged controversy.
There are exceptions to this chorus.
Most building trades union leaders are
highly enthusiastic about Kulongoski,
who they say did everything they asked
him to. In particular, Kulongoski came
through on a series of massive public-
works projects that will put building
trades union members at work for years
to come: One bill introduced by Kulon-
goski put the state to work fixing bridges
using $2 billion in bonds that will be re-
paid with an increase in the drivers’ li-
cense fee. Another dedicated $100 mil-
lion in lottery-backed bonds for
improvements to railroads, airports and
other non-highway projects. A higher
education construction bill put $400 mil-
lion of money into expansion at univer-
sity campuses. All those amounts will be
spent over a period of years.
Kulongoski also stuck by building
trades unions in behind-the-scenes ne-
gotiations with the Warm Springs Tribe
over a proposed casino in Cascade
Locks: The governor’s influence helped
get the tribe to commit to build and op-
erate the casino with union labor if it
wins federal approval for an off-reserva-
tion casino.
Kulongoski was the clear labor fa-
vorite four years ago, and for the same
reason some loyalists are sticking by
him now: Of the contestants, he has by
far the longest, most solid relationship
with organized labor, going back more
than three decades.
“I am and always will be a labor De-
mocrat,” Kulongoski told a gathering of
labor leaders at a December breakfast.
At one time he was a member of the
Teamsters in St. Louis, Missouri.
It was Kulongoski who wrote the
1973 law that allowed public employees
to unionize: As a Eugene labor lawyer,
he was asked to write the Oregon Public
Employee Collective Bargaining Act,
which passed a Democratic Legislature
and was signed by Republican Gover-
nor Tom McCall.
From 1975 through 1981, Kulon-
goski served four terms in the Oregon
Legislature, and his votes were in accord
with the Oregon AFL-CIO 96 percent of
the time.
In the late 1980s and early ‘90s, Ku-
longoski was the state insurance com-
missioner, and worked with then-Gov-
ernor Neil Goldschmidt on a series of
controversial changes in the state’s
workers’ compensation system. The
changes made it harder for workers to
prove that their medical conditions were
work-related, and limited the fees work-
ers’ compensation attorneys could re-
Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski (left) squares off against Democratic primary challengers Peter Sorenson (center) and
Jim Hill during a debate last month at the Plumbers and Fitters Hall in Tualatin.
ceive. With those changes, the amounts
employers pay for workers’ compensa-
tion insurance have decreased, even
though medical costs have gone up.
As governor, he made it easier for
state workers to unionize in some in-
stances. At the Department of Fish and
Wildlife and the Department of Hous-
ing and Community Services, a gover-
nor’s executive order permitted workers
to unionize on the basis of signed union
authorization cards rather than through a
union election. At the Oregon Lottery,
however, a late decision that the agency
had to follow similar rules unraveled on
a technicality. The Service Employees
International Union opted to go the route
of a union election, which is scheduled
this month.
After some prodding from the Ore-
gon AFL-CIO, he pledged to veto a bill
that would have undermined Oregon’s
minimum wage for tipped employees.
His record of supporting other union
struggles was spotty, however. The gov-
ernor was not seen on any union picket
lines. After much pleading by the union,
Kulongoski intervened in an SEIU dis-
pute at the Parry Center for Children, us-
ing the the threat of lost state contract to
pressure management to sign a deal ac-
ceptable to the union. But he was criti-
cized for it by opponents of labor. Later,
when his appointees at the Lane Transit
District provoked a strike in Eugene and
Springfield, the governor refused ap-
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peals for help from Amalgamated Tran-
sit Union Local 757. And when a
teacher strike in Sandy, Ore., threatened
to drag on, he proposed a settlement that
was rejected by both sides. The teachers
union later settled on more favorable
terms than the governor had proposed.
The centerpiece of Kulongoski’s
campaign for re-election is his jobs
record.
“Every night I go to bed I’m always
thinking, ‘How can I create more jobs
for the people of this state?” Kulongoski
told delegates at the September 2005
convention of the Oregon AFL-CIO.
Kulongoski says he inherited a se-
vere recession and 7 percent unemploy-
ment, and worked to turn around Ore-
gon’s economy by creating jobs. Asked
to elaborate, he acknowledges that his
method of creating jobs was primarily
wooing out-of-state corporations to lo-
cate in Oregon, using various incentives.
(Turn to Page 11)
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