Custodial Board rejects
PPS’ proposed hiring plan
At its Dec. 15 meeting, the Custo-
dial Civil Service Board (CCSB) re-
jected a Portland Public Schools (PPS)
proposal to give special treatment to
Portland Habilitation Center (PHC)
janitors who are applying for perma-
nent positions with the school district.
PPS is returning to an in-house cus-
todial staff because of an Oregon
Supreme Court ruling that the district’s
2002 decision to contract out custodial
work to PHC to was illegal under the
Custodial Civil Service Law.
That law requires that PPS hire
from a pool of applicants created by
the CCSB, which is supposed to ad-
minister a competitive examination
open to all. PPS wanted to allow an
ungraded cleaning class offered by
PHC management to substitute for the
graded examination for applicants
from PHC. The PHC class was not
open to the public at large, unlike the
exam, which tests basic math and Eng-
lish reading ability.
The district’s proposal was opposed
by returning custodians, who belong to
Service Employees International
Union (SEIU) Local 503, and by oth-
ers who took the test when it was last
given. Several hundred applicants took
the test in August 2006, but the hiring
process stopped while the CCSB con-
sidered the district’s proposal for sev-
eral months.
PHC, and SEIU Local 49, the
union that represents its employees, ar-
gued that using only the test would
discriminate against applicants on the
basis of national origin, since some
PHC applicants have limited ability to
speak English, and the test was in
English.
Others at the Custodial Civil Ser-
vice Board meeting argued that it was
perfectly valid to test English ability,
as English is needed on the job. Wayne
Q
Curtin, a returned custodian, said he’d
seen how language difficulties with
some PHC immigrant workers have
prevented them from understanding
and carrying out instructions.
And one PHC employee told the
Custodial Civil Service Board not to
let the class substitute for the test.
“I took the PHC training course,
and I didn’t think very highly of it,”
said Robert Baker, a former Freight-
liner machinist.
After several hours of testimony,
the three-member Custodial Civil Ser-
vice Board unanimously rejected the
PPS proposal because of the 11th-hour
revelation that PHC offered the class
only to its disabled employees. PHC is
a non-profit that gets preference for
government contracts under a law
meant to employ individuals with dis-
abilities who need a sheltered work
environment. Custodial Civil Service
Board members felt that since some of
the limited-English janitors might not
have taken the class, the class would-
n’t remedy the concern expressed by
the district about discrimination.
Custodial Civil Service Board did
however agree to another PPS request
— to reduce the weight of the exam in
the hiring process. The exam was to
have counted for 60 percent and now
will count for 20 percent. Work experi-
ence, employer reviews and answers
to interview questions will count for
the other 80 percent.
“That’s not fair,” said applicant
Bruce Koslowski, who complained
that the district reduced the weight of
the exam after he took it.
Oral interviews began in late De-
cember. The district hasn’t said when
it will complete the transition to in-
house staff, except that it plans to be
finished by September 2007.
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JANUARY 5, 2007
Think Again •
By Tim Nesbitt
Final Column
My ‘think again list’ for 2007
I
am excited about joining Gover-
nor Ted Kulongoski’s staff, but I
am sad to have to give up this col-
umn. Still, I can’t be a member of
the governor’s leadership team and
an independent commentator on Ore-
gon politics at the same time.
So it’s time to move on. But, be-
fore I do, I want to share my current
thoughts on what I had hoped to ex-
plore in future columns.
Call this my “think again list” for
2007.
Whither our union movement?
When I began this column almost
three years ago, we were fighting to
unseat the most anti-union president
of our lifetimes, working to re-ener-
gize our organizing efforts and trying
to revitalize our union movement at
the same time. Now, just as we have
helped to deliver a stunning repudia-
tion of that president and are watch-
ing him lose his grip on power, we
are still searching for new ways to
reach the growing numbers of work-
ers without unions and to survive as a
united movement.
Those of us who have worked in
unions for the past several decades
can’t say we’ve been part of a grow-
ing movement. But we know we’ve
made a tremendous difference in the
lives of our members and in the con-
test of political power for working
families. This country would be in
far worse shape today if we hadn’t
fought the good fights during those
decades.
But will we be able to move from
defense to offense before we leave
the playing field? Can we in our life-
times reorganize the resources of our
movement to grow again and regain
the kind of broad-based political
power that labor commanded a half
century ago?
The chicken-and-egg debate that
preceded the split in the AFL-CIO in
2005 continues. Must we build polit-
ical power to change our labor laws
and enable us to organize more
workers? Or, should we concentrate
on organizing more workers, using
new strategies to do so, before we try
to reach critical mass in the political
arena?
Obviously, we need to do both.
But I also think we need a third leg if
we hope to move forward. We need
to focus on the role of government,
not just as referee on the economic
playing field, but as a player in its
own right with the power to make
life better for working people that
will always be far greater than that of
our union movement.
For an excellent analysis of our
movement’s sometimes schizo-
phrenic view of government, I rec-
ommend Nelson Lichtenstein’s
“State of the Union, A Century of
American Labor” (2002, Princeton
University Press). Despite all the
angst about a global economy that is
rapidly escaping the reach of national
governments, Lichtenstein’s analysis
reminds us that our fate as working
people is inexorably linked to our
power as citizens and the purpose of
our public institutions.
Shared responsibility as a new
model for progressive government.
I learned a lot from working with the
Higher Ed board on a new model for
college aid.
Research shows that students who
work part-time during the school
year do better in college than those
who don’t work at all. And voters in
focus groups tell us that they would
be far more willing to help students
who work or at least pay something
for their education than those who
don’t. These insights gave birth to
the new shared responsibility model
we’re promoting as a way to make
college affordable for all Oregonians.
The shared responsibility ap-
proach offers something to those
who contribute something them-
selves. It’s based on the concept of
matching effort, rather than subsidiz-
ing need.
If government would match the
efforts of more middle class families,
whether for college or health care,
social programs would be seen in a
different light than those of the
proverbial welfare state.
In Oregon, publicly-funded col-
lege aid and health care for the able-
bodied reach only the poorest of the
poor. But the financing needed to ex-
pand such programs and provide at
least modest amounts of help for
middle class families is not beyond
our reach. For example, long-over-
due adjustments in the state’s corpo-
rate minimum and tobacco taxes
could pay for a truly affordable
higher education system and health
care for all children in families with
incomes up to $60,000 or even
$80,000 a year.
When government uses its re-
sources to support more working
families, working families will be-
come more supportive of their gov-
ernment.
What will be the jobs of the fu-
ture? I continue to tell my daughter
that she made the right choice when
she decided to pursue a nursing de-
gree. There will be great demand for
nursing jobs in the years ahead, both
because of the aging of the baby
boomers and their exodus from the
healthcare workforce.
But I can’t assure her that these
jobs which we’re handing off to the
next generation will continue to be
good-paying jobs, if we don’t have a
union movement and a progressive
government to defend them.
The debates today about the jobs
of the future range from the faith-
based (that education is the ticket to
all better jobs) to the cynical (that
we’re doomed to lose more good
jobs than we’ll gain as corporations
scour the globe for cheaper labor).
Neither view is persuasive to me.
I continue to think that the formal
model of higher education is a social
good that we should continue to
make more accessible to everyone
with the interest and ability to pursue
it. But, I sense that its utility in the
job market has been greatly exagger-
ated. Also, I think that the turnover
of jobs from the baby boom genera-
tion and the dynamism of technolog-
ical innovation will prove the cynics
wrong about opportunities in the
workforce of the future.
My conclusion: The future can be
much brighter for our children if we
make the right choices. As working
people and trade unionists, we need to
reorganize our movement to defend
the jobs of the future. As citizens, we
need to undertake a massive public in-
vestment in alternative energy devel-
opment and demand a reorganization
of government to better support the ef-
forts of working families.
And I’d like us to have a little
more confidence — that we can
think and rethink our way through
these changing times and both figure
things out and straighten them out
before we leave the playing field.
Happy New Year!
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
PAGE 9