Down to the wire at the Oregon Legislature
Labor lobbyists scramble to push through priority bills
SALEM — With just four weeks left
in the 2007 session of the Oregon Leg-
islature, unions are scrambling to push
priority bills through. Some union-
backed bills have already made it to the
finish line and have been signed into
law by the governor. Others are for all
intents and purposes dead.
The topmost priority of the Oregon
AFL-CIO is a package of bills to make
it easier for workers to unionize. Two of
the bills may be headed for passage —
a bill prohibiting use of tax dollars to
oppose union drives, and a bill allowing
public employees to unionize by sign-
ing cards. Both passed the House in
April and are now before the Senate.
Two other “right to organize” bills ran
into trouble, however. A non-binding
resolution urging Congress to pass the
union-backed Employee Free Choice
Act appears to have stalled. And a bill
aimed at banning mandatory-atten-
dance anti-union meetings in the work-
place passed the House in April but un-
raveled in the Senate over provisions
that extended the ban to religious pros-
elytizing in the workplace.
Meanwhile, a package of reforms of
the initiative process is on track to be-
come law. The bill is aimed at modern-
izing and improving the citizen initia-
tive, and ending the kinds of abuses
committed by the ballot measure opera-
tion of union foe Bill Sizemore. It
passed the House and was scheduled to
have its first hearing May 30 in the Sen-
ate Rules Committee.
Building trades unions have been
pushing a bill to settle a dispute over
whether construction projects that mix
public and private money have to pay
workers the prevailing wage. The bill,
which would mandate prevailing wage
on any project that has over $750,000
of public money, passed the House and
is pending in the Senate.
Several bills on health care reform
have made progress. The governor’s
proposal to insure all Oregon children
failed to attain the needed three-fifths
majority in an April 26 House vote, but
a Senate version of the proposal now
looks like it may end up being referred
to voters as an amendment to the state
Constitution.
And a bill called the “Responsible
Employer Act” passed the House May
16 and is now pending in the Senate. It
would reveal to the public how many of
a company’s employees are receiving
state-subsidized health benefits. The
law is aimed at companies like Wal-
Mart that don’t provide adequate health
insurance.
Lawmakers failed to reach consen-
sus on a comprehensive universal health
care proposal, but several versions of a
bill may yet pass that would continue to
develop such a proposal for the Legisla-
ture to consider as early as its scheduled
special session in January 2008.
A bill to give workers paid family
leave in case of birth, death or serious
illness cleared a House committee May
3 and is now in the Joint Ways and
Means Committee. Basically, employ-
ees who are eligible for unpaid leave
under the federal Family and Medical
Leave Act would be eligible for a
weekly stipend of $250 for up to six
weeks, funded by a 1-cent-per-hour in-
surance contribution paid by all work-
ers. The governor has said he will sign it
if it reaches his desk.
Another bill would make workers
who are locked out in a multi-employer
labor dispute eligible to collect unem-
ployment insurance. Currently, when a
single employer locks out workers (the
employer-side equivalent of a strike),
the workers can collect unemployment,
but multi-employer bargaining units are
excluded. That’s of particular concern
to grocery workers and longshore work-
ers. The bill passed the House May 16
and is pending in the Senate.
Public employee unions remain
hopeful about the chances of a bill un-
doing the “break in service” provisions
of the 2003 PERS reforms. Because of
the provision, more than 3,000 workers
who returned to public sector jobs after
an absence of six months or more have
been placed in PERS “Tier 2” with re-
duced pension and later retirement age.
The bill passed a House Committee
April 30 and as of press time, was be-
fore the Joint Ways and Means Com-
mittee.
One bill, hailed by labor as a job-cre-
ator, will require major utilities to get
25 percent of their electricity from new
renewable energy sources by 2025. It
passed the House April 10 and the Sen-
ate May 23. The governor has said he
will sign it.
The 2007 legislative session will end
June 29.
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