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About Northwest labor press. (Portland , Ore.) 1987-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 7, 2007)
... Smith takes some heat from unionists for past votes (From Page 1) spent millions of dollars to derail the bill, and the Bush Administration mo- bilized high-level bureaucrats to cam- paign against it. The House already passed the bill by a wide margin and a majority of sen- ators supported it. But to get to an up or down vote supporters needed to end the filibuster. That re- quires 60 votes, and only 51 senators voted to end debate. Smith was not among those senators voting to end debate and vote on the bill. So it wasn’t sur- prising that EFCA was the first question posed to him at the la- bor breakfast. Smith admitted that “the system isn’t perfect. But I don’t want the cure to be worse than the prob- lem. That’s what I was afraid of.” One of Smith’s biggest concerns with EFCA was language imposing binding arbitration. “Not all unions are great, just like there are bad compa- nies,” he said. “You can have a bad company and a bad union rig it in a way that doesn’t benefit the employee. You go to binding arbitration and the em- ployee has no say in it. That can hap- pen, you know.” Britt Cornman, an organizer for the Machinists Union, told the senator that he has seen workers fired for nothing more than expressing interest in a union. “Ninety percent of workers are afraid to unionize (because they are afraid they might be fired). We need to do something.” Dave Tully, an organizer for the Teamsters Union, said, “Employers now spend thousands of dollars fight- ing union organizing campaigns. If they do something illegal, the result is only a hand-slap by the National Labor Rela- tions Board.” Smith said he could support a neu- tral third-party to verify signatures and strategies used during a card-check or- ganizing campaign, and he pledged to work with labor on employer neutrality language during an organizing drive. “I will commit to work with you on that,” he said. Smith also agrees with labor that last year’s National Labor Relations Board decision in the Kentucky River case in which supervisors were reclassified (such as charge nurses) and there- fore ineligible to belong to a union, was wrong. Smith said he supports the Re- Empowerment of Skilled and Pro- fessional Employ- ees and Construc- tion Tradeworkers (RESPECT) Act that has been intro- duced to overturn the NLRB decision. “Workers should have the right to vote for a union, and when they do, that vote ought to count,” he said. “It should- n’t be whittled away by executive rule or anything else.” On other labor issues, Smith said he opposes so-called right-to-work laws and supports prevailing wage laws 100 percent. “When public money is spent to build things, it should be built to union quality and it should pay a family wage. That’s a value I share with you.” Smith said he is an “enthusiastic backer” of the Columbia River Cross- ing project and its efforts to build a new I-5 bridge. “It will happen,” he said. He said he is not against siting liq- uid natural gas plants in Oregon as long as it can be done to the strictest of safety standards. Smith took issue with a question from Brad Witt, a Democratic state rep- resentative and union rep for United ‘Workers should have the right to vote for a union, and when they do, that vote ought to count. It shouldn’t be whittled away by executive rule or anything else. ‘ T HE M ARCO C ONSULTING G ROUP T HE M ARCO C ONSULTING G ROUP Food and Commercial Workers Local 555, about creating an “America on the cheap,” with tax cuts for the rich at the expense of infrastructure and livability in the U.S. Smith said under President Bush’s tax cuts “revenue has gone up. That’s a fact.” He said the notion that there are cuts in transportation spending aren’t true. “The deficit is coming way down be- cause the economy is going way up.” he said. “Wages are rising now faster than inflation. It’s just a fact.” Smith said the only new tax that he willingly supports is the proposed healthy kids program funded by an in- crease in the cigarette tax. Oregonians will have an opportunity to vote on that tax increase — Ballot Measure 50 — in November. “It’s money very well spent ... on the health care of children,” Smith said, noting that tobacco kills 20 percent of Oregonians who die each year. If approved in November, Measure 50 would raise the tax on cigarettes by 82.5 cents a pack to provide affordable, accessible health care for Oregon’s 117,000 uninsured children. Smith said those who want to get rid of hydro-electric dams on the Colum- bia River, “do so at the peril of your jobs.” “Not a job can be created out there unless you create energy first.” He said Oregon’s energy-producing dams are being run by the federal courts. He said all the evidence he has seen says that fish mortality rates are no Roger G. 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