... Smith takes some heat from unionists for past votes
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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
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