JUNE 5, 2009:NWLP
6/2/09
10:18 AM
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Letter Carriers march in Starlight Parade
Worker Freedom Act gets
new life in State Legislature
SALEM — The Oregon Legislature
is down to the last four weeks of its
2009 session. The season for hearings
and testimony on bills is over. Now
bills face deadlines for being voted out
of committees and passing the House
and Senate. It’s not over until it’s over,
but it’s due to be over June 30.
For labor, many closely-watched
bills are still in the running, including
the Worker Freedom Act (SB 519), the
Oregon AFL-CIO’s top priority. That
bill, which would give workers the
right to refuse to attend anti-union
meetings, was thought dead three
weeks ago. But Democratic leaders in
the Senate may have secured enough
votes to pass it. It passed the Senate
Rules Committee May 29. Sen. Ginny
Burdick (D-Portland), who opposes the
bill, cast a courtesy vote for it to get it
out of committee and permit a floor
vote.
Lawmakers appear also to have
agreed with labor and community
groups that the budget crisis should not
be solved with cuts alone. There’s mo-
mentum gathering behind two union-
supported proposals for raising revenue
— increasing the corporate minimum
income tax, and adding a higher in-
come tax rate on individuals making
more than $125,000 a year and couples
making more than $250,000.
Another proposal to be decided in
the remaining days of the session is HB
2116, which would use a new tax of 3
percent on hospitals and 1 percent on
insurers to raise money, matched by
In keeping with this year’s Rose Festival
theme — “Bridging Communities” —
about 30 National Association of Letter
Carriers (NALC) Branch 82 members
marched in the festival’s Starlight Parade
May 30 alongside a float made of food cans
made to look like the St. John’s Bridge.
Letter Carriers held signs with the names
of their post office and the amount of food
collected in this year’s Letter Carrier Food
Drive. In the photo right, Letter Carriers
Janet Barlow and Darcy Nolan wave to
crowd while riding the float. The parade
crowd was estimated at 250,000.
federal dollars, to increase enrollment
of low-income Oregonians in the Ore-
gon Health Plan.
And an increase in the gas tax and
vehicle and title registration fees — to
fund a $960 million package of trans-
portation projects — passed the House
and cleared the Senate May 29. It now
awaits the governor’s signature. The
gas tax would go up 6 cents to 30 cents
a gallon, though not until 2011 (sooner
if the economy rebounds.)
A package of reforms aimed at ini-
tiative fraud — HB 2005 — passed the
House 52 to 7 May 19 and was on its
way to the Senate floor as of press time.
Also passed by the House was HB
2699, a bill requiring that construction
projects of over $5 million that get en-
terprise zone tax breaks pay building
trades workers the prevailing wage for
their craft. The bill was in the Senate
Rules committee as of press time.
CORRECTION
An article in the May 15 issue of the
Northwest Labor Press, “Oregon AFL-
CIO’s top bill, the Worker Freedom
Act, gets shelved in committee” incor-
rectly referred to State Senator Ginny
Burdick (D-Portland) as chair of the
Senate Rules Committee, to which the
bill that is the subject of the article was
referred. Burdick is a member of the
committee, but it is chaired by Senate
Majority Leader Richard Devlin (D-Tu-
alatin).
SEIU’s Dale takes job in Geneva; Local 49 names Niemi president
Alice Dale, a longtime Oregon
leader at the Service Employees Inter-
national Union (SEIU), moved May 30
to Geneva, Switzerland. Two days later,
she began her new job as director of the
Property Services Sector at UNI Global
Union.
UNI (Union Network International)
is an international labor federation
formed in 2000 by the merger of four
industry-specific global union federa-
tions. UNI affiliates represent about 20
million workers worldwide. Several
large U.S. unions belong to UNI —
SEIU, Communications Workers of
America, and United Food and Com-
mercial Workers.
In her new job, Dale will negotiate
with multinational corporations like
Danish ISS, Swedish Securitas, and
British G4S to get “framework agree-
ments” setting ground rules for union
organizing campaigns. And she will
oversee campaigns to unionize security
and janitorial workers in India, Poland,
South Africa, Malawi, and elsewhere.
Dale, 56, has a law degree from Loy-
ola Law School in Los Angeles. She be-
gan her career in organized labor in
1978 as staff attorney for Oregon Public
Employees Union, which was then an
JUNE 5, 2009
independent union of state employees.
OPEU affiliated with SEIU in 1980,
chartering as SEIU Local 503.
Dale became Local 503’s executive
director in 1985, and led the union
through a nine-day rolling strike in
1987 which won a major victory for
gender pay equity.
“[The strike] was the culmination of
a couple of years of work trying to build
militancy within a rank-and-file organ-
ization,” Dale said. “It was transforma-
tive for the membership.”
The State of Oregon agreed to a clas-
sification study that resulted in pay
raises of 10 to 30 percent for underpaid
traditionally female-dominated occupa-
tions.
In the years Dale led the union, Lo-
cal 503 grew from 12,000 to 26,000
members. By 2001, she was ready for a
change.
She agreed to serve as trustee of
Portland-headquartered SEIU Local 49,
which represents janitors and hospital
workers. Members elected her president
in 2002. Local 49 grew from about
5,000 members to about 7,500 under
her leadership.
Last year, the janitors won a major
improvement in their multi-employer
A LICE D ALE
union contract — company-paid health
coverage for their children. However, a
campaign to unionize several thousand
workers at Providence Health System,
begun in 2005, has been tough going,
owing to strong employer opposition,
Dale said.
Dale also has served on the national
union’s Executive Board since 1985,
first with SEIU President John Sweeney
and later with his successor Andy Stern.
SEIU devotes a sizable fraction of its
budget to organizing new members, and
has been one of the fastest growing
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
M EG N IEMI
unions in the country. Now Dale will
seek to replicate that in organizing
workers worldwide.
Husband Frank Evans and their 13-
year-old son Nicolas will join Dale in
the move to Geneva. Dale speaks Span-
ish. Her new job will require her to
learn French.
On Dale’s recommendation, Local
49 organizing director Meg Niemi was
appointed by the union Executive Board
to fill out the remainder of her term.
Niemi, 38, grew up in Central Ore-
gon and later Portland, where she grad-
uated from Jefferson High School.
Niemi said union membership was im-
portant to her grandparents and her
stepfather; when she graduated from
Pitzer College in California with a de-
gree in political science she decided to
attend the AFL-CIO’s Organizing Insti-
tute. She went on to become an organ-
izer for SEIU Local 1199P in Pennsyl-
vania, SEIU Local 250 in California,
and Oregon School Employees Associ-
ation in Central Oregon.
She returned to SEIU as Northwest
organizing coordinator, and then joined
Local 49 in 2004 as organizing director
just as the Providence campaign was
getting under way. Niemi said recent
decisions by Providence to cut pension
benefits could bring new urgency to the
union campaign. So could passage of
the Employee Free Choice Act in Con-
gress.
Niemi could end up being Local 49’s
last president because the union is in
discussions over possible mergers with
other SEIU locals. In one scenario, Lo-
cal 49’s building services members
would join Seattle-headquartered SEIU
Local 6, while its health care members
would join SEIU Local 503 or Local
1199 NW.
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