Northwest labor press., August 06, 2010, Page 4, Image 4

AUG. 6, 2010:NWLP
8/3/10
10:10 AM
Page 4
In Portland
City tries to pry concessions, including OT, from workers
By DON McINTOSH
Associate Editor
Leaders of the 1,800-member Dis-
trict Council of Trade Unions
(DCTU) say the City of Portland is
trying to use tough times in the econ-
omy to extract contract concessions
that have nothing to do with the city’s
finances. The seven-union DCTU is
the city’s largest union bargaining
group. Its previous two-year contract
expired June 30, and was extended by
mutual agreement.
Other local governments, losing
revenues in the recession, have gotten
public employee unions to agree to
one or two year wage freezes. The
City is asking for the same, but is also
proposing to eliminate cherished
union gains like the eight-hour day
and protections against contracting
out members’ jobs.
DCTU spokesperson Cherry Harris
said the City wants to “gut” provi-
sions that limit privatizing members’
jobs. Earlier this year, an arbitrator or-
dered the City to pay over $200,000 to
parking meter technicians whose
work was given to outside contractors
— in violation of the DCTU contract.
The DCTU contract requires the City
to notify a union when it’s going to
contract out work that would be done
by members. The City must give
union members a chance to bid on the
work. The agreement also says the
city can’t contract out unless it saves
money by doing so, and the savings
can’t come from the private sector
workers getting lower pay and bene-
fits.
Meanwhile, two City Council
members — Dan Saltzman and
Amanda Fritz — have pressed for
changes to union contract overtime
rules, which go further than the mini-
mum required under federal law. The
federal Fair Labor Standards Act re-
quires “time-and-a-half” pay after em-
ployees work 40 hours in a week, but
some state laws and union contracts
go beyond that. The DCTU contract
requires overtime pay for all hours be-
yond eight hours in a day.
City negotiators also proposed a
freeze in step pay increases, limits on
union access to members, a change to
comp time rules, and making mem-
bers pay the full cost if their adult
children stay on the employer health
plan, as they will have the right to do
under the new federal health care law.
“It’s frustrating to have an em-
ployer that says they have an eco-
nomic problem but then brings all this
other crap to the [bargaining] table,”
said Ken Allen, executive director of
Oregon AFSCME (American Federa-
tion of State, County and Municipal
Employees). AFSCME Local 189,
with 1,200 members, is the DCTU’s
largest union local.
Saltzman and Fritz have said they
seek the overtime change in order to
end the practice of workers taking
sick leave and then working overtime
to get caught up in their work. They
made that argument when a smaller
contract — covering 90 members of
Laborers Local 483 employed in
Parks & Recreation — came up for
approval last month. Usually, labor
agreements negotiated by the City hu-
man resources department are ratified
Paid for by Clark County Democrats, Treasurer Marsha Manning, PO Box 179, Vancouver 98666
PAGE 4
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
without debate as part of the City
Council’s “consent agenda.” But
Saltzman and Fritz raised their objec-
tions, which delayed approval of the
contract.
“It made public employees look
bad, like we’re getting something for
nothing,” said Local 483 Business
Manager Richard Beetle.
For City Council to reject a union
contract over issues that were not
raised during bargaining would be an
unfair labor practice under the state’s
Public Employee Collective Bargain-
ing Act, Beetle said; Council ratified
the contract at its next meeting. But
the City is proposing the overtime
change in the DCTU bargaining still
under way.
If there are concerns about sick
leave abuse and excess overtime,
union leaders say, managers can al-
ready address that. They can require
doctors notes, and can choose not to
allow overtime. Beetle said he made
that point in a meeting with Fritz.
“I said ‘You’ve overstaffed your
management ranks, so you’ve got
plenty of them, and you pay your
managers good money. If you can’t
ask them to do something as basic as
manage a 37-year-old sick leave pol-
icy, you need to look at your manage-
ment and say, what are we buying
here?’ ”
“We think you ought to staff your
work areas correctly and manage your
hours so that you don’t have to work
people overtime,” Beetle said.
When the DCTU negotiations first
began, the two sides used an “interest-
based” bargaining framework that
supposes that the parties are on the
same side. That proved untenable, and
bargaining reverted to the more tradi-
tional adversarial style. At that point,
City negotiators proposed lots of
changes to the contract, most of which
union negotiators found unacceptable.
As of press time, the City had backed
off some of the objectionable propos-
als, and the two sides were trading
comprehensive settlement offers.
The City has reached two-year
agreements with four other bargaining
units so far this year: The Laborers
unit at Parks & Rec, an AFSCME unit
at Bureau of Emergency Communica-
tions, and contracts with the City of
Portland Professional Employees As-
sociation (COPPEA) and the Portland
Fire Fighters. All those contracts con-
tained cost-of-living freezes, but no
other takeaways.
DCTU leaders say they could ac-
cept a one- or two-year halt to cost of
living increases, but not the overtime
and privatization changes.
The DCTU includes members of
AFSCME Local 189, Laborers Local
483, International Brotherhood of
Electrical Workers Local 48, Machin-
ists Local 1005, Operating Engineers
Local 701, Painters District Council 5,
and Plumbers Local 290.
AUGUST 6, 2010