Jan. 7, 2011:NWLP
1/4/11
9:59 AM
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GREED AT A GLANCE
Could anything possibly be more all-
American than Pasadena’s annual New
Year’s Day Tournament of Roses pa-
rade? This Southern California city has
been parading on New Year’s since
1890, and over 50 million Americans
watched this past edition. What these
viewers didn’t see: Pasadena’s stagger-
ingly wide gap between the rich and
everyone else. By one measure, Occi-
dental College’s Peter Dreier noted,
Pasadena has just tied San Francisco as
“California’s most unequal city.”
Pasadena’s wealthiest 5 percent — es-
sentially everybody making over
$250,000 — now take home almost a
quarter of the city’s income. Their bid-
ding up the cost of shelter has sent rents
throughout the city soaring. Just under
70 percent of Pasadena families making
between $35,000 and $50,000 are cur-
rently paying over 30 percent of their
income on housing ...
Pasadena has another New Year’s
claim to fame. The city, back in 1902,
invented the college football bowl
game. Nearly three dozen of these exhi-
bitions now dot America’s holiday land-
scape. Why so many? These games pay
off big — for bowl game CEOs. Most
of these execs, a new study shows,
make over $300,000 for running osten-
sibly “non-profit” operations. The top
exec for one obscure game, the Kraft
Fight Hunger Bowl, made $320,492 in
2008, a total that equaled 11 percent of
the game’s revenues. If the CEO of
Wal-Mart took in 11 percent of his
company’s revenues, notes a new Time
report, “he'd be making $44 billion.”
Wal-Mart’s current CEO does not, of
course, make $44 billion a year. But that
exec, Mike Duke, does make an impres-
sive piece of change, $19.2 million in
the company’s latest fiscal year. What’s
Duke doing to earn his ample take-
home? He’s moving furiously fast on his
pledge to slow the retail chain’s rising
expenses — by cutting Wal-Mart wages.
Starting this January, all new Wal-Mart
hires will no longer earn the $1 an hour
premium Wal-Mart employees have tra-
ditionally earned for working on Sun-
days. Duke’s move, by the end of this
year, will have most Wal-Mart workers
no longer eligible for the Sunday pre-
mium, since employee turnover at the
retail giant averages 60 percent a year ...
Mike Duke has some stiff competi-
tion in the CEO scrooge race from over
at Disneyland, where just over 2,000
bellmen, dishwashers, room attendants,
and cooks at Disney hotels have been
without a contract since January 2008.
The biggest bone of contention at the
bargaining table: Disney wants workers
to start shelling out as much as $535 a
month more for health care. For work-
ers like Narciso Guevara, a 10-year Dis-
ney veteran who makes $1,910 a
month, that added outlay would be sim-
ply unaffordable. Walt Disney CEO
Bob Iger, for his part, averaged over
$2.4 million a month in 2009. In a bid to
dramatize that contrast, Disney workers
are battling in an unusual new venue.
They’re urging film industry folks to
“vote their conscience” in this year’s
Academy Awards balloting and deny
Disney’s Toy Story 3 the nod as the
year’s top picture.
(From Too Much, an online weekly
publication of the Institute for Policy
Studies; editor@toomuchonline.org.)
City of Lake Oswego workers join Oregon AFSCME
By a margin of 57 to 43 percent, the independent Lake
Oswego Municipal Employees Association (LOMEA) voted
Nov. 10 to affiliate with Oregon AFSCME Council 75.
The bargaining unit of 165 people includes most non-
management and non-police employees in the city.
The Lake Oswego workers are the sixth group of city em-
ployees within Clackamas County to affiliate with the union,
joining those from Canby, Gladstone, Milwaukie, Oregon
City, and West Linn.
Talks between AFSCME and LOMEA have been ongo-
ing since December 2009, and included “11 months and
many meetings,” said AFSCME Organizing Director Sue
Lee-Allen. “We are excited to have them join us, and they are
excited about becoming part of AFSCME.”
LOMEA and the City of Lake Oswego inked a new three-
year contract in January 2010.
Carrier retires from Painters Union
A retirement party was held Dec. 16 for Tim Carrier, longtime business
representative of Painters and Allied Trades District Council No. 5. In the
photo above, Carrier (center) receives a plaque of appreciation from Oregon
AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Barbara Byrd (right) and AFL-CIO Political
Legislative Director Duke Shepard. Carrier was the “unofficial” political
coordinator for the union and was involved in numerous campaigns in Oregon
and Southwest Washington throughout his career. Carrier, 55, joined Painters
Local 360 in 1978 after going to work for Thompson Metal Fab. Always active
in the union, he was hired as an organizer in February 1991 by the former
District Council No. 55 (it merged into District Council 5). In addition to
organizing, Carrier also was an instructor in the apprenticeship program. He
was elected as a full-time business rep in the mid-1990s, serving Local 360
and later Local 10, following the merger of those two locals. Over the years he
was elected to virtually every office of Local 360 — from president on down.
He was a trustee to the joint apprenticeship training council and District
Council’s health and welfare and pension trusts; and was an at-large member
of the Oregon AFL-CIO Executive Board. He also served as a delegate to
several central labor and building trades councils. “This union has cared for
me and my family,” Carrier said. “They have found me work, they secured
health and welfare for me and my family and they have secured a decent
pension for me to retire. Thank you for letting me serve as your business rep.”
Carrier’s successor as business rep for District Council 5 is Jeff Brooke.
Washington judge nixes effort
to stop minimum wage hike
SEATTLE — A Kittitas County
judge Dec. 29 rejected an effort by
corporate lobbying groups to halt a
12-cent increase to Washington state’s
minimum wage that went into affect
Jan. 1.
Superior Court Judge Scott Sparks
ruled against the summary judgment
request from the Washington Farm
Bureau, Washington Restaurant Asso-
ciation, Washington Food Industry
Association, and Washington Retail-
ers Association that sued the state in
November over the decision to raise
the minimum wage to $8.67 an hour
on Jan. 1. They sided with Republican
State Attorney General Rob McKenna
who opined that the lowest legal wage
should not increase in years following
a drop in the Consumer Price Index
(CPI).
The Washington State Labor Coun-
cil joined with the Washington Asso-
Broadway Floral
for the BEST flowers call
503-288-5537
ciation of Churches, the Lutheran
Public Policy Office, Washington
Community Action Network, and
minimum wage workers from UNITE
HERE! and the United Farm Workers
union to intervene on behalf of the
state’s position that the minimum
wage ought to go up on Jan. 1, per the
language and formula that the WSLC
wrote in 1998’s Initiative 688. The
judge denied the plaintiff’s request for
summary judgment and stated that the
law was clear as it was written — that
the minimum wage was only to be in-
creased whenever there was a positive
rate of change of the CPI-W from one
year to the next.
“This means about 140,000 work-
ers received a raise Jan. 1, including a
number of our members in the hospi-
tality, service, food service, and agri-
cultural industries,” said incoming
WSLC President Jeff Johnson, who
attended the hearing in Ellensburg.
“This is our first success in 2011 for
Washington’s working families. May
there be many more.”
(From the WSLC Reports Today
webite at www.wslc.org.)
1638 NE Broadway, Portland
JANUARY 7, 2011
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
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