Inside
Official
Meeting Notices
See
Page 6
Volume 113
Number 6
March 16, 2012
Portland, Oregon
Handful of labor-backed
bills pass in Oregon’s first
annual legislative session
ATU rejects
contract
proposal at
TriMet Lift
In a contract vote held March 9, a
second unit of TriMet Lift drivers has
authorized the union to call a strike.
TriMet Lift is a federally-funded van
service that transports senior and dis-
abled people who can’t use regular
mass transit in the TriMet service area.
TriMet has several contracts with First
Transit — a division of the UK-head-
quartered multinational First Group —
to provide the service. First Transit, in
turn, has several collective bargaining
agreements with employees who are
members of Amalgamated Transit
Union Local 757.
One such agreement covers em-
ployees dispatched from the Nela yard
(2800 NW Nela Street, Portland). An-
other covers workers dispatched from
the Merlo yard (Southwest 158th and
Merlo, Beaverton.) Workers at a third
location are non-union.
The Nela group voted last year to re-
At a Merlo Garage conference room in Beaverton, TriMet Lift driver Pamela
Sells (left) holds up a union contract ballot. To her right are Amalgamated
Transit Union Local 757 President Jon Hunt and fellow TriMet Lift driver
Joy LaRochelle, a union liaison officer, holding up a summary of the final
offer from their employer, First Transit. The drivers voted 83 to 8 to reject the
contract proposal.
ject the contract offer and authorize
strike; the Merlo group did the same
March 9, voting 83 to 8 to reject First
Transit’s contract offer. The union ne-
gotiating committee recommended re-
jection.
Local 757 president Jon Hunt says
First Transit’s revenue, under its con-
tracts with TriMet, is increasing 4 to 5
percent a year. But its offer to employ-
ees is a wage increase that totals 15 per-
cent over five years. And that increase
would be more than eaten up by First
Transit’s proposal that workers pay
more for health insurance. First Transit
(Turn to Page 3)
SALEM — Overcoming potential
partisan deadlock with an evenly di-
vided House, the Oregon Legislature
passed a handful of bills in its short
2012 session that had the support of or-
ganized labor. Lawmakers delivered no
real jobs program — in a state where
the official unemployment rate stands
at 8.8 percent — nor did they approve
major new infrastructure investments.
But neither did they make draconian
state budget cuts, or give away the
store with new tax cuts.
Several bills passed which were
identified as priorities by Gov. John
Kitzhaber and will affect union mem-
bers indirectly.
One of those codifies more details
about the Oregon Health Insurance Ex-
change. The exchange is being set up
to comply with the Patient Protection
and Affordable Care Act of 2010, the
health insurance legislation passed by
Congress. Under that law, states are
supposed to set up insurance ex-
changes through which individuals and
small businesses would purchase
health insurance plans. Adults who
aren’t eligible for Medicare and who
don’t have insurance through an em-
ployer will be required to buy it on the
exchange, but lower-income pur-
chasers will get some subsidy and tax
credits to offset the cost. The ex-
changes will open for business in 2014.
The Oregon one will include a web
site, a telephone hotline, and field of-
fices.
Kitzhaber also pushed to pass sev-
eral education reform bills, including
one that requires schools to sign an
“achievement compact” stating what
they provide for the state money they
receive. Another extends and reorgan-
izes an “Early Learning Council” that
advises Head Start.
Here’s a run-down of what they did
and didn’t do — on issues of concern
to working people:
I NTERNATIONAL TRADE
U.S. trade policy is set by Congress,
(Turn to Page 2)
Three Washington lawmakers make inquiry
Concerns raised over use of foreign workers at Port
By DON McINTOSH
Associate Editor
When construction cranes popped
up last year on the waterfront just west
of downtown Vancouver, Painters Lo-
cal 10 President Roben White wanted
to know who was doing the work.
White, a Vancouver resident and
member of the executive board of
Southwest Washington Central Labor
Council, hadn’t heard about local
union members getting work on the
project, and wanted to see for himself.
He headed down to the site, Port of
Vancouver Terminal 2, and found a
parking lot full of out-of-state license
plates. At shift change, White says, he
followed a van full of workers to the
Staybridge Suites hotel in Northeast
Vancouver. White said he was unable
to communicate with the workers, who
were Spanish speakers, but their need
for a hotel strongly suggested they
weren’t local. And that rubbed White
the wrong way.
The project they were working on
— an $80 million expansion of the
United Grain export terminal — is on
public land, leased long-term from the
Port of Vancouver. The Port of Van-
couver, created by Clark County tax-
payers in 1912, is a tax-supported pub-
lic agency with a mission of economic
development.
“This land was intended to benefit
the community as a whole, not just a
business or the port as an entity,” White
told the Labor Press.
Moreover, as White points out, the
project benefits from several kinds of
public assistance.
• A tax break. In Washington, busi-
nesses pay a 6.5 percent sales tax when
they build a new facility. But develop-
ers of large warehouses and grain ele-
vators get a pass: They pay the tax,
then fill out an application to have it re-
bated in full.
• Rail improvements. The Port of
Vancouver is half-way through its 10-
United Grain is constructing an $80 million expansion to its export terminal
at the Port of Vancouver.
year $150 million West Vancouver
Freight Access project. One compo-
nent of the project — estimated at $8
million — is a set of track improve-
ments to serve the United Grain termi-
nal. The improvements will double the
number of rail cars that can be un-
loaded at one time, from 11 cars to 22.
Under its lease agreement with the Port
of Vancouver, United Grain will pay
$10 each for the first 30,000 rail cars a
year (or $300,000 a year) toward that
cost.
• Channel deepening. The publicly
funded 20-year effort to deepen the
Columbia River shipping channel —
from 40 to 43 feet — means that ap-
proximately 7,200 tons of additional
grain can be loaded onto each vessel
calling at the Port of Vancouver.
Meanwhile, White searched online,
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