MEETING
NOTICES
Inside
See
Page 4
Volume 113
Number 14
July 20, 2012
Portland
Arbitrator rules against ATU
But calls TriMet’s
contract ‘unwarranted,
poor public policy, and
simply unfair’
‘Return to Sender’
Protesters line up in front of the St. Johns Post Office in North Portland July
9, part of a series of “Return to Sender” rallies held in Oregon by the Rural
Organizing Project against the United States Postal Service’s plan to cut hours
at 124 rural post offices — the first step toward complete closure. The USPS
plan not only goes after rural post offices, but also mail processing centers,
and impacts nearly 50,000 jobs. Four of Oregon’s mail sorting facilities are
scheduled to be closed January 2014. At the rallies in Lane, Benton, Wasco,
Marion, and other counties, Oregonians were asked to sign postcards and
send letters to Congress calling for no closure or cuts to post offices.
B Y DON M C INTOSH
A SSOCIATE E DITOR
TriMet’s 32-month-old contract dis-
pute with Amalgamated Transit Union
(ATU) Local 757 reached a conclusion
of sorts July 13. Arbitrator David Gaba
sided with the transit agency, a decision
that trims health benefits for 2,026
union members and 1,200 retirees and
eliminates the pension for future hires.
Under an Oregon law the union
helped pass in 2007, transit workers
can’t strike; instead, when they can’t
agree, they submit contract offers to
binding arbitration, and the arbitrator
picks one side’s final proposal in its en-
tirety. The arbitrator is supposed to base
the decision on the public interest, and
consider other issues, such as an em-
ployer’s ability to pay.
Local 757 proposed to keep every-
thing the same as under the previous
six-year agreement, except for health
insurance, where members for the first
time offered to pay up to 3 percent of
the premium. TriMet’s proposal, on the
other hand, contained 11 contract
changes, most significantly to pension
and health insurance.
In his written decision, Gaba
lamented not being able to pick and
choose parts of the two offers. Gaba
wrote that he was in the uncomfortable
position of having to approve contract
language that he found “personally of-
fensive.” An arbitrator since 1997, Gaba
was at one time an attorney for a Wash-
ington nurses union. Parts of the TriMet
package are “unwarranted, poor public
policy, and simply unfair,” he wrote.
For example, TriMet’s proposal
eliminated defined pension benefits for
future hires; instead they’ll get a
401(k)-style “defined contribution
plan” to which TriMet will contribute 8
percent of wages. That transfers all the
investment risk to employees, Gaba
said, and takes away a longstanding
benefit without providing anything in
return.
TriMet’s proposal also limits retiree
pension benefit increases to 90 percent
of inflation, a provision that could open
the agency up to legal liability, since it
alters what was promised in the past.
Also, TriMet’s proposal ends the
practice of paying union officers to rep-
resent members in grievance meetings,
which Gaba wrote, “appears to be mo-
tivated by anger or spite rather than by
any legitimate need.”
Still, all those objections were in-
significant compared to what Gaba
called not just an elephant in the room
but “a two headed Siamese-twin ele-
phant that has been ignored for well
over a decade.” That was the extraordi-
nary cost of health care for members
and retirees, and particularly the plan
provided by Regence Blue Cross Blue
Shield, which costs TriMet $30,969 per
year for individuals with full family in-
surance coverage, and $33,694 for re-
tirees and their families. TriMet’s union
(Turn to Page 5)
AFL-CIO pushes tax break to ‘bring jobs home’
The AFL-CIO is promoting a plan
to give businesses a tax credit when
they bring jobs back to the United
States, and end the tax deductibility of
business expenses related to offshoring.
The Bring Jobs Home Act is not
considered to have any chance of pas-
sage, since it has no Republican co-
sponsors and Republicans have a ma-
jority in the U.S. House. But Senate
Democratic leaders have told top AFL-
CIO officials that they will schedule a
vote on it in the coming days — a vote
that might embarrass Senate Republi-
cans who vote against it.
The House version of the bill, HR
5542, is sponsored by Bill Pascrell (D-
N.J.) and has 36 co-sponsors, including
Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) and Jim Mc-
Dermott (D-Wash.) The Senate version,
S.2884, is sponsored by Debbie
Stabenow (D-Mich.) and has six co-
sponsors, including Jeff Merkley (D-
Ore.) The bill would reduce a corpora-
tion’s income tax bill by up to one-fifth
of any expenses involved in bringing
work back to the United States. And it
would spell out that any money spent to
outsource work overseas cannot be
treated as an ordinary business expense,
which businesses deduct from gross in-
come to determine their taxable income.
To tout the bill in Portland, Oregon
AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Barbara
Byrd was joined by Northwest Oregon
Labor Council Executive Secretary-
Treasurer Bob Tackett and Blumenauer
staffer Ree Armitage for a July 6 press
conference outside the gates of Port of
Portland Terminal 2.
Byrd said the location was chosen
because Terminal 2 is both an import
and export terminal, but Oregon has
come largely to export raw materials
and import finished goods. Returning
manufacturing jobs to the United States
would be the key to a real recovery, she
said. Byrd said the latest jobs figures
make that point: Bureau of Labor Sta-
tistics reported no decrease in unem-
ployment for the month of June: Na-
tionally 8.2 percent of workers are
officially unemployed. Jobs grew by
84,000 in June, but that was less than
the 100,000 needed per month to keep
up with the growing workforce. Mean-
while, the percentage of workers who
are unemployed, underemployed or
have dropped out of the labor force ac-
tually rose from 14.8 percent in May to
14.9 percent in June.
The Washington State Labor Coun-
cil and the Association of Western Pulp
and Paper Workers held a press confer-
ence July 9 outside a shuttered Kim-
berly Clark pulp mill in Everett, Wash.
About 750 workers lost their jobs ear-
lier this year when the mill closed, and
the closure was determined by the gov-
ernment to be trade-related.
National AFL-CIO President
Richard Trumka has pushed the Bring
Jobs Home Act as one part of a strate-
gic jobs plan that would also include
fair trade policies, curtailing currency
manipulation and closing tax rules that
discourage U.S. corporations from
repatriating overseas profits.
The AFL-CIO has set up a text mes-
sage alert system for the campaign: Tex-
ting “JOBS” to 235246 will allow the la-
bor federation to send “info and action
alerts to help bring America’s jobs
home.”
Oregon AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Barbara Byrd (center) was joined by
Northwest Oregon Labor Council Executive Secretary-Treasurer Bob
Tackett (right) and Ree Armitage, field representative for U.S. Rep. Earl
Blumenauer (D-Ore.) for a July 6 press conference touting the Bring Jobs
Home Act. Byrd said jobs being created today don’t pay enough to produce
an upward spiral in the economy. “We need to focus on policies that promote
not just jobs, but good jobs,” Byrd said.