Inside
Meeting Notices
See
Page 6
Volume 113
Number 15
August 3, 2012
Portland, Oregon
ERB judge’s ruling
contradicts TriMet’s
win at arbitration
Planned Walmart in Oak
Grove draws protesters
The community organization “No Oak Grove Walmart” (NOGWal)
held a rally July 14 against the corporate giant’s proposal to open a 63,500
square-foot grocery store at the vacant G.I. Joe’s building on McLaughlin
Boulevard. More than 75 people attended, including speakers Jefferson
Smith, who is running for mayor of Portland, and City Commissioner-elect
Steve Novick. Walmart has targeted the Portland metropolitan area for 17
new stores, many of them near unionized grocers.
Lisa Brinson, a member of United Food and Commercial Workers Lo-
cal 555 employed at Fred Meyer, said the encroachment of Walmart into
communities brings down wages and benefits of all grocery workers. “Wal-
mart would be a bad investment in this neighborhood of Oak Grove,” she
said.
Valerie Chapman of NOGWal said some businesses are worse than an
empty building. “We know people desperate to take care of their family will
take any job,” she said. “But Walmart is a race to the bottom for everyone.”
Chapman said local residents have been working for several years on a
plan to revitalize the economy
of Oak Grove by including lo-
cal businesses, walkable
neighborhoods, tree-lined
streets and open spaces not
dominated by large parking
lots. “Walmart was not part of
our dream,” she said. “In fact,
Walmart represents a night-
mare for our hopes.”
More rallies are expected in
Oak Grove, as well as at other
locations where Walmart
stores are being proposed.
Walmart has already
opened grocery stores this year
in West Linn, Beaverton, and
Gresham.
P HOTO COURTESY OF T OM C IVILETTI
Five days after an arbitrator im-
posed TriMet’s contract proposal on
2,000 members of Amalgamated Tran-
sit Union (ATU) Local 757, an admin-
istrative law judge with the Oregon
Employment Relations Board (ERB)
issued an order that appears to contra-
dict it.
Since 2007, state law has barred
Oregon public transit workers from
striking; instead, if contract bargaining
reaches impasse, union and manage-
ment present their final offers to an ar-
bitrator, who picks one side’s offer in
its entirety. After much delay, on July
13, 2012, arbitrator David Gaba picked
TriMet’s offer, and ordered that its
terms be retroactive to Dec. 1, 2009 —
when the previous contract expired.
Under TriMet’s contract proposal, it
continues to pay the full premiums for
Kaiser Permanente and Regence Blue-
Cross BlueShield health plans, but it re-
duces the benefit level of the Regence
plan, which 58 percent of TriMet’s
union workers are enrolled in. Under
the previous contract, the Regence plan
paid virtually all health expenses; under
the new contract, it has what’s known
as a 90/10 benefit level: Employees pay
10 percent of health care expenses —
after a deductible of $150 per individ-
ual (or $450 per family) — up to an out-
of-pocket maximum of $1,500 a year
per individual (or $4,500 per family).
But a reduced benefit level is pretty
tricky to implement retroactively, be-
cause it changes payment terms for
benefits that were already used. It
makes matters still more complicated
that TriMet continued the old Regence
benefit level for 13 months after the old
contract expired — and paid an in-
creased premium for 12 of those
months. Then as of Jan. 1, 2011 it made
workers who wanted to continue with
Regence choose: keep the old generous
benefits and pay the premium increase,
or accept the new 90/10 benefit struc-
ture. So to impose TriMet’s offer
retroactively requires some complex
accounting. Workers who chose to
keep the old benefit structure get a re-
fund of the premiums they paid, but if
they used any of the health insurance
benefits, they have to pay the de-
ductible and 10 percent coinsurance
that they would have paid if the 90/10
structure had been in place.
However, all this appears to be con-
tradicted by the ruling issued July 18
by ERB judge Wendy Greenwald.
(Turn to Page 10)
GOP filibuster threat shoots down another jobs bill
WASHINGTON, D.C. (PAI) — Once again, a
planned Senate Republican filibuster brought
down a jobs bill, the Bring Jobs Home Act.
The 56-42 vote on July 19 to open debate was
not enough to cross the 60-vote threshold law-
makers needed to halt the scheduled Republican
filibuster against it. Had the vote been allowed, it
would have garnered a majority of senators’ sup-
port. Instead, the bill died.
The bill banned firms from deducting from
their taxes the expenses of shifting U.S. jobs over-
seas, while giving firms that bring outsourced jobs
back to the U.S. an additional 20 percent tax credit
for doing so.
Four Republicans joined 50 Democrats and
both independents in voting to debate the measure
introduced by Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.).
The AFL-CIO pushed for the bill and asked mem-
bers to call and e-mail senators and encourage
them to support it.
“Too many of our tax and trade policies con-
tinue to reward multi-national companies who off-
shore jobs,” AFL-CIO Legislative Director Bill
Samuel wrote senators. “This important legislation
will create and keep jobs here at home.”
“Every other major industrial country has a
strategic plan to create and keep good jobs. It’s
time for the U.S. to implement a real plan ... to put
our people back to work and end the tax breaks
and flawed policies that encourage rampant off-
shoring,” he added. “The Bring Jobs Home Act is
the first step” in doing so, Samuel said.
Before the vote, Stabenow, Sen. Barbara Boxer
(D-Calif.), and other backers discussed the jobs
bill, anyway.
“In the last decade, companies shipped 2.4 mil-
lion jobs overseas,” Stabenow said. “To add insult
to injury, American taxpayers were asked to help
foot the bill. It is amazing. When I explain that to
folks in Michigan, they say you have to be kidding
— or they say other things I cannot repeat on the
floor of the Senate.
“Just imagine if you are one of those workers in
Michigan or Virginia or Ohio or Wisconsin or any-
where who maybe was forced to train your over-
seas replacement before you were laid off ... When
an American worker is asked to subsidize the mov-
ing expenses and costs so their own job can be
shipped overseas,” as they do now, “there is some-
thing seriously wrong with our tax code and our
priorities.”
“This is about making sure we see the words
‘Made in America’ again,” Boxer said. “We need
the jobs here. Shipping jobs overseas became a
trend and a lot of important voices were heard say-
ing: ‘That is just the way it is.’ It is not just the way
it is. If we have policies in place that incentivize
manufacturing and production here, we are not go-
ing to lose those jobs.”
The AFL-CIO said the U.S. Senate had a
golden opportunity to fix some of the policies that
have resulted in millions of American jobs being
outsourced abroad, but Republicans stood with
those who ship U.S. jobs overseas.