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About Northwest labor press. (Portland , Ore.) 1987-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 5, 2012)
Inside Meeting Notices See Page 6 Volume 113 Number 19 October 5, 2012 Portland, Oregon TriMet gets ready to settle accounts with union members A pending letter demands that workers repay up to $7,080 for past health insurance premiums TriMet is preparing to send letters to more than 3,200 active and retired union employees, settling accounts for health insurance premiums going back as far as 2009. Most will be told they owe, and the amounts are as high as $7,080. In sample letters TriMet provided Sept. 19 to Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 757, the Portland-area transit agency tells union members that if they don’t pay, they will face legal ac- tion and possibly discipline. Local 757, attempting to head off the threat, sent out its own letter the same day, asking members not to respond to the TriMet letter when it comes. In response to that, TriMet filed charges Sept. 26 with the state Employment Relations Board, saying the union’s letter violates the law. The exchange is the latest tangle in a tortured contract struggle that has lasted nearly the entire duration of the 2009- 2012 ATU-TriMet contract. Bargaining continued past the Dec. 1, 2009 expira- tion of the previous contract, but broke down in July 2010. At that point, under state law, binding arbitration was sup- posed to begin. But Local 757 filed le- gal objections to unlawful practices by TriMet, objections which were upheld by the Oregon Employment Relations Board, and that delayed the start of ar- bitration until May 2012. The arbitrator had to pick one side’s final offer in its entirety, and on July 13, he picked TriMet’s proposed three-year contract. The contract he imposed is retroactive back to Dec. 1, 2009, and it expires Nov. 30, 2012. It’s not uncommon for a new union contract to have some retroactive appli- cation (typically a wage increase) if the new contract is finalized some time af- ter the old contract has expired. But a key element of TriMet’s contract pro- posal was lowering the cost of its Re- gence BlueCross BlueShield health in- surance plan by reducing the level of benefits. How do you impose retroac- tive changes to a health insurance plan that has already been paid for, and which employees have already used? TriMet’s answer to that, in the sam- ple letter: “You owe TriMet the differ- ence between the total premium TriMet actually paid and the premium TriMet would have paid had the new plan de- sign been in effect for all three years of the contract.” To pay the difference for the 33 months of past benefits, TriMet’s letter tells union members to sign an authori- zation for pre-tax payroll deductions, or write a check for the full amount. Payroll deductions would be the same monthly amount as the premiums some members had opted to pay before the arbitrator’s decision. Members who were enrolled in Regence BlueCross BlueShield were paying $226.10 a month for family coverage and $79.50 for employee only. At those rates, it would take union members more than two-and-a-half years to repay the amounts TriMet is saying they owe. TriMet spokesperson Mary Fetsch told the Labor Press by email that the agency has no plans to charge interest. The 42 percent of members who were enrolled in the cheaper Kaiser Per- manente plan, on the other hand, are told they are owed refunds ranging from $20 to $919. In its letter to members, Local 757 characterizes that as an at- tempt to divide the workforce, and ad- vises members not to cash the checks. “There is no guarantee that you will not be asked to return the money once TriMet loses in the legal arena,” says the letter, signed by Bruce Hansen, Jon Hunt, and Mary Longoria, Local 757’s top three officers. “We will be acting with all deliberate speed to stop their latest craziness,” the (Turn to Page 9) For labor commissioner Candidate wants to make Oregon a ‘right-to-work’ state With “friends” like Bruce Starr, who needs enemies? That’s what construction union offi- cials are saying after listening to Starr, a Republican candidate for Oregon la- bor commissioner, tell a conservative radio talk show that he would endeavor to make Oregon a “right-to-work” state. Just two weeks prior, at a candi- dates’ forum in Bend sponsored by the Oregon State Building and Construc- tion Trades Council, the five-term state senator from Hillsboro told the all- union audience: “We’ve had a good re- lationship over the last 10 years. We are friends. I’m not walking into enemy territory here today.” Some friend. “Right-to-work” is code for union- busting and working for less wages and benefits. According to data from the U.S. Department of Labor and the U.S. Census Bureau, workers in states with r i g h t - t o - wo r k laws earn on aver- age $5,538 a year less than workers in states without such laws. “You can’t be for right-to-work and be pro-labor,” said John Mohlis, executive director of the Building B RUCE S TARR Trades Council. “Supporting right-to-work means you are anti-union.” Gordon Lafer, an associate profes- sor at the Labor Education and Re- search Center at the University of Ore- gon, wrote in The Nation that “right-to-work does not guarantee any- one a job. Rather, it makes it illegal for unions to require that each employee who benefits from the terms of a con- tract pay his or her share of the costs of administering it. By making it harder for workers’ organizations to sustain themselves financially, right-to-work aims to undermine unions’ bargaining strength and eventually render them ex- tinct.” “This is exactly what proponents of right-to-work laws want,” says the Na- tional Workrights Institute. “The cham- pions of right-to-work laws are not sup- porters of workers’ rights.” Right-to-work laws exist in 23 states. Advocates of right-to-work claim that such laws protect workers’ right to freedom of association by preventing them from being forced to join unions against their will. But that’s not true. Workers already have that right under the National Labor Relations Act. Sec- tion 7 of the Act prohibits discrimina- tion against any employee because they have chosen to join or not join a union. That was the angle conservative talk show host Lars Larson used when in- terviewing Starr, who is trying to un- seat Brad Avakian, a Democrat, as la- bor commissioner. Asked if he would openly advocate for Oregon to become a right-to-work state, Starr responded: “Yes. The pure answer and clear an- swer is ‘yes,’ Lars, I would. I’m pro- choice in that regard. Let’s let folks choose who they want to associate with, and again, I think a policy like that would create a lot more economic opportunity in our state and a lot more jobs, make Oregon a much more at- tractive place to do business.” According to New York Times edi- torial page editor Andrew Rosenthal, economists have found that unioniza- tion has a minimal impact on growth and employment. “Six of the 10 states with the highest unemployment have right-to-work laws in place,” Rosenthal wrote. “North Carolina, which has the lowest unionization rate in the country, 1.8 percent, also has the sixth highest unemployment, 10 percent.” Union density in Oregon is 17.1 per- cent of the workforce. Mohlis told the Labor Press he was surprised by Starr’s comments. “It’s not in sync with what I thought his views were,” he said. “It shows more urgency to re-elect Avakian. It’s cer- tainly not in our best interest to have a labor commissioner who is anti-labor.” (Editor’s Note: Right-to-work statutes came into effect in 1947 with the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act by a Republican-controlled Congress. The Act allowed states the ability to pass laws that outlawed closed union shops. Previously, under the 1935 National Labor Relations Act, unions could en- ter into closed shop contacts in which employees at these workplaces had to become union members to get hired.)
