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.)