Northwest labor press., November 16, 2012, Page 9, Image 9

Nov. 16, 2012_NWLP 10/10/17 10:52 AM Page 9
Hyatt Hotel signs rare ‘labor peace’ agreement in Portland
UNITE HERE, the union that rep-
resents hotel workers, has reached a
landmark neutrality agreement with
Hyatt Hotels and Resorts that could
make it easier for workers to unionize
at a planned convention center head-
quarters hotel.
Mortenson Development Inc. is ask-
ing the Portland Development Com-
mission (PDC), Portland City Council,
and the Metro regional government for
a package of public incentives for a pri-
vately-built privately-operated hotel
operation, which could consist of one
or two hotels totaling 600 rooms. Once
built, the facility would be purchased
and operated by Hyatt. But public offi-
cials made it known that they would
not approve the incentives without a
“labor peace” agreement in place.
That made the difference in getting
the agreement from Hyatt, says UNITE
HERE Local 8 organizer Shellea Allen,
despite the fact that Hyatt is still the tar-
get of a global boycott by UNITE
HERE that has the endorsement of the
AFL-CIO.
UNITE HERE says it is boycotting
Hyatt for underpaying and mistreating
its housekeepers, giving them too-
heavy workloads and in some cases
contracting out their work to temps
earning minimum wage. A Chicago
Hyatt even turned heat lamps on work-
ers who were picketing during a heat
wave.
But under the labor peace agreement
in Portland, Hyatt would show a friend-
lier face. UNITE HERE organizers
could meet with workers at the hotel,
and hold meetings there; managers
would attend and make it clear that the
company has no objection to workers
exercising their right to unionize.
Workers would be free to join a labor
organization of their choosing, and
could do so through a “card check”
process or through a government-ad-
ministered election. If workers choose
to unionize, and don’t reach agreement
with management within six months
over the terms of a first union contract,
the contract proposals could be submit-
ted to binding arbitration, under the la-
bor peace agreement.
The agreement does not apply to
Hyatt Place at Portland Airport Cascade
Station, which is currently nonunion.
The proposed hotel would be lo-
cated in the Oregon Convention Center
urban renewal area, which makes it el-
igible for help from the PDC. PDC is
looking at contributing about $4.1 mil-
lion to the project. The proposal is ex-
pected to go before the PDC, Portland
City Council, and Metro. Metro Coun-
cil will consider public subsidies at a
Dec. 4 work session, and is scheduled
to vote on it Dec. 13.
“If Hyatt’s going to come here, these
have to be good jobs,” said Allen, the
UNITE HERE organizer. “All jobs
should be living wage jobs, but when
public funds are going into it, these
have to be good jobs.”
If the $200 million project gets ap-
proval and is built, it would likely be-
come the fifth unionized hotel in the
Portland metropolitan area, joining the
Hilton, Benson and Paramount down-
town, and the Vancouver Hilton and
Convention Center in Washington.
If the workers choose to join UNITE
HERE, they would become members
of Local 8, headquartered in Seattle.
Portland-based Local 9 was merged
into Local 8 in August.
USPS hiring freeze hurts veterans, postal workers say
With the US Postal Service (USPS)
closed on Veterans Day, a group of
Portland postal employees used the day
off to say that if USPS really wants to
honor veterans, it should hire them.
Hiring has been frozen for five years
at USPS, and that’s reducing opportu-
nities for veterans returning from the
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, said letter
carriers and postal workers who gath-
ered at Pioneer Courthouse Square in
Portland.
USPS is historically the biggest em-
ployer of veterans. USPS applicants
take civil service aptitude tests, and vet-
erans get 5 points added to their test
scores. Disabled veterans get 10 points.
Over 108,000 former service men and
women are current employees, about a
fifth of USPS workforce. But the aver-
age USPS employee is now over 53,
and workers aren’t being replaced as
they retire.
In Oregon there are 180 vacant letter
carrier positions, says Kevin Card, state
director of the National Association of
Letter Carriers, and 114 of those are in
the Portland area. At the rally, those
missing co-workers were represented
by blue USPS shirts hoisted up on
picket signs.
And blame for the missing workers,
protesters said, belongs to Congress.
“Six years ago, in a lame duck ses-
sion of Congress, we were saddled with
a $5.5 billion a year pre-funding re-
quirement,” Card said. That’s the
amount USPS is required to pay, in ad-
vance, for future health costs of retirees.
That would be a very unusual require-
ment for any employer, and it has
pushed USPS — already under stress
from declining mail volumes — to the
brink of insolvency.
Now, a bill by Darrell Issa would
make the situation even worse, Card
said. The bill authorizes USPS to go
down to five-day delivery, encourages
contracting out, orders USPS to close
post offices sufficient to cut cost $1 bil-
lion a year and mail processing facili-
ties to save $2 billion a year, caps con-
tributions to employee health care, and
bars collective bargaining agreements
from containing anti-layoff clauses.
Could it pass Senate and White
House during the lame duck session
that begins Nov. 13? “We don’t know,
and you gotta be fearful,” Card says.
“When it comes right down to it, the
working class is being asked to pay the
bill.”
Marching out of the square, USPS
workers passed by the Pioneer Court-
house (former site of a post office),
where a man sitting on the sidewalk
held a sign: “Disabled veteran. 67 years
old. Trying to get by. Anything helps.
Happy Veterans Day.”
Labor braces for lame-duck session
WASHINGTON, D.C. (PAI)—
Fresh off of a consequential U.S. elec-
tion that saw union members vote by a
2-to-1 margin to reelect Democratic
President Barack Obama and retain a
Democratic majority in the U.S. Senate,
union leaders started planning future
legislative priorities.
But before they could even think
about next year and beyond, they had to
deal with an immediate problem, sure
to be discussed at the AFL-CIO Execu-
tive Council’s post-election meeting in
D.C. on Nov. 9: What to do about the
Low Prices!
Mon-Fri 9-6, Sat 9:30-5:30, Sun 12-6
NOVEMBER 16, 2012
“lame duck” session of the 112th Con-
gress and the nation’s “fiscal cliff” that
lawmakers are supposed to avoid.
“Starting tomorrow – Yes, I said to-
morrow! – working families will be
more out in communities at close to 100
events to talk to members of Congress
about the coming lame duck session
and fiscal showdown,” AFL-CIO Pres-
ident Richard Trumka declared on Nov.
7.
“We will send the message that it’s
time to say ‘no’ to benefit cuts for Social
Security, Medicare and Medicaid and
‘yes’ to fair taxes on America’s wealth-
iest 2 percent. It’s time to rebuild Amer-
ica’s middle class, not tear it down.”
If Congress does nothing, a mix of
tax hikes – on workers and on the rich
– and billions of dollars of cuts in do-
mestic and defense programs are sched-
uled to kick in starting Jan. 1. They in-
clude restoration of the full payroll tax
needed to fund Social Security and
Medicare.
The economic jolt is so huge that an-
alysts of all political stripes contend it
would throw the U.S. back into reces-
sion. Labor agrees. It’s pushing to raise
taxes on the rich and to create jobs, es-
pecially in manufacturing and infra-
structure, Trumka said.
“It is time for our nation to move for-
ward and continue the fight for eco-
nomic and social justice for all Ameri-
cans,” said Amalgamated Transit Union
President Larry Hanley in a statement.
But beyond that immediate problem
of the fiscal cliff, union leaders say labor
has other priorities down the road.
Some of them are:
Labor law reform will always be the
union movement’s Number 1 priority,
Trumka said.
Obama promised to sign the Em-
ployee Free Choice Act, labor’s top leg-
islative priority, during his first term.
The measure would have leveled the
playing field between workers and
bosses in organizing drives and in bar-
gaining, and increased penalties for em-
ployer labor law-breaking. But Obama
never pushed it, upsetting leaders and
members.
AFT President Randi Weingarten
and Service Employees Secretary-Trea-
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
surer Eliseo Medina each placed com-
prehensive immigration reform, includ-
ing a path to legal residence – and labor
law protection – for undocumented
workers high on next year’s “to do” list.
So did Obama, in an interview with the
editors of the Des Moines Register,
even before he beat GOP nominee Mitt
Romney by 70 to 26 percent among
Latino voters, who were a record 11
percent-plus of the electorate.
“Latinos proved we are a national
political force and growing stronger
with each election cycle,” Medina said.
“We said, ‘Yes!’ to comprehensive im-
migration reform. And we said, ‘No!’
to scapegoating of immigrants and
communities of color. This election
proved comprehensive immigration re-
form is not the third rail of politics.”
Medina said he expects passage of
comprehensive immigration reform
next year.
American Federation of Govern-
ment Employees (AFGE) president J.
David Cox expects Obama to propose
a pay raise – the first in several years –
for federal workers.
DOL helps 400
laid off at Hanford
The U.S. Department of Labor
announced a $1.3 million grant to
provide re-employment assistance
for about 400 workers affected by
layoffs from multiple environmen-
tal cleanup contractors — including
CH2M HILL Plateau Remediation
Co., Materials and Energy Corp.,
Mission Support Alliance and 13
others — at the U.S. Department of
Energy’s Hanford Site in Southeast-
ern Washington.
The grant, awarded to the Wash-
ington State Employment Security
Department, will provide dislocated
workers with employment-related
assis- tance, including support serv-
ices and training, in order to help
them re-enter the workforce in
growing areas of the economy.
For more information, go to
www.doleta.gov/NEG/.
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