Portland to discuss paid sick leave proposal in January
Backers of a paid sick leave ordi-
nance say Portland City Council won’t
take up the issue until next year.
The Everybody Benefits coalition,
which includes labor, community, and
business groups, wants Portland to re-
quire employers to provide paid sick
leave, as San Francisco and several
other cities do.
City Commissioner Amanda Fritz
said in October she aimed to pass such
an ordinance by the end of 2012. Now,
Jeff Anderson, secretary-treasurer of
United Food & Commercial Workers
(UFCW) Local 555, said he expects
Fritz will come out with a draft pro-
posal the first week in January.
Up to 40 percent of Portland work-
ers — 260,000, including nearly all
restaurant workers — have no paid sick
leave of any kind, said Andrea Paluso,
coordinator of the Everybody Benefits
coalition. Without paid sick leave,
workers lose wages and may even face
discipline in some workplaces if they
stay home because they or a child is
sick. Workers who lack sick leave are
more likely to go to work sick or to
send their kids to school sick, and that
spreads illness to others.
Paid sick leave is a big issue for An-
derson’s union, which represents
17,000 grocery workers in Oregon and
Southwest Washington. Local 555 is
engaged in tough contract negotiations
with grocers, and one issue of con-
tention is employers insistence that
workers not use paid sick leave until the
third day of an illness.
Under the San Francisco ordinance,
workers can use paid sick days starting
on the first day of an illness. They ac-
crue an hour of sick leave for every 30
hours of work, and can use up five or
nine days a year, depending on the size
of the workplace.
“We’re pushing for Portland to take
the leadership role and enact a good
piece of legislation,” Anderson said.
One possibility would be a City or-
dinance set to go into effect in Septem-
ber, after the Oregon Legislature had a
chance to consider a statewide paid sick
leave law.
An Aug. 24 poll commissioned by
Local 555 showed 60 percent of Port-
land voters favored “a law that would
guarantee all workers in Portland a
minimum number of paid sick days to
care for themselves or their immediate
family members.” Of 528 Portland vot-
ers, 60 percent were in favor, 15 percent
opposed, and 25 percent undecided.
The poll had a margin of error of plus
or minus 4.3 percent.
Labor to Congress: Don’t fall for ‘fiscal bluff’
Sometimes a bad deal is worse than
no deal. The national AFL-CIO wants
Congress to renew a set of tax cuts for
working people, but not at the expense
of continuing tax cuts for the rich or
cutting Social Security or Medicare.
Starting immediately after the No-
vember election, the AFL-CIO has
been campaigning to stiffen the back-
bones of the president and Congres-
sional Democrats as the so-called “fis-
cal cliff” nears. Fiscal cliff was the
phrase Federal Reserve chair Ben
Bernanke used to describe the conse-
quences if Congress fails to reach
agreement on tax and budget policy by
year’s end. Several sets of tax cuts ex-
pire then, and so does funding for pro-
grams like extended unemployment in-
surance. And under a law passed in
2011, across-the-board cuts in federal
spending are scheduled to take effect
Jan. 1 if Congress doesn’t find ways to
reduce the deficit. In short, it’s a manu-
factured political crisis, and it could use
a political solution.
But it must not be used as an excuse
to cut benefits that working people have
paid for all their lives, AFL-CIO Presi-
dent Rich Trumka has argued. Republi-
cans have proposed smaller cost-of-liv-
ing adjustments for Social Security
DECEMBER 21, 2012
George Slanina joined nearly 250
people at a candlelight vigil Dec. 10
to protest proposed cuts to Social
Security and Medicare as a way to
avoid the “fiscal cliff.”
gress “No tax breaks for the richest 2
percent” and “no Social Security,
Medicare or Medicaid cuts.”
In Portland, 250 unionists and com-
munity activists held a candlelight vigil
Dec. 10 outside of U.S. Sen. Ron
Wyden’s office in Portland, “to shine a
light on the truth about the fiscal cliff.”
“While there are major conse-
quences for not striking a deal, the con-
sequences of a bad deal are even
worse,” read an AFL-CIO flier. “It’s not
worth bargaining away our financial se-
curity, or health security, or our retire-
ment security. It’s not worth a bad
deal.”
The Portland vigil called on Sen.
Wyden and U.S. Rep. Kurt Schrader to
not “buy into a deal because they think
it’s the only option. It’s not the only op-
tion.”
recipients and raising the Medicare eli-
gibility age from 65 to 67 as part of a
deal.
Organized labor has been lobbying,
rallying, and running ads to tell Con-
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
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