Labor unions put together agenda
for 2013 Oregon Legislature
By DON McINTOSH
Associate Editor
SALEM — When the newly-in-
stalled Oregon Legislature opens Feb.
4 for its 2013 session, organized labor
will be in the building.
The Oregon AFL-CIO will press
lawmakers to fund the Columbia River
Crossing, ban public sector union-bust-
ing, and preserve industrially-zoned
land. Building trades unions will seek
to close loopholes in the state prevailing
wage law. And public-sector unions
will try to minimize the harm to mem-
bers’ interests from a set of reforms
Gov. John Kitzhaber is proposing to the
Oregon Public Employee Retirement
System (PERS).
As always, the Legislature’s biggest
task will be to approve a state budget,
deciding how much the state will spend
on education, public safety, and social
safety net programs. But since voter-
approved legislation bars any legislative
revenue increase without a hard-to-
achieve three-fifths supermajority,
Capitol budget battles tend to be about
how to prioritize existing revenues.
The governor made PERS savings a
major element of this year’s budget
proposal. PERS covers approximately
120,000 retirees and 140,000 non-re-
tired current and former public em-
ployees. Over 900 Oregon public em-
ployers participate in the system,
including state and local government
employers and school districts.
Kitzhaber is proposing three changes:
capping retirees’ cost-of-living in-
creases at $480 a year; excluding PERS
JANUARY 18, 2013
recipients who don’t pay Oregon in-
come tax from a program of income tax
reimbursements; and allowing union-
ized public employers to negotiate par-
tial reductions in the employer
“pickup” of employee retirement con-
tributions. The governor’s office says
the first two changes would save state
and local governments and school dis-
tricts $865 million over two years. The
third proposal, says Oregon AFSCME
political director Joe Baessler, would
“make it easier to slowly bleed folks”
in contract bargaining. All three pro-
posals would achieve savings at the ex-
pense of public employee retirees.
“We are disappointed,” wrote Serv-
ice Employees International Union
(SEIU) Local 503 President Rob Sisk
in a letter to members, “because the
governor’s main path to more revenue
is to go after the earned benefits of
front-line workers and retirees.” Sisk
said the governor’s budget relies on
PERS cutbacks to fund essential serv-
ices, and it doesn’t address tax fairness.
The cost-of-living cap would affect
the 47 percent of PERS recipients who
receive over $24,000 in annual benefits.
But Baessler said judging by past court
decisions, such a measure could be
struck down in court, since it changes
what workers were promised after they
retire.
Elana Guiney, legislative and com-
munications director of the Oregon
AFL-CIO, said the state labor federa-
tion will support the legislative efforts
of affiliated unions like Oregon AF-
SCME Council 75.
The Oregon AFL-CIO itself will be
pursuing a “not-just-jobs, but good
jobs” agenda, Guiney said. In other
words, for any bill that lawmakers jus-
tify as a job-creator, the labor federa-
tion will ask for guarantees and mini-
mum standards for the jobs created.
The Oregon AFL-CIO will also pro-
mote an expanded crackdown on em-
ployers that falsely mischaracterize em-
ployees as “independent contractors.”
In recent years, a multi-agency task
Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber met Jan. 7 with 12 officials from Oregon
building trades locals and councils for a wide-ranging discussion about jobs,
public works projects, and measures to defend the state prevailing wage.
Kitzhaber was supportive of efforts to seek a project labor agreement with
Nike on a planned expansion, said Oregon State Building and Construction
Trades Council Executive Secretary John Mohlis.
force has improved enforcement, but it
only acts when there’s a complaint. The
Oregon AFL-CIO wants the state to
hire an investigator to conduct proac-
tive employer audits and levy fines on
repeat offenders.
The Oregon AFL-CIO will also
back a bill to maintain Oregon’s supply
of industrial land by making it harder
to rezone land that’s slated for indus-
trial use.
And it will push a bill to bar tax-
payer-funded union-busting by public
employers. The bill would require pub-
lic employers to remain neutral in any
union organize drive. A bill in a previ-
ous legislative session would have re-
quired such neutrality of contractors
doing government business as well, but
the one to be introduced this year ap-
plies only to public employers. Guiney
(Turn to Page 7)
Unions prepare to play defense in Washington Legislature
OLYMPIA — Following the No-
vember election, Washington state
union leaders had high hopes for pro-
worker legislation in the state capitol.
Now — thanks to a pair of Democratic
turncoats in the state Senate — labor is
preparing for defensive fights.
On Dec. 10, Senate Democrats
Rodney Tom of Bellevue and Tim
Sheldon of Mason County announced
they would join with 23 Senate Repub-
licans to form a “Senate Majority
Coalition Caucus.”
In effect, the two Democrats are col-
luding with the Senate Republican mi-
nority to deprive the 26-member ma-
jority Democrats of Senate leadership.
The way it works, Tom gets to be Sen-
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
ate majority leader, Sheldon becomes
president pro tempore, and Republicans
get to chair the most important com-
mittees. For example, Eastern Wash-
ington Republican Janéa Holmquist
Newbry — who has sponsored past
bills to weaken the prevailing wage —
will now chair the Labor, Commerce
and Consumer Protection Committee
(which she prefers to call the “Com-
merce and Labor Committee”).
Washington, like Oregon, is becom-
ing a solidly “blue” state, with Democ-
rats now occupying eight of the nine
statewide elected offices, and holding
55-43 and 26-23 majorities in the state
House and Senate, respectively. But
this legislative coup makes it possible
for Senate Republicans to block Demo-
cratic proposals.
“We expect the Senate majority to
be hostile to labor’s interests,” says
David Groves, publications director at
the Washington State Labor Council
(WSLC), the state-level AFL-CIO
body.
Nonetheless, WSLC plans to push a
proactive agenda — “legislation that
puts us on a high road to recovery by
investing in jobs, increasing revenue
and protecting families through
strengthening our social and workplace
safety nets.”
The agenda starts with a call for ma-
jor reinvestment in transportation and
transit. Groves says the labor federation
hopes to rally the business and environ-
mental communities behind a 10-year,
$20 billion funding package to main-
tain and operate the state road and ferry
system, improve freight mobility, and
restore public mass transit. [Ferries are
considered an extension of the state
highway system under the Washington
state constitution, but service has been
reduced in recent years as the state has
faced budget crises.]
Other proposals include:
• Cracking down on misclassifica-
tion of employees as independent con-
tractors, as well as violations of the re-
quirement to pay minimum wage,
prevailing wage, and overtime.
• Mandating a preference for in-state
goods and services in the state procure-
ment process.
• Establishing a Washington Invest-
ment Trust, modeled after the Bank of
North Dakota: State bank balances
would be withdrawn from big Wall
Street banks and instead lent to local
governments for public infrastructure
projects — at lower interest rates than
the private bond market. The Trust
would also fund student loans.
• Reforming the state workers’ com-
pensation system, giving injured work-
ers information about how their bene-
fits are calculated, and providing for
attorneys fee awards in medical claims
appeals, to give injured workers a more
usable right to appeal.
WSLC will also be ready to oppose
any bills to repeal Washington’s annual
minimum wage increase, make it
harder to get unemployment benefits,
or expand a new program of lump-sum
injured worker payouts. [The lump sum
option was sold to legislators as a cost-
saving alternative to long-term workers
compensation payments for injured
workers over the age of 55, but it can
result in reduced compensation over
time.]
The 2013 legislative session runs
from Jan. 14 to April 28. WSLC will
hold its annual legislative conference
March 7 at the Olympia Red Lion.
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