Inside
Meeting
Notices
See
Page 6
Volume 114
Number 7
April 5, 2013
Portland, Oregon
Unanimous City Council:
Portland workers
will have sick leave
How a labor and community
alliance improved life for over
a quarter million workers …
and might keep you from
getting sick next year
By DON McINTOSH
Associate Editor
In a 5-0 vote March 13, Portland
City Council guaranteed the right to
sick leave to all who work in Portland.
The ordinance, which takes effect Jan.
1, 2014, will make life a little better for
an estimated quarter million Portland
workers who don’t currently have sick
leave, plus many thousands more who
have it but can’t use it when they need
it. The ordinance is expected to curb
the spread of contagious illnesses in
restaurants, schools, and daycare cen-
ters, because workers will be able to
stay home when they or their children
are sick.
The ordinance’s passage was the
product of a year-plus campaign by a
coalition of labor, business, and com-
munity groups. Key to the campaign’s
success, supporters say, was the group
nature of the effort — and the decision
of Commissioner Amanda Fritz, a for-
mer nurse and proud nurses union
member, to champion the measure.
The sick leave campaign began with
Andrea Paluso, a 36-year-old former
community health clinic social worker
and mother of two.
Paluso and her group, Family For-
ward Oregon, got educated on paid sick
leave and quietly assembled a coalition
in support. At first the plan was to pass
something in Multnomah County,
where Commissioner Deb Kafoury was
eager to take up the cause. But a legal
opinion came back that such a regula-
tion was outside the county’s charter.
Municipalities, however, have much
greater latitude, and the activists turned
their attention to Portland City Council.
Commissioner Fritz recalls that it
was the grocery workers union, United
Food and Commercial Workers
(UFCW) Local 555, that first brought
the sick leave idea to her attention — in
a candidate endorsement interview for
the 2012 primary.
“It was pretty shocking to learn that
Fred Meyer grocery workers and deli
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‘Right-to-work’ initiative
aims at Oregon ballot
The 2014 measure, backed by
millionaire Loren Parks, would
make public employee union
dues strictly voluntary
The first 1,000 signatures have been
submitted on a “right-to-work” initia-
tive for the November 2014 ballot.
The initiative, dubbed the Public
Employee Choice Act, would remove
any requirement that public employees
pay union dues or any share of the costs
that unions incur to represent them. Un-
der current law, public employees who
are represented by unions pay either
union dues, if they choose to be mem-
bers, or reduced “fair share” fees which
cover the union’s cost of negotiating
contracts and representing workers in
discipline cases.
The chief petitioners on the initiative
are Keizer resident Braeda Libby and
Beaverton attorney Jill Gibson Odell, a
former legislative director for the Ore-
gon House Republican caucus.
After the campaign turned in the ini-
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Rally to save U.S. Postal Service delivers big crowd in Portland
Portland area letter carriers, postal workers, and community allies marched through the streets of downtown Portland
March 17 in a show of support for saving the U.S. Post Office from massive cuts. (Photo by Jamie Partridge)
An estimated 600 postal workers
and community allies rallied in the
streets of downtown Portland March 17
to save postal jobs and services.
U.S. Postal Service (USPS) Post-
master General Patrick Donahoe an-
nounced earlier this year plans to end
Saturday mail delivery, beginning in
August. Cutting delivery to five days
will eliminate 80,000 jobs, according to
the National Association of Letter Car-
riers (NALC), hundreds of them in the
Portland area. USPS has already cut
168,000 jobs since 2006 and projects
the outsourcing of most postal trucking,
and closure of 30 percent of mail pro-
cessing plants and hundreds of post of-
fices by June, cutting another 100,000
jobs and slowing delivery standards.
“It’s a manufactured financial crisis
that happened when the 2006 Congress
mandated the USPS pay for 75 percent
of future retiree benefits in a 10-year pe-
riod,” said Jim Cook, president of
NALC Branch 82, which represents
1,200 carriers in the greater Portland
area. “Without this ‘stamp tax’ of $5.5
billion each year during the recession,
the USPS would be financially sound,
expanding services — not shrinking the
universal postal service into oblivion.”
Besides the Letter Carriers, an addi-
tional 800-plus postal workers in the
Portland area are members of the Amer-
ican Postal Workers Union; the National
Postal Mail Handlers Union, a division
of the Laborers Union; and the National
Rural Letter Carriers Association.
Cook and others said with new
USPS leadership and appropriate legis-
lation, the Postal Service can become fi-
nancially stable and continue long into
the 21st century.
Most of Oregon’s congressional del-
egation supports legislation to save the
Postal Service, and not dismantle it.
U.S. Senators Jeff Merkley and Ron
Wyden have co-sponsored S. 316 and
U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio has sponsored
a companion bill, HR 630. These will
modernize the USPS, save Saturday de-
livery, reinstate overnight delivery stan-
dards to speed mail delivery, prevent
shutdown of mail sorting facilities, and
protect rural post offices.
“And these are tax-free solutions,”
said Cook, pointing out that the USPS
has not operated on tax dollars since
1982.
The rally began at Pioneer Court-
house Square, and protesters marched
through the streets of downtown Port-
land on a busy St. Patrick’s Day to the
Main Post Office several blocks away.
March 17 is the anniversary of the
Great Postal Strike of 1970, a two-week
wildcat strike by thousands of postal
workers protesting unbearable working
conditions and poor pay. President
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