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About Northwest labor press. (Portland , Ore.) 1987-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 2, 2013)
ERB: Arbitrator’s ruling stands, but TriMet broke law The transit agency is ordered to pay $136,000 and stop trying to collect back-premiums By DON McINTOSH Associate Editor Oregon’s three-member Employment Rela- tions Board (ERB) has ruled — once again — that TriMet violated Oregon’s public employee labor law. In a July 19 decision, ERB ordered TriMet to cease further violations, pay $136,000 into two funds, and stop trying to collect retroactive health insurance costs from employees. “I see it as a win,” said Amalgamated Transit Union Local 757 President Bruce Hansen. The ERB ruling stems from Local 757’s chal- lenge to a July 2012 contract arbitration. Under Oregon law, transit workers can’t strike, but in- stead submit contracts to binding arbitration if union and management can’t agree. Arbitrator David Gaba picked TriMet’s final contract offer over the union’s. But in his written decision, Gaba pointed out several features of TriMet’s contract offer that could be problematic or even illegal. Lo- cal 757 included some of those in its multi-part legal challenge, and TriMet responded with its own charges, saying the union had refused to co- operate with efforts to impose the arbitrator’s de- cision. The 47-page ERB ruling resolves all those AUGUST 2, 2013 charges. Local 757 had hoped ERB would over- turn the arbitrator’s decision outright, but ERB didn’t do that. Instead, it agreed with two union allegations, while dismissing its other allegations, as well as TriMet’s charges against the union. TriMet broke the law, ERB said, when it sent a different “final offer” to the arbitrator than the ac- tual final offer it had presented to the union during bargaining. It also broke the law in August 2012 when — without bargaining over it — it stopped making payments to the Recreation Trust Fund and Employee Assistance Program. The union-ad- ministered Recreation Trust Fund pays for an an- nual picnic, among other things, while the Em- ployee Assistance Program pays for Cascade Centers, Inc., to provide confidential employee counseling about marriage, drug and alcohol use and other personal issues. To remedy the viola- tion, ERB ordered TriMet to pay $63,000 to the recreation fund and $73,000 to the employee as- sistance program by Aug. 19. The ERB ruling also bars TriMet from trying to recoup past health insurance costs purportedly owed by ATU members. That bizarre scenario was one result of a three-year contract being im- posed — retroactively — almost three years after the previous one expired. During the several years workers waited for their contract dispute to be re- solved, they and their dependents had a health in- surance benefit that was more expensive than the one the arbitrator later decided TriMet was ulti- mately responsible for. Once the arbitrator an- nounced his decision, TriMet drafted a letter seeking to collect the difference from work- ers, but Local 757 urged members not to cooperate with any collection efforts, and in the end TriMet did- n’t send the letter. Several other alle- gations by ATU were dismissed by ERB, in- cluding the claim that it was illegal retaliation for TriMet to stop pay- ing union stewards to represent employees in grievances. Over a six- year period, TriMet paid $150,000 to stewards to handle 1,400 griev- ances. ERB was persuaded that TriMet halted the payments on budgetary grounds, not to retaliate against employees for filing too many grievances. ERB also disagreed with ATU’s contention that a provision limiting retiree cost-of-living increases violated the terms of previous contracts. As of press time, it wasn’t clear whether either side would appeal the ERB ruling to a court of ap- peals. Under the imposed contract, TriMet still pays 100 percent of health insurance premiums, but the NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS insurance benefits are less generous: Workers pay a deductible and then 10 percent of costs up to an annual maximum. The contract also ends the tra- ditional defined benefit pension for workers hired after Aug. 1, 2012. Instead, new hires get a 401(k)-style “defined contribution” retirement plan to which TriMet contributes 6 percent of wages. The arbitrator-imposed three-year contract ex- pired Nov. 30, 2012. After legal delays and sched- ule conflicts, bargaining over a new agreement will begin Sept. 7. PAGE 3
