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.
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