...Talks stall over City’s push to end outsourcing protections
(From Page 1)
City proposals during ongoing negotia-
tions.
But union leaders say they know
why the City wants to gut Article 6: The
City lost two disputes over it that went
to arbitration. Now managers want to
neutralize the clause they got caught vi-
olating. Details of those two cases sug-
gest that much worse is in store for
workers, and the public — if Article 6
protections against outsourcing are
eliminated.
A LOW - ROAD EMPLOYER , AND AN
OPENING TO CORRUPTION
One case stems from identical lan-
guage in a collective bargaining agree-
ment between Laborers Local 483 and
the City’s Parks and Recreation De-
partment. A union grievance said the
City violated that agreement when
work done by bargaining unit members
was outsourced to minority-owned
Brooks Staffing. At the height of the
arrangement, up to 140 workers em-
ployed by Brooks Staffing worked side
by side with City employees at the Mt.
Scott and Southwest community cen-
ters — staffing the front desk, teaching
classes, and serving as lifeguards and
personal trainers. But the Brooks work-
ers receive no benefits and earn wages
averaging $11.91, under a contract that
gives their private-sector employer a 26
percent “mark-up.” Eleven days before
the dispute was scheduled to go before
an arbitrator, the City settled voluntar-
ily, agreeing to terminate the Brooks
contract when it expires March 22,
2014, pay $5,000 for Local 483’s legal
bills, and not to contract out the work
again for three years.
The other case — detailed in an ar-
bitrator’s report and in investigations by
the Portland Tribune and the Oregon-
ian — bolsters DCTU's claim that Arti-
cle 6 curbs corruption by City man-
agers. It began in 2006 when City
Parking Operations Division manager
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SEPTEMBER 6, 2013
Portland City Commissioner Nick
Fish, thumbs up, found that a cloud
followed him everywhere he went at
the Sept. 3 Labor Day picnic.
threatened lawsuit — but because
Feathers had declined to hire him.
In December 2009, arbitrator Nor-
man Brand ruled on the union griev-
ance: “Not only [did the City fail] to no-
tify the Union that it was considering
contracting out work, it affirmatively
misled the Union,” and contracted out
members’ work to “an unknown com-
pany, with no experience and no em-
ployees.” Brand found the City had vio-
lated Article 6 five different ways,
including contracting out without show-
ing it would result in reduced cost.
Brand ordered the City to cease and de-
sist and pay $169,800 damages.
In spite of all this, McCoy remained
in charge at Parking. Then the FBI
raided his home and office in August
2011. He retired voluntarily the follow-
ing month. A year later, he pled guilty to
federal bribery charges. Federal prose-
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Ellis McCoy moved to contract out
work on parking pay stations that had
been historically performed by the
City’s own technicians, who are mem-
bers of Laborers Local 483. The union
filed a grievance challenging the viola-
tion.
The three-year $1.3 million contract
went to Precise ParkLink of Toronto,
Canada — the only bidder — after Mc-
Coy reportedly tweaked the company’s
bid documents before they were sub-
mitted. Precise ParkLink then subcon-
tracted the work to minority contractor
FeatherLite, on McCoy’s specific rec-
ommendation.
FeatherLite was supposed to re-
move meters, switch out components,
and re-install the meters. But problems
began right away. Re-installed ma-
chines were improperly anchored,
missing parts, put back together wrong,
and weren’t returned to the same loca-
tions they were removed from, causing
confusion for customers: Meter stick-
ers said “one-hour parking” where
street signs said there was three-hour
parking. Then $3,400 disappeared out
of meters while they were in Feather-
Lite’s possession. McCoy learned of
the missing money, and alerted com-
pany owner Bruce Feathers — before
police were informed, eliminating their
ability to catch the suspects unaware.
Meanwhile, McCoy had begun ne-
gotiating a plan for the City to sell all
its meters to a Precise ParkLink investor
for $9.4 million, then lease the meters
back over five years for $12 million,
while paying Precise ParkLink $3 mil-
lion to maintain them. And McCoy an-
gled for FeatherLite to hire him, send-
ing Feathers a résumé and a business
plan in which he proposed they try to
replicate the sale-and-lease-back idea in
Seattle. But Portland City Council
turned down the deal. Now McCoy had
Precise ParkLink cancel the contract
with FeatherLite, not because of the
problems — Feathers alleged in a
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NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
cutors said he steered multimillion-dol-
lar city contracts to two parking meter
companies in return for expensive vaca-
tions and $131,792 in cash and checks
written to his consulting company.
Local 483 caught McCoy breaking
Article 6. Now City leaders — who
failed to rein McCoy in — want to
eviscerate the article. City of Portland
Human Resources Director Anna Kan-
wit proposed in March 2013 to elimi-
nate Article 6 entirely and replace its
two pages of protections with five sen-
tences. Basically if contracting out
caused layoff of a union-represented
employee, the City would notify the
union before it was done. If the union
demanded to bargain over it within two
weeks, the City would bargain (just as
it’s bargaining now, presumably.)
Kanwit heard from the DCTU bar-
gaining team that such a proposal was
unacceptable, so in July she offered a
new page-long proposal. That amounts
to a data dump: The City would pro-
vide to the unions “copies of project
transmittal forms” for all kinds of con-
struction and goods and services proj-
ects. Unions could sift through the pile
to see if any of it is work done by their
members. They’d have 10 calendar
days to “request” to “discuss” those
projects, after which they would have
waived that right. The City would also
post solicitations for goods and serv-
ices contracts on a web site for 14 days.
And if the City should fail to do these
things … well, that notification re-
quirement “shall not be subject to the
grievance procedure.” If contracting out
results in layoffs of members, the City
would be obliged to let the appropriate
union know “before the plan is actually
executed,” whereupon the union would
have two weeks to bargain. But neither
City obligation — to notify or to dis-
cuss — would apply to projects that are
chosen for a City program intended to
increase the number of minority and
women contractors.
All this is alarming local labor lead-
ers — who backed City Council candi-
dates after being assured that they were
not in favor of greater privatization.
In an Aug. 28 letter, the Northwest
Oregon Labor Council (NOLC) called
on City Council to take a more active
role in the negotiations, saying that
Council’s “hands-off approach” up un-
til now isn’t helping the two sides reach
a fair contract.
“This Labor Council has seen the
wholesale privatization of public serv-
ices in other cities, and we are very
concerned that Portland may be fol-
lowing that trend,” wrote NOLC Exec-
utive Secretary-treasurer Bob Tackett.
It’s traditional for Democratic politi-
cians to attend NOLC’s Labor Day pic-
nic, and declare what friends they are
to the union movement. This year was
no different, as City Commissioners
Amanda Fritz, Nick Fish, and Dan
Saltzman — plus the mayors wife —
showed up to hobnob Sept. 2.
But with the City pushing to get rid
of its workers’ job security protection
against outsourcing, DCTU unions
planned an eye-grabbing action, trail-
ing City Council members with large
signs painted like storm clouds.
This appeared to upset Fritz, who
often tells labor audiences of her union
membership in the Oregon Nurses As-
sociation. Local 483 member Will
Tucker, a pump station millwright and
member of the DCTU bargaining team,
said Fritz told him his storm cloud sign
was “tacky,” and not likely to make her
more sympathetic. Storm clouds hov-
ering nearby, Fritz told this reporter that
she and her City Council colleagues
aren’t interested in more outsourcing or
further layoffs, so she doesn’t get la-
bor’s objection.
Fritz brought a written response to
NOLC’s letter to the picnic. “I have no
interest in ‘wholesale privatization’ or
even partial privatization,” Fritz wrote.
“There are times, however, when it
makes sense for the City to have work
done by third parties.”
City Council has not been hands-
off, Fritz wrote: Kanwit gives Council
members weekly updates, and they
give feedback.
“The City has offered to modify the
original proposal to address some of
the concerns of the DCTU bargaining
team,” Fritz wrote. “We cannot go fur-
ther than the latest modification to the
language.”
The clouds mostly missed Commis-
sioner Dan Saltzman, who announced
his run for re-election at NOLC’s La-
bor Day picnic.
Commissioner Nick Fish, for his
part, handed his camera to a union
member so he could get his picture
taken with the storm clouds.
“I’m not going to bargain in the me-
dia,” he said, when the Labor Press
asked why the City wants to gut Article
6. Fish said City Council has no intent
to reduce positions or do an end run
around bargaining unit work.
The next mediation session was
scheduled for Sept. 3, after this issue
went to press.
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