Inside:
MEETING NOTICES
See
Page 6
Volume 115
Number 5
March 7, 2014
Portland, Oregon
‘Right-to-work’
intiative dropped
Parkrose decides not to
contract out bus drivers
An energetic five-
month campaign by
OSEA saves school
bus driver jobs
By DON McINTOSH
Associate Editor
In a dramatic turnaround, Parkrose
School Board rejected its superinten-
dent’s plan to contract out school bus
transportation to a private corporation,
First Student. The 3-to-2 vote took
place at 10 p.m., three-plus hours into
the board’s Feb. 24 meeting, as a
packed house of Oregon School Em-
ployees Association (OSEA) members
and supporters watched.
The district — located in outer
Northeast Portland — announced its
intention to outsource student trans-
portation last September. It then paid
for a state-mandated cost comparison,
and received bids from four companies.
Superintendent Karen Gray proposed
to award the contract to UK-headquar-
tered First Student, sell the district’s
bus fleet for $350,000, and lay off dis-
trict school bus employees at the end of
the school year. Though the district es-
timated the move would save money,
the cost comparison indicated nearly all
the savings would come from cutting
employee retirement and health bene-
fits.
But OSEA waged a vigorous cam-
paign to defend the jobs of its 22 mem-
bers — drivers, a dispatcher and a me-
chanic. Rallying behind the slogan
“Keep It Local,” the union blanketed
the district with lawn signs, and went
door to door to talk to residents. It even
aired a television ad featuring a mom
and her daughter — touting the value
of the district directly controlling its
“first classroom of the day.”
For months, OSEA rallied outside
board meetings, mobilizing members
and residents to attend. Board members
got calls from dozens of residents, and
from state legislators representing the
Parkrose district — State Rep. Jessica
Vega Pederson and State Sen. Michael
OSEA holds its final anti-outsourcing
protest before the Feb. 24 Parkrose
School Board meeting. In a 3-2 vote,
the Board kept school bus drivers as
district employees.
Dembrow — all opposed to the plan.
The anticipated savings were said to be
intended to hire more teachers, but the
Parkrose teachers union also stood with
OSEA in opposing the outsourcing. On
the day of the big vote, board members
got a letter opposing outsourcing from
(Turn to Page 11)
SALEM — Sponsors of two anti-
union initiative petitions — including
a so-called right-to-work measure for
public employees — have agreed to
withdraw their measures aimed at the
Oregon ballot in November. In ex-
change, a labor-backed coalition that
sponsored pro-union counter-measures
agreed to do the same.
The announcement was made
March 3 by Gov. John Kitzhaber.
In all, 13 measures were withdrawn.
Most of them were still waiting to be
certified by the secretary of state. The
right-to-work measure, Initiative Peti-
tion 9, had been certified and was in the
early stages of collecting signatures.
None of the measures had qualified for
the ballot.
The governor’s announcement fol-
lows an agreement Kitzhaber brokered
in February between the Service Em-
ployee International Union (SEIU) and
many of the state’s largest hospitals.
Following that agreement, an addi-
tional five ballot initiative petitions
were withdrawn.
Kitzhaber, who is up for re-election
this year, has talked for more than a
year about wanting to keep the initia-
tives off the ballot in order to avoid a
bruising, expensive ballot measure bat-
tle. He began formal discussions with
initiative sponsors several months ago.
“This is an unprecedented moment
in Oregon’s long history of ballot
measure politics,” Kitzhaber said in a
press release. “Over the last three years,
we have shown time and time again
that no matter how wide the ideological
divide might be, people on different
sides of issues are able to come to-
gether for the greater good of Oregon
and our citizens.”
At press time, the secretary of state’s
website showed the following anti-
union initiative petitions had been with-
drawn: IP 1 (public employees cannot
contribute to unions using payroll de-
ductions if funds are used for political
purposes), and IP 9 (dubbed the “Pub-
(Turn to Page 11)
Medford teachers end 16-day strike
P HOTO COURTESY OF IBEW LOCAL 659.
MEDFORD — Over 500 Medford
school teachers went back to work Feb.
24, ending a 16-day strike with a tenta-
tive agreement on a new three-year
contract that both sides compromised
to achieve.
Medford Education Association
members voted Feb. 27 to ratify the
agreement. It includes cost-of-living
wage increases of 1.9, 2.5 and 3 per-
cent, plus a 2.1 percent salary increase
to add back four work days. But some
of those gains will be eaten up when
teachers’ contribution to health insur-
ance doubles from 5 percent of the pre-
mium to 10 percent by the end of the
contract. The union also agreed to
phase out the current early retirement
health insurance benefit. Teachers who
retire this year and next can stay on the
system’s health insurance plan until
they are eligible for Medicare.
Schools closed the first three days
of the strike, idling 12,100 students.
But the district hired more than 165
substitute teachers, and reopened some
schools Feb. 9 on half-day schedules
with what even the Medford Mail Trib-
une newspaper called “dumbed down
class selections.” Schools were sur-
rounded by picketing teachers and se-
curity guards, and students stayed
away. Attendance dropped from 68 per-
cent the first day to 44 percent by the
end of the strike.
The Medford School District said it
does not plan to add days to the school
year to make up for lost instructional
time during the strike.
Striking teachers were supported by
many parents during the strike, which
raised the profile of unions in an area
of Oregon where they have been less
prominent. A Feb. 15 community soli-
darity rally organized by Southern Ore-
gon Jobs With Justice drew an esti-
mated 600 participants — more than
any Medford demonstration in recent
memory. And other labor organizations
stepped up in solidarity, including In-
ternational Brotherhood of Electrical
Workers (IBEW), Service Employees,
American Postal Workers Union, Ore-
gon Nurses Association, United Food
and Commercial Workers, AFSCME,
Southern Oregon Jobs With Justice,
and the Oregon AFL-CIO community
coalition Oregon Strong Voice.
With the support of IBEW Local
659 Business Manager Lennie Ellis,
two staff members joined teachers on
the picket line with food and helped or-
ganize a community support phone
bank. IBEW Local 1245 in Vacaville,
California, sent two “organizer stew-
ards” to help with strike support for a
week.
“We felt like the community got be-
hind it,” said Local 659 organizer John
Hutter. “The strike was unfortunate, but
it was a great community builder for us
and for the teachers. All 600 of them
know who we are now, and some of
them asked us ‘What can we do to help
you when the time comes?’ ”