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About Northwest labor press. (Portland , Ore.) 1987-current | View Entire Issue (March 21, 2014)
...Portland park rangers unionize (From Page 1) fliers. Also, Local 483 left two former park rangers out of its proposed unit — an office worker and a dog enforcement program coordinator. Also, park ranger isn’t listed specifically in the DCTU contract, and is a different job than the other jobs in the DCTU; therefore rangers don’t belong in the DCTU. Also, the rangers were assigned to write parking tickets in Washington Park and Hoyt Arboretum; that work is done by parking patrol workers represented by fellow DCTU union AFSCME Local 189, so maybe the park rangers have more in common with those workers. Also, most of the rangers don’t have health insurance, seniority rights, disci- plinary grievance rights, or any paid leave. Therefore they have nothing in common with DCTU members, who do have those things. Therefore they don’t belong in the DCTU. Also, La- borers Local 483 represents manual la- borers, and it would be wrong to “lump policing/security personnel with man- ual laborers.” Except later on, Farley ar- gued that the 11 “community service aids” are temporary seasonal employ- ees, and therefore should maybe be un- der a separate Local 483 contract cov- ering “seasonal maintenance workers” who, it turns out, are manual laborers. Boil it all down, and the City of Portland attorney is arguing that these 15 coworkers (and maybe two others) ought to be in three separate bargaining units, not one; and they ought to be rep- resented by AFSCME Local 189, not Laborers Local 483; and they ought to be not in the DCTU unit but in stand- alone units, where they could negotiate three separate union contracts with the City. But Oregon’s public sector labor law doesn’t work that way. ORS 243.650 says public employ- ees “have the right to form, join and participate in the activities of labor or- ganizations of their own choosing for the purpose of representation.” Wendy Greenwald, an administra- tive law judge for the Employment Re- lations Board, held a two-day hearing on the City’s objections May 28-29, and issued her ruling Nov. 20, dismiss- ing the City’s case and ordering it to get on with the election and draw up a voter list within 10 days. But then the City appealed the judge’s decision to the three-member Employment Relations Board, which functions as the “supreme court” of Oregon public sector labor law. The Board heard arguments from both sides Jan. 9, and on March 6, it too dismissed the City’s objections, and ordered the election to move forward. Rangers were jubilant at a March 10 meeting to discuss next steps. They can’t wait to be in the union. But their experience poses a ques- tion for the rest of labor to ponder: How is it that the mayor and the other four members of City Council all represent themselves as friends of organized la- bor, and yet City attorneys just spent public resources for over a year to ob- struct and delay the attempt of 15 park rangers to join a union? The Labor Press asked the mayor’s spokesperson Dana Haynes why the City fought the park rangers attempt to unionize, and how much it spent to do so. Haynes said he asked the lawyers in the City attorney’s office and learned that the City was “caught in the mid- dle” between AFSCME and Local 483. Leaders of both unions were of- fended to hear that reply. “That’s total bullshit,” said Local 483 Business Manager Erica Askin, who helped the park rangers organize and represented them in the ERB pro- ceedings. “They’re doing a divide-and- conquer type thing.” According to the rangers, the real story is this: After Parks manager Art Hendricks learned they’d talked with the Laborers, he suggested they talk to AFSCME. Rangers met with represen- tatives of both, and in the end opted to go with Local 483, which represents other workers in the Parks Bureau, from arborists and turf maintenance workers to lifeguards and rec center staffers. AFSCME Local 189 President Mark Gipson says he’d love for his union to represent the park rangers, but always respected it was their choice to make, and went out of his way not to interfere. Judge Greenwald said as much in her ruling: “AFSCME neither petitioned to represent the park rangers, nor sought to intervene in the petition filed by [the Laborers.]” What AFSCME did do was file a grievance when the City assigned rangers to write parking tickets in City parks. The grievance said that should be the work of AFSCME-represented parking patrol officers. The rangers agreed with that. Nine of them signed an open letter supporting AFSCME’s grievance, which is still pending. “Anything they say about this differ- ence between AFSCME and Laborers is bullshit,” Gipson said. Gipson ex- plains that the grievance — which he wrote and filed — is about a very basic union contract feature, the part where the employer recognizes the union as the representative of all workers in a classification, responsible for negotiat- ing and enforcing provisions spelling Park rangers were in high spirits March 10. It was their first meeting after the State of Oregon dismissed legal objections the City of Portland had filed opposing their effort to join Laborers Local 483. Now they’ll get to have a union election, after a year of delay. out wages and conditions. When an employer starts assigning other work- ers to do the same work, and at a much lower wage rate, that violates the con- tract. City Attorney Farley argued that be- cause one suggested remedy to the AF- SCME grievance would be for park rangers to become AFSCME members, that meant AFSCME was seeking to represent them. But Gipson says it was the city which suggested that remedy, not AFSCME. “There was a little ‘nod, nod,’ and ‘wink, wink’ of ‘How about if you guys represented these workers?’ They wanted to break our contract and get themselves in the business of organiz- ing, which they have no right to do,” Gipson said. So the City wasn’t “caught in the middle” between two contending unions. On the contrary it appears to have tried to instigate conflict between them. As for how many tax dollars were spent opposing the park rangers’ at- tempt to join Local 483, Haynes said it was only attorney and other staff time, and they were not eligible for overtime, and were going to be paid whether they worked on the rangers case or some- thing else. Farley collects a $114,175 annual salary. At least one paralegal also worked on the case, which would Union & Community Members, Families and Kids Welcome & Building a Brighter Future for Working Families Food-Refreshments Games! Community Labor Solidarity Gathering: Saturday, April 12 Noon-5 pm MARCH 21, 2014 NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS Kelly Elementary School 9030 SE Cooper St., Portland Food Drive: Bring Non-Perishable Food have involved interviews, preparing and filing the objection, preparing for and taking part in a two-day hearing with several dozen evidentiary exhibits, put- ting together post-hearing briefs, filing an eight-page appeal of the judge’s de- cision, preparing and delivering oral ar- guments to ERB — in short, a substan- tial amount of legal work. And someone in the mayor’s office or the City attorney’s office thought that was an appropriate use of public resources. Now that ERB dismissed the City’s objections, Haynes said the City “wel- comes the Employment Relations Board’s direction.” “I think it’s clear,” Askin said. “They were doing everything they could to deny the park rangers their collective bargaining rights.” Major League Soccer locks out union referees The Portland Timbers and Seattle Sounders opened the 2014 Major League Soccer (MLS) season with scab referees. The Professional Referee Organiza- tion (PRO), the company created by MLS owners to employ its referees, locked out members of the Professional Soccer Referees Association (PSRA) at the start of the season March 8 because the collective bargaining agreement was not completed. The league is using replacement officials. PSRA voted 64–1 for strike author- ization. The union has filed two unfair labor practice complaints with the NLRB, accusing the PRO and MLS of bad-faith bargaining and making threats against its members. PRO filed an unfair labor practice complaint al- leging the union tried to intimidate re- placement referees who officiated games opening weekend. At press time, the sides were meet- ing with the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service. Negotiations were confidential and FMCS asked that the sides not talk to the media. FMCS helped negotiate the 2010 agreement between the MLS and the MLS Players Union. PAGE 5
