Inside
MEETING
NOTICES
See
Page 11
Volume 115
Number 18
September 19, 2014
Portland
A SENATOR
FOR THE
WORKING
CLASS
In his first six-year term, Democratic U.S.
Sen. Jeff Merkley has proven to be one of
organized labor’s closest allies
Democrat Jeff Merkley — one of organized
labor’s most dependable allies in the U.S. Senate
— is up for re-election in Oregon this November
against Monica Wehby, a Republican challenger
backed by the billionaire Koch brothers.
Oregon labor unions aren’t taking any
chances, and are working to get the word out in
union workplaces about Merkley’s record in his
first six-year term. A Republican minority has
used the Senate’s filibuster rules to bring the
chamber to a standstill, but that hasn’t prevented
Merkley from advancing priorities like energy ef-
ficiency and infrastructure investment, consumer
protections against financial abuses, and pro-fam-
ily workplace rules like the right of breastfeeding
mothers to a private place to pump milk.
Merkley prizes his close relationship with or-
ganized labor, and is proud of his working-class
roots. The son of a millworker, he grew up in
Myrtle Creek, Roseburg and Portland. Today
when he’s not in Washington, D.C., he lives with
his wife and kids in a blue-collar outer East Port-
land neighborhood. Their daughter Brynne at-
tends David Douglas High School, and their son
Jonathan graduated from David Douglas in June.
It’s the same public school Jeff Merkley attended
— and was elected student body president.
In a legislative chamber full of outsized per-
sonalities, Merkley is known as a calm, thought-
ful, persistent figure. Former Oregon Labor Com-
missioner Dan Gardner — now a DC lobbyist for
International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers
— says Merkley comes across as an ordinary guy,
albeit an extremely smart ordinary guy whose job
is representing the people.
“He doesn’t go for pomp and hoopla like other
senators,” Gardner says. “Some senators come
into a building with an entourage. Jeff Merkley
takes the Metro [DC’s subway.]”
Merkley is also one of the Senate’s most reli-
able pro-labor votes. In 82 votes tallied by the
AFL-CIO over five years, Merkley cast just one
vote the AFL-CIO deemed “wrong.”
Spin and propaganda are par for the course in
political campaigns, but one well-aired Koch-
funded attack ad against Merkley goes beyond
unfair. “In six years, Merkley wrote only one bill
that became law,” the ad says, insinuating that
Merkley lacks a work ethic. It’s true on the sur-
face: The unanimously passed Klamath Basin
water bill is the only Merkley-authored legisla-
tion yet to win passage. But it ignores the dozens
of successful amendments Merkley sponsored.
[In the Senate, most of today’s legislative work
takes the form of amendments to big omnibus
bills.] And more importantly, it leaves out why
Merkley, and every other Democratic Senator, has
passed so few bills in recent years: the Republican
minority’s rampant use of the filibuster, which
Merkley has campaigned to reform since the day
he arrived.
Along with New Mexico Democrat Tom
Udall, Merkley is the Senate’s biggest filibuster
reform advocate. Under current filibuster rules, it
takes a supermajority of 60 of the 100 senators in
order to close off debate and move legislation to a
vote. In practice, it means that a minority of 41
senators can prevent votes on anything they op-
pose. Labor unions, particularly Communications
Workers of America, have campaigned to get the
Senate to change the rules.
So Republicans faulting Merkley’s bill-pass-
P HOTO COURTESY OF S EAN S PITZER
ing record are like arsonists who complain of
smoke and ash after setting fire to the fire mar-
shal’s house.
To talk about the filibuster and other issues,
Labor Press associate editor Don McIntosh inter-
viewed Merkley in his Lloyd Center campaign
office.
LABOR PRESS: Outside Oregon, you’re
probably best known for your role in reforming
the filibuster. Why has that been your priority?
JEFF MERKLEY: The biggest shock of go-
ing to the U.S. Senate was to see how paralyzed it
had become. I was first around the Senate in 1976-
77, when I interned with Senator Mark Hatfield. I
went back and saw the Senate again when I
worked for Congress in the 1980s. It worked as a
legislative body should. It had a functioning pro-
tocol for introducing and voting on amendments
and bills.
The heart of the dysfunction that’s grown since
then is the filibuster. Filibuster is a Dutch word. It
means freebooter. That’s a pirate. Piracy has over-
taken the Senate. To give you a sense of this: In
the six years that Lyndon B. Johnson was majority
leader of the Senate, there was only one time that
(Turn to Page 4)
Fired pro-union PIRG fundraiser takes
settlement after devastating crash
By DON McINTOSH
Associate Editor
David Neel’s 20-month fight for reinstatement
ended with a crash.
Neel, 37, is a telephone fundraiser who be-
lieves passionately in the union movement. He
helped win a 2012 campaign by workers at the
Portland call center of PIRG-affiliated Fund for
the Public Interest to join Communications Work-
ers of America (CWA) Local 7901, and then be-
came an active volunteer on the union contract
bargaining team. Then on Nov. 6, 2012, he was
fired on a string of trumped-up accusations.
Neel, unlike at least 12 other pro-union work-
ers fired by the Fund for the Public Interest, was
able to prove to a National Labor Relations Board
(NLRB) agent and a federal judge that his union
activism was a factor in his firing. The judge or-
dered the Fund to reinstate Neel with back pay,
but the Fund appealed to the NLRB’s five-mem-
ber board in Washington, D.C. The Fund lost
there too, and then appeared to defy a May 2014
Board order for reinstatement. The Fund wanted
Neel to accept a financial settlement in return for
waiving his right to reinstatement, but Neel re-
fused.
“I wanted them to be forced to do the right
thing,” Neel said. “I wanted to go back.”
But in early morning July 5, Neel and his fi-
(Turn to Page 3)