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About Northwest labor press. (Portland , Ore.) 1987-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 19, 2014)
National Labor News New round of fast food strikes Fast food workers staged one-day strikes in more than 100 U.S. cities Sept. 4, the seventh such walkout in nearly two years. The latest action was planned at the first-ever fast food worker convention, which took place July 26 in Chicago, attended by 1,300 fast food workers. This round of strikes featured non-violent civil disobedience, which resulted in about 50 arrests each in Detroit and Chicago, and 21 arrests outside a McDonalds in New York City’s Times Square. The movement is being sparked and supported by a big behind-the-scenes commitment from Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the nation’s largest service-sector union, which has spent more than $10 million on the cause. The strikers’ chief demands: $15 an hour, and a union. California passes sick leave law California this month became the first U.S. state to mandate paid sick leave for nearly all workers. The law, which takes effect next July, requires employers to offer at least three days a year of paid sick leave to all employ- ees who work more than 30 days in a year in California, including part-time and temporary employees. State-paid home care workers, and workers cov- ered by a collective bargaining agreement, are exempt. A sick leave law in Connecticut applies only to service-sector businesses with over 50 employ- ees. Oregon proponents plan to push for a paid sick leave law in the 2015 leg- islative session. No fair: Varsity teams from rich schools outperform poor schools So much for the level playing field. An analyst for the non-profit group Class Action took the win-loss records for all high schools in eastern Mas- sachusetts and matched them up with the median incomes of the communi- ties the high schools serve. Guess what? The top 10 schools by income win over 60 percent of their games, and the bottom 10 lose over 60 percent. In fact, not a single school in the bottom 20 percent of median income had an overall winning record. Recently merged Carpenters Local 156 splits into two new locals Carpenters Local 156 — which was formed in January 2011 out of the merger of six general carpenter locals in Oregon and Southwest Washington — was split up into two new locals ef- fective Sept. 1. Newly chartered Carpenters Local 1503 (named for one of Northwest Oregon’s two telephone area codes) will represent about 2,400 general car- penter members in the Portland metro- politan area and Southwest Washing- ton. It will keep the Oregon City offices of the former Local 156, which are shared with Local 146, the statewide drywall hangers local. All union general carpenters in the rest of Oregon — about 1,200 mem- bers — will belong to newly chartered Carpenters Local 271, with offices in Eugene. Ben Basom, spokesperson for the Pacific Northwest Regional Council of Carpenters, said the split will help solve the challenge of a far-flung mem- bership: It was tough for members in Medford, for example, to attend Tues- day evening union meetings at the lo- cal headquarters in Oregon City. To head Local 1503, United Broth- erhood of Carpenters General Presi- dent Doug McCarron appointed all those who’d recently won union offi- cer elections in Local 156. Those are: President Shaun Cushman, Vice Presi- dent Cliff Puckett; Financial Secretary Krista Farmer; Recording Secretary Ben Basom; Treasurer Don Ball; Con- ductor Pete Savage; Warden Christy Kern; and Trustees Bill Lewis, Larry Heckathorne, and Joe Figueroa. Officers of Local 271 will be: Pres- ident James Jones, Vice President Tyson Stuber, Financial Secretary Jeff Harms, Recording Secretary Jennifer Van Datta, Treasurer Ken Daletas, Conductor Boyd Martin, Warden Tim Keck, and Trustees Jim Wilson, David Mork, and Cory Rogers. Both locals work under the terms of region-wide master agreements with Associated General Contractors (AGC) and the General and Concrete Contractors Association (GCCA). United Brotherhood of Carpenters is not affiliated with the AFL-CIO, but has a partnership with AFL-CIO-affil- iated International Union of Operating Engineers known as the National Con- struction Alliance II. Bend letter carrier Filson receives ‘Hero of the Year’ award from union WASHINGTON, D.C. (PAI) — A Bend, Oregon, letter carrier was among five “Heroes of the Year” hon- ored Sept. 10 by the National Associa- tion of Letter Carriers’ (NALC). Steve Filson, a member of NALC Branch 1937 in Bend, saved fellow unionist Jim Lascurin in 2012 after Lascurin collapsed in a Bend parking garage with a rare form of heart fail- ure. Physicians later said that had Fil- son, a former Navy medic, not acted immediately by giving Lascurin CPR, Lascurin would have died. That type of heart failure has only a 5 percent sur- vival rate. For his action, Filson was named the Western Region Hero of the Year by the international union. Jermaine Shirley of Branch 379 in the Bronx was named National Hero of the Year. Last December Shirley helped save several people from a fire in his own apartment building. He was just setting out for work when he smelled smoke. He alerted residents at all six apartments, called 9-1-1, and helped several residents, including an 11-year-old child, to safety. All of the honorees are examples of “courage, compassion and dedication or all three,” said Letter Carriers Pres- ident Fredric Rolando. “They do these things because they’re in the neighbor- hoods six or seven days a week and they know when something’s wrong.” National AFL-CIO Secretary- Treasurer Liz Shuler of Portland, Ore- gon, attended the ceremony held in Washington, D.C. ALEC may push local-level ‘right-to-work’ ordinances It’s not clear it would stand up in court, but the secretive corporate lobby group ALEC may be planning to push city- and county-level versions of the laws that are best known by their inaccurate label “right to work.” The laws — which exist in 24 states — bar any union contract from requiring workers to pay the cost of union representation. Trouble is, the public buys it: In an Aug. 7-10 Gallup poll 71 percent of Americans said they’d vote for it, even though the same poll found that 53 percent approve of unions. So in the state of Washington, the anti-union group Freedom Foundation is sponsoring lo- cal ballot measures establishing right-to-work for local public employees. This November, residents of the cities of Blaine, Chelan, Sequim and Shel- ton may vote on the ordinances, if they survive legal challenges arguing that they violate state law. And in Oregon, union foes say they will pursue a 2016 ballot initiating instituting right-to-work for public employees. Sign of the times: Senior citizens struggling to repay college loans You can discharge consumer debt with a bankruptcy, and lose mortgage debt (and your house) with a foreclosure, but under federal law, student loans are the debt that never goes away. On Sept. 10, the U.S. Senate Special Com- mittee on Aging held a hearing on the student loan debt of retirees. A U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) study found about 706,000 house- holds headed by senior citizens carry student loan debt, totaling $18.2 billion, and apparently seniors are defaulting on student debt at a higher rate than the general population. As of 2013, the government was garnishing the Social Security benefits of 155,000 individuals in default on their student loans — a fivefold increase from 2002. PAGE 8 NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS SEPTEMBER 19, 2014
