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About Northwest labor press. (Portland , Ore.) 1987-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 17, 2014)
Inside MEETING NOTICES See Page 4 Volume 115 Number 20 October 17, 2014 Portland Federal judge orders employer to hire seven union painters Knocking on Doors with Working America If you want to see the boots of the Oregon AFL-CIO political op- eration, look no further than Chellema Qolus. Qolus is a paid canvasser for Working America — the AFL-CIO’s at-large affiliate. Most of the time, her job is to go door-to-door to build Working America’s membership list. But during election season, it’s to elect AFL-CIO-endorsed candidates. On Tuesday, Oct. 7, a scorcher of a day, Qolus is in Gladstone to help state representative Brent Bar- ton and state senate candidate Jamie Damon. At 4 p.m., she and a coworker are dropped off on the evening’s turf. They’ll split up and spend the next five hours knocking on doors, checking off names from a voter address list on a tablet com- puter. Qolus, 51, has been a Working America canvasser since 2012. On the doorstep, she's seasoned and friendly. She's a dog and cat lover. And she’s unfazed by signs that say “No Soliciting.” Those signs might be aimed at salespeople, or might have been left by the previous homeowner. Qolus says she gets half her donations from houses with “no soliciting” signs at the door. “We’re not trying to disturb any- body,” Qolus tells the Labor Press. (Turn to Page 5) Federal administrative law judge John McCarrick didn’t hold back in his verdict on Edwards Painting. Edwards violated federal labor law 18 separate ways, McCarrick ruled Sept. 26, and now must make amends. Edwards Painting is a family-owned company based in Oregon City that specializes in interior and exterior painting of multifamily residential buildings. In January 2014, owner Gene Ed- wards told an NLRB agent he’d shut down the company before he’d go union. But McCarrick ordered the com- pany to hire seven union painters, pay back wages with interest, and read the court order in English and Spanish to his assembled employees in the pres- ence of a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) agent. Gene Edwards acted as if his com- pany were immune to the effects of the law. He and his family went into a five- day hearing without an attorney, and made such a mess of the proceedings that the voluminous transcript is full of dark comedy, like when the company denied it was engaged in interstate commerce, or argued that the Painters Union was not a labor organization. During the trial McCarrick repeatedly made allowances for Edwards’ lack of legal experience. But in his decision he seems to have lost patience with Ed- wards’ thumbing his nose at the law. Section 7 of the National Labor Re- lations Act says employees have the right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in other concerted activities for the pur- pose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection. That’s fol- lowed by Section 8(a)(1), which says it’s an unfair labor practice for an em- ployer to interfere with, restrain, or co- erce employees in the exercise of those Section 7 rights. Keep that in mind when you con- sider that Edwards Painting, more specifically Gene Edwards and wife Connie and sons Grant and Bob inter- rogated employees about union activi- ties on numerous occasions; threatened to lay off or terminate employees if they signed a union petition, attended a union meeting, or voted for the union; promised a wage increase — and work throughout the winter — if they’d cease union activities; and told workers their (Turn to Page 2) Portland teachers unions host festival in Pioneer Square Free pumpkins, face- painting … and standardized tests. By DON McINTOSH Associate Editor Portland-metro-area teachers unions are throwing a party Sunday. Oct. 19 at Pioneer Courthouse Square, offering free pumpkins, face-painting … and standardized tests. Yes, standardized tests. As part of the Portland Association of Teachers’ (PAT) Quality Education Festival, one booth will give parents and kids a chance to answer sample questions from the new test that fourth graders are slated to take this Spring. The Smarter Balanced Assessment is part of a nationwide roll-out of high-stakes tests the federal government is at- tempting to impose on states. Ironically, the test itself is incom- plete and untested. Students will use computers to take the Smarter Bal- anced test, but software glitches have plagued early run-throughs, and sec- tions of the test like social studies haven’t yet been developed. In May, the Representative Assembly of 48,000-member Oregon Education As- sociation (OEA) approved a resolution calling for a statewide moratorium on the test. And the National Education Association, of which OEA is an affil- iate, is supporting a bill in Congress to lessen the number of federally-man- dated standardized tests. PAT Vice President Suzanne Cohen — a science and math teacher at Penin- sula Middle School — says people who take the sample Smarter Balanced test at the booth will be surprised how challenging it is. “It’s not that we’re against chal- lenging tests,” Cohen said. “It’s the high stakes associated with this test. This test has yet to be validated or proven, and yet they want to use it to measure students, schools and teach- ers, and school districts. And we just really question this notion that funding should be based on this, or that a school would be rated positively or negatively based on test scores.” States are spending $1.7 billion a year on standardized tests, according to the Brookings Institution — money that could be going to instruction. That’s particularly a problem in Ore- gon, where school funding has de- clined steadily and dramatically over the past two decades when adjusted for inflation. After successive rounds of budget cuts and belt-tightening, Ore- gon schools today are less likely to have art, music, dance, and drama of- ferings than they used to. High school foreign language offerings are less ro- bust. Shop class is a distant memory. Schools have fewer nurses, librarians, and counselors. High-quality, prop- erly-staffed maintenance of school grounds and physical plant are a thing of the past. And in the midst of an epi- demic of childhood obesity, many ele- mentary schools lack physical educa- tion teachers, and cafeterias are heating and serving processed foods to save on labor costs. So the event in the square is a kind of launch party, to take forward the public campaign Portland Association of Teachers waged when it faced down district managers in February’s near- strike. PAT won contract gains, includ- ing an agreement that teachers won’t be graded based on scores on student tests that weren’t designed for that pur- pose. But union leaders say that’s only the beginning. The event in the square is meant to demonstrate three princi- ples: That students deserve to be a funding priority for the state, that a stu- dent is more than a test score, and that strong schools build strong communi- ties. “We want students and families en- gaged and involved,” Cohen said. “It can’t just be teachers.” PAT and over a dozen metro-area sister locals are taking part in the event, backed by OEA. Besides free pump- kins and popcorn, the Quality Educa- tion Festival will feature student per- formances led by licensed teachers, a fun photo booth, and a video booth for participants to record statements on what kind of education they think Ore- gon students deserve. The festival runs from noon to 3 p.m. Oct. 19 at Pioneer Courthouse Square in downtown Port- land.
