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.