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About Northwest labor press. (Portland , Ore.) 1987-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 21, 2014)
One toke over the line Workers can still be fired for using legal marijuana In July 2015, recreational marijuana use will become legal in Oregon for adults 21 and over. But there’s a hitch: Adults can use marijuana, but employ- ers can still fire them for doing it. Ballot Measure 91, which legalized recreational marijuana, specifically left untouched private prohibition by em- ployers or landlords. Nonunion em- ployers can impose whatever work- place drug policies they want. Union employers must negotiate drug policies with the union. But under federal law, employers in transportation and em- ployers that have federal contracts have no choice: They must have workplace drug policies. And under that federal regulatory regime, marijuana continues to be one of five tested-for drugs (along with amphetamines, cocaine, opiates and PCP). Paul Loney, a Portland attorney who specializes in marijuana law, says workers need to know their employer’s policy. Some conduct random drug tests, while others test only after an ac- cident or on suspicion of intoxication. And when a test comes back positive, some discipline or fire an employee, while others send them for counseling or treatment. In hazardous working environ- ments, it’s reasonable for employers to want workers to be sober. The problem is, the standard-issue drug tests don’t actually show intoxication, Loney says: “They don’t test for impairment; they test for metabolites.” U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore- gon), one of the biggest advocates of reforming federal marijuana law, says employees subject to workplace drug policies shouldn’t risk sanctions in the workplace. But he thinks federal mari- juana prohibition will be history by 2020. By then, most states will have more relaxed policies, and the federal government will reclassify marijuana to bring government policy more in line with common sense. “Right now, according to the federal government, marijuana is more danger- ous than methamphetamine or co- caine,” Blumenauer told the Labor Press. “That’s crazy.” Since 1972, marijuana has been classified — along with heroin and LSD — as a Schedule I Controlled Substance, meaning that it has a “high potential for abuse” and possesses “no currently accepted medical use in treat- ment in the United States.” Blumenauer has urged the Obama Administration to use its legal authority to reclassify marijuana, but so far, the president has refused. “It’s well known that marijuana is less dangerous than tobacco,” Blume- nauer said, “and it’s used by about 20 million people every month in Amer- ica. Prohibition has failed, just like al- cohol prohibition failed.” Quote of the Month for by a small group of ultra-wealthy donors using outside groups to bury voters with an avalanche of spending.” “The real story of the election’s campaign finance chapter was not which side had more resources, but that such a large chunk of the cost was paid E E FR Who’s On Our Side? n the afternoon of Nov. 4, I began to follow election re- turns from across the United States. The news wasn’t good. The Blue Tide that swept across America in 2008 on President Obama’s coattails was ebbing. De- mocrats who had won Senate seats in Republican states lost big. Throughout the night, swing states such as Colorado elected Republi- cans. All in all, eight U.S. Senate seats flipped from blue to red, as did 13 U.S. House of Representative seats and three governorships. These results aren’t surprising when you start to evaluate the 2014 election. America’s governing bod- ies — from the U.S. Senate to state legislatures — became more con- servative because working people didn’t go to the polls. After eight years of President Bush’s profit-at- any-cost agenda, six years of Con- gressional stagnation, and the rise of corporate domination of the po- litical process, working people stayed home. They didn’t go to the polls be- cause they felt their vote didn’t mat- ter. They were turned off by the mil- lions of dollars spent on negative advertising. Only 36.3 percent of eligible voters made it to the polls nationwide. While America was becoming more conservative, in a small cor- ner of the Pacific Northwest, a state became more progressive. The most noticeable difference? 69.5 percent of registered voters participated in the 2014 election in Oregon. Why is that? Some say it is because we vote by mail. But Colorado and Wash- ington are vote-by-mail states, and their voter turnout was just slightly PAGE 6 BARGAIN COUNTER Free classified ads to subscribers By Tom Chamberlain O R USS C HOMA C ENTER FOR R ESPONSIVE P OLITICS N OV . 5, 2014 above the national average. Some say that ballot measures drove voter turnout. Five states had minimum wage on the ballot, and Alaska, Arkansas, Illinois, Ne- braska and South Dakota all ex- ceeded the national turnout. But none came near Oregon’s turnout numbers. Why is it that Oregon has moved progressively left since the mid- 1990s when Republicans controlled both chambers and Democrat John Kitzhaber was governor? Was it the migration of tech jobs into Wash- ington County, once a Republican stronghold that now votes consis- tently progressive? Is there some- thing else turning outlying parts of our purple state blue? I believe Oregon’s success is a combination of factors that includes vote by mail, takes into account Washington County turning blue, and acknowledges the content of our ballot measures. But it’s more than that. What separates Oregon from the rest of the country is that we have learned to fight together. Billionaires bought the airwaves to fight GMOs, push the top-two primary, and support Monica We- hby and Dennis Richardson. This is not strange territory for Oregon. We always seem to be in someone’s electoral gun sights. Tax reform, re- strictions on marriage, limiting workers’ rights, all have been on the Oregon ballot with mixed results. Oregon is a cheap media market and attracts all manner of million- aire crackpots. This constant elec- tion year attack has forged a strong alliance within Oregon’s progres- sive community. We know that while it may not be our fight this year, it could be our fight next year. Environmentalists, immigrant rights, choice and basic rights ac- tivists, unions and working people — we’ve all banded together to share resources, develop strategies, and fight an ongoing onslaught of conservative ballot measures. The 2014 election cycle was Oregon at its best, carrying the mes- sage door to door, on the phone, in the workplace and through the mail. Our combined efforts made a dif- ference. Since 2010, the Oregon AFL- CIO has not contributed to candi- dates but, instead, invested in our in- frastructure. We’ve created the largest ground game in the state — complete with call sectors, weekly canvasses, worksite programs, and Working America. This year we hired on-the- ground staff in Bend, Medford, Corvallis and Eugene to establish our program across the state, and it paid off. Thirty percent of our calls and walks were done outside the Portland area. Sara Gelser and Alan Bates won hard-fought State Senate elections in Corvallis and Medford — two regions where our ground game was on the move. We as a progressive movement should be proud of what we have accomplished. But we should also remember that we won because we kept our egos in check. We won be- cause we fought together. We won because we realize the future of our state and our nation rests in the hands of the people, not corpora- tions and billionaires. Tom Chamberlain is president of the Oregon AFL-CIO. 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