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About Northwest labor press. (Portland , Ore.) 1987-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 20, 2015)
SERVING ORGANIZED LABOR IN OREGON AND SOUTHWEST WASHINGTON SINCE 1900 NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS VOLUME 116, NUMBER 4 INSIDE In memoriam Union meetings Free classifieds Economics 101 3 4 6 7 PORTLAND, OREGON FEBRUARY 20, 2015 PRACTICE WHAT YOU PREACH John Kitzhaber resigns First Unitarian recognizes a union amid ‘media frenzy’ Church leaders balk at first, but pressure from the congregation prompts a change of heart By Don McIntosh Associate editor Senior minister Bill Sinkford was more than a little surprised Nov. 18, when 11 of his employees at First Unitarian Church of Portland entered his office to present signa- tures demanding union recogni- tion. First Unitarian is one of Port- land’s most progressive churches, with an activist congregation and a profusion of committees on so- cial, economic, and environmen- tal justice. Its parent organization, the Unitarian Universalist Associ- ation of Congregations, teaches that evil originates with “unjust social and economic conditions.” But when church employees announced their plan to tackle un- just economic conditions by sign- ing up with Communications Workers of America (CWA) Lo- cal 7901, they got a chilly re- sponse from Sinkford and two other church executives: Minister Tom Disrud and Administrator Kathryn Estey. Jason Chapman, Nicole Bowmer, Josh Mong and Kate Fagerholm fell in love with their jobs at First Unitarian Church of Portland, but were shaken last No- vember when their efforts to unionize were opposed. Fagerholm left her job at the church as of Feb. 6. Church leaders did an about face the next day, and agreed to recognize the union. The day after the delegation went to Sinkford’s office, then- Local 7901 president Madelyn Elder got a phone call from Cor- bett Gordon — a member of the First Unitarian congregation who’s also a management-side at- torney at Tonkon Torp law firm. Gordon told Elder that U.S. labor law doesn’t require churches to bargain with unions, and First Unitarian wouldn’t be recogniz- ing Local 7901. But that response missed the point, says labor attorney Cathy Highet, who advised the Unitarian workers. “The whole point of this exemption is to allow churches to organize their labor relations in accord with church doctrine,” Highet told the Labor Press. Just because churches don’t have to recognize a union doesn’t mean they can’t. Clerical employees at Turn to Page 2 John Kitzhaber’s Feb. 13 resigna- tion as Oregon governor generated expressions of sympathy from top labor leaders, who have looked on him as an ally. The resignation followed a de- cision by the state attorney general to open a criminal investigation into whether paid advocacy work by Kitzhaber's fiancée Cylvia Hayes crossed legal lines. “I am confident that I have not broken any laws nor taken any ac- tions that were dishonest or dis- honorable in their intent or out- come,” Kitzhaber said at the press conference announcing his resig- nation. But Kitzhaber said he was troubled that a person can be “charged, tried, convicted and sen- tenced by the media with no due process and no independent veri- fication of the allegations in- volved.” An “escalating media frenzy” had “reached the point of no return,” Kitzhaber said, and he became a liability to the cause. Kitzhaber included efforts to defend workers’ union rights among his proudest achievements: “We have stood by our working men and women steadfastly sup- porting collective bargaining and the right to form a union,” he said. “If you look at what he’s ac- complished in the last 12 years, it’s pretty phenomenal,” said Oregon AFL-CIO President Tom Cham- berlain (referring to the three full terms Kitzhaber served as gover- nor). “When the Republican far right took over the Legislature, he was ‘Dr. No.’ He stopped this state from being Wisconsin-lite. He took a hostile Senate and House and did everything he could to push a progressive agenda. The bottom line is: More people have health care, and better health care, because of John Kitzhaber.” Kitzhaber was an emergency room doctor when he entered the Oregon House in 1978. He served a two-year term in the House and three four-year terms in the Ore- gon Senate. As Senate president, he led passage of the legislation that created the Oregon Health Plan — which stretches federal Medicaid dollars to cover more low-income Oregonians than the minimum required by federal guidelines. Then, as Oregon governor from Turn to Page 3 Portland airport: a highly desirable workplace, for managers After unions advocate for low- wage workers, the Port hires a consultant at $197 an hour to develop a ‘social equity’ policy By Don McIntosh Associate editor What do you get when you ask high-paid managers to draft a proposal to improve life for low- wage workers? A whole lot of nothing. For nearly a year, UNITE HERE and Service Employees International Union (SEIU) have pressed the Port of Portland to do something to improve wages and job security for hundreds of low-wage workers at Portland International Airport (PDX) — baggage handlers, wheelchair assistants, fuelers, cabin clean- ers, and concessions workers. What Port executives came up with — after months of “stakeholder” meetings — was five pages of management- speak, in which the public agency promises next to noth- ing. The document, presented to the Port of Portland Board of Commissioners Feb. 11, is full of sentences like these: “Integral to ensuring that airport workers, whether employees of the Port of Portland or the many contrac- tors and concessionaire workers at PDX, are safe, healthy and able to sustain high quality work is the vigilant attention to rights and benefits afforded them. To this end the Port will monitor and enhance existing programs as well as chart paths to new benefits not currently in place.” Say what? You can take a look at the document yourself at ow.ly/JdesJ. We did our best to boil down the verbiage, and found just two tangible im- provements: • The Port will make it easier for employers to offer subsidized bus passes to workers. • The Port might make a computer available for workers to search for new jobs. The other bullet points in the 1,600-word document range from vague to meaningless: The Port will “continue” to do a va- riety of things it’s already doing; it will “partner with state agen- cies” to tell workers how to sign up for Obamacare; it will “join with” the City of Portland and the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries to tell airport employ- ers about sick leave; it will make lease-holders submit written plans on how to avoid “disrup- tive labor strife;” it will require contractors to detail the “mini- mum level of working condi- tions” they themselves set for employees; and on and on. There are even bullet points touting past achievements — like last November’s airport job fair for pink-slipped concessions workers. The one promising item would come in 2016, when the Port would include “wages and benefits, quality of safety training, and career develop- ment programs” in its criteria for evaluating and scoring con- cessions proposals. The document was written by a cross-departmental group of 14 senior managers from human resources, legal, operations, public affairs, and finance. Nowhere does the manage- ment-written draft admit there’s a problem with low wages at the airport. In fact, it lauds PDX as “a highly desirable workplace,” and “an excellent working envi- ronment in terms of safety, secu- rity and opportunities for ad- vancement and mutual success.” Turn to Page 5
