NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS | July 17, 2015 | PAGE 7
...Legislature adjourns
From Page 1
OTHER WINS AND LOSSES
☑ Domestic worker bill of rights
Starting Jan. 1, nearly 10,000
nannies, house cleaners, and
housekeepers who work in Ore-
gon homes will have a right to
three days off a year, meal and
rest breaks, and protections
against harassment and discrim-
ination. Those living in employ-
ers’ homes will get eight hours of
uninterrupted rest every 24
hours, overtime pay after 44
hours of work, and the right to
cook their own meals. Others
will get overtime after 40 hours
and at least one day off a week.
Oregon is the fifth state to pass
such a bill, giving domestic
workers some of the same legal
rights other workers have.
☑ Wage transparency Employers
will be barred from retaliating
against workers for disclosing
their wages. Such workplace
policies can mask unfair wage
disparities, including compensa-
tion differences between male
and female workers.
☑ Increase worker’s comp attor-
ney fees It’s gotten harder to get
a lawyer when a worker’s comp
claim is denied in Oregon, be-
cause low fees make it hard for
lawyers to take cases. But this
year MLAC, the management-
labor committee on workers’
comp, recommended a bill to
raise fees in a way that doesn’t
come out of a worker’s settle-
ment; it passed.
☑ Cannabis workers rights
United Food and Commercial
Workers, which has unionized
cannabis workers in other states,
was able to get workers’ rights
provisions added to Oregon’s
new law regulating the newly-le-
galized cannabis industry. A sec-
tion of the new law guarantees
cannabis workers the right to
unionize, and makes it an unlaw-
ful employment practice to retal-
iate against workers for that. It
also lets the Oregon Liquor Con-
trol Commission set merit-based
criteria for issuing or renewing
licenses, including whether an
applicant offers employees living
wages and benefits.
☒ Wage theft The Oregon Coali-
tion to Stop Wage Theft, a coali-
tion of eight unions and 29 faith
and community groups, teamed
up with Labor Commissioner
Brad Avakian to push bills crack-
ing down on employers who vi-
olate wage and hour laws. They
had almost no success. Associ-
ated Oregon Industries and As-
sociated General Contractors
tarred the bills as “job-killers.”
Just one bill passed, allowing the
Bureau of Labor and Industries
to garnish employer accounts to
enforce wage orders.
☒ Employer health insurance
The Oregon AFL-CIO’s “health-
care accountability” bill would
have penalized large employers
whose employees end up on
publicly subsidized health care.
No state has done this so far.
☒ Scheduling abuses A landmark
San Francisco ordinance puts a
halt to abusive scheduling prac-
tices like giving workers little
notice of schedules, making last-
minute schedule changes, requir-
ing workers to be on-call, and
sending workers home early
when sales are slow. No one
thought Oregon lawmakers
would be as bold as San Fran-
cisco, but advocates dipped a toe
in the water with bills giving
workers the right to ask for pre-
dictable schedules. Instead, the
Legislature went the other way,
passing a two-year moratorium
on local jurisdictions taking ac-
tion on scheduling. That anti-
worker move was led by State
Sen. Chris Edwards (D-Eugene),
who got it attached to passage of
the sick leave measure.
BUILDING TRADES
Every year, the Oregon State
Building and Construction
Trades Council goes to Salem to
advocate for public infrastruc-
ture investment, help clear ob-
stacles to private construction
projects, and protect and expand
the requirement to pay the pre-
vailing wage to workers on con-
struction projects that spend
public money. Building Trades
executive secretary-treasurer
John Mohlis State ended this
year’s session more aggrieved
than celebratory. Mohlis called it
“almost inconceivable” that law-
makers would leave without
passing a transportation bill, and
says a needed renovation of the
State Capitol won’t get easier or
cheaper just because lawmakers
kicked that down the road. Still,
lawmakers did approve hun-
dreds of millions in new infra-
structure spending, and passed
union-supported fixes to past tax
and prevailing wage legislation.
☑ Clean fuels Oregon’s Low Car-
bon Fuel Standard, also known
as the Clean Fuels Program, was
first approved by the Legislature
in 2009, and needed to be re-ap-
proved in 2015 in order to go for-
ward to implementation after six
years of research. The bill had the
backing of the building trades, as
well as AFSCME Local 3336,
which represents Oregon DEQ.
The plan is to reduce the carbon
needed to make transportation fu-
els by 10 percent over the next 10
years. It’s likely to create jobs:
Salem’s SeQuential Pacific Bio-
Fuels is expanding its refinery ca-
pacity by 20 percent, and Fort
Collins, Colorado-based Red
Rock Biofuels is pursuing per-
mits to construct a new $200 mil-
lion plant in Lakeview.
☑ Convention Center hotel A
new law makes it clear that the
Metro regional government has
the authority to finance construc-
tion of a convention center head-
quarters hotel.
☑ Flaggers A new law backed by
the Laborers requires construc-
tion flagging contractors to get a
license and show that they’re
bonded and carry insurance.
☒ Solar arrays A bill to incen-
tivize utility-scale solar installa-
tions of up to 300 megawatts was
backed by IBEW, but failed to
pass. IBEW Local 48 political di-
rector Joe Esmonde thinks law-
makers balked at the price tag.
☒ 4-cent gas tax increase to fund
road improvements Because
cars are more efficient than they
used to be, Oregon’s gas tax isn’t
keeping up with the need to
maintain roads. The state gas tax
is currently 30 cents per gallon,
and hasn’t increased since 2011.
Lawmakers put together a plan
for two 2-cent increases. [Any
more than that, and the trucking
industry and AAA threatened to
campaign to overturn it with a
ballot measure.] The tax increase
— plus higher vehicle fees —
Turn to Page 8
VANCOUVER CITY COUNCIL
Position #4
Position #5
Position #6
BART HANSEN
TY STOBER
GEORGE FRANCISCO
CLARK COUNTY COUNCIL
See you at the AFL-CIO
Summer School,
August 7-9, where
Chris Frost has a
workshop on Workers’
Comp. Go online for
more info:
Chair, At Large
MARC BOLDT
MIKE DALESANDRO
Councilor, Dist. 2
CHUCK GREEN
NO
MADORE
http://lerc.uoregon.edu/eve
nts/summer-school/
BATTLE GROUND CITY COUNCIL
Councilor, Pos. #7
CANDY BONNEVILLE
EVERGREEN SCHOOL DISTRICT
Representative, Dist. 3
VICTORIA BRADFORD