PAGE 8 | July 17, 2015 | NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
...Legislature adjourns
From Page 7
HEALTH CARE
would have generated $343 mil-
lion for roads. But the plan
needed some Republican votes
because of Oregon’s requirement
that tax increases pass by a 3/5
supermajority. Republicans de-
cided to hold the transportation
package hostage in order to get
Democrats to repeal the Clean
Fuels program. Democrats
balked, and stalemate resulted.
☒ $337 million State Capitol ren-
ovation The State of Oregon has
spent more than $30 million
planning a renovation of the
Capitol building — a four-year
$337 million project. But the
project didn’t get the green light
from lawmakers.
Service Employees (SEIU) Lo-
cal 49, which represents 7,600
health care workers, has a cam-
paign called Act Now for a
Healthy Oregon that pushes for
industry reforms. But this year’s
effort was opposed by dozens of
lobbyists representing the med-
ical-industrial complex, and
they’re used to getting their way
in Salem.
PUBLIC SECTOR
☒ A deal’s a deal In 1995, a Re-
publican-led legislature rewrote
Oregon’s public employee col-
lective bargaining law to reduce
union power. Twenty years later,
public employee unions are still
trying to get Democratic majori-
ties to undo the damage. One ex-
ample is “expedited bargaining.”
A public employer like the City
of Portland can sign a union con-
tract, then come back soon after
and say something new has
come up, and unilaterally impose
new terms — over union objec-
tions — after 90 days of desul-
tory “expedited bargaining.”
Oregon AFSCME and Oregon
School Employees Association
pushed a bill to require binding
arbitration in such cases if the
two sides couldn’t agree. It
passed the House 32-25. In the
Senate … it couldn’t get a floor
vote.
☒ Right to unionize The Oregon
State Bar is a quasi-public
agency that polices misconduct
by lawyers. Should its staff have
the same right as other workers
to unionize? Oregon House De-
mocrats thought so, and ap-
proved a bill to make the Bar
subject to Oregon’s collective
bargaining law — on a party-line
35-25 vote. In the Senate, it died
in committee.
☑ Improvements for crisis unit
workers Oregon’s Stabilization
and Crisis Unit is a network of
23 secure group homes where
about 250 AFSCME-represented
staff work with sometimes vio-
lent adults or children with intel-
lectual or developmental disabil-
ities who are deemed a risk to the
public, themselves, or fellow res-
idents. AFSCME was able to
pass a bill this year to allow the
staff the same early retirement
benefits that police and fire fight-
ers get, and another bill creating
a task force to improve staff
safety.
☒ Health care price trans-
parency One bill would have re-
quired health care facilities to
publish prices, so consumers
could make informed choices
about where to go. Instead, law-
makers passed what state Sen.
Chip Shields (D-Portland) called
“sham hospital rate trans-
parency.” Hospitals will submit
price data for the most common
procedures, but the state will
keep it secret, instead publishing
the “median” price.
☒ Taxing health care facilities
that don’t provide charity care
Oregon’s non-profit hospitals get
all kinds of tax breaks—no prop-
erty taxes, no income taxes,
nothing—but face no require-
ments on how much charity care
they’re supposed to provide in
exchange. In fact, SEIU says,
hospital spending on charity care
declined by nearly half in the
first half of 2014. But a bill to
link the property tax exemption
to the amount of charity care
died without a committee vote.
☑ Hospital staffing ratio SEIU
and the Oregon Nurses Associa-
tion did win a set of improve-
ments to a nurse staffing ratio
law. The 2001 law requires hos-
pitals to have a minimum
staffing plan developed by a joint
committee of nurse managers
and direct care nurses. Now, that
committee will have a position
for a CNA or LPN too, and at
unionized hospitals, the direct
care nurses will be selected by
the union. Also, committee meet-
ings will be open to hospital staff
and to union reps. Health care
providers will also get at least 10
hours off after working 12 hours
in a 24-hour period. And nurses
will be allowed to refuse to work
overtime if they believe that
would jeopardize patient or em-
ployee safety.
ONLINE EXTRA
For even more bills, plus links to see how
your reps voted, visit the online version of
this article at: http://bit.ly/1JfEACk
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