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August 7, 2015 | NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
AFSCME, state of Oregon
reach tentative agreement
The union negotiating team (from left to right) IBEW International Rep David Myers; Administrative Assistant
Kristi Straight; Siemens workers Nick Reed and Nick Miles; Local 48 rep Ray Lister; Siemens employee Chris
Lap; Local 48 rep Scott Zadow; Siemens worker Greg Norman; and IBEW International Rep Rick Hite.
Workers join IBEW Local 48
At Siemens, solidarity got the goods
By Don McIntosh
Associate Editor
What can 20 workers spread over
four states do to improve working
conditions at a massive multina-
tional? Maybe not much, on their
own. But boosted by union broth-
ers and sisters, a group of North-
west medical imaging technicians
joined the International Brother-
hood of Electrical Workers
(IBEW) Local 48 and got a first
contract with big gains.
The workers maintain and re-
pair MRI and CAT scan ma-
chines in Oregon, Washington,
Idaho and Montana for Siemens
Medical Services USA, a sub-
sidiary of the German conglom-
erate Siemens. Salaries for the
highly-skilled work ranged from
$44,000 to $112,000 a year, but
workers wanted less arbitrary
pay, more job security, and other
improvements. With a little sol-
idarity, they got those things.
Solidarity is the trade union
principle of groups of workers
supporting each other—stand-
ing strong together.
First, international solidarity
helped the Siemens techs get a
union: One day after a Siemens
board member from the German
union IG Metall complained,
the company dropped a legal
objection that was delaying a
union election, and the workers
voted 13 to 6 to unionize.
Then, in June, regional soli-
darity unclogged first-contract
talks that were slowing to a
crawl—letters from labor organ-
izations made the difference,
IBEW Local 48 organizer Ray
Lister explains.
It took six years—and the de-
feat of an effort to vote out the
union—before a similar Sie-
mens tech group in Boston got
its first union contract. Bargain-
ing for the Northwest group got
off to a good start, Lister says,
but bogged down after eight
months when the two sides
started talking about economic
issues. Local 48 reached out to
other labor organizations, and
got letters of support from the
Oregon AFL-CIO, Idaho AFL-
CIO, Montana AFL-CIO—and
from the Oregon Nurses Associ-
ation (ONA) and Oregon Feder-
ation of Nurses and Health Pro-
fessionals Local 5017, two
unions that represent over
16,000 nurses in total.
“We are … very disappointed
to hear that you have been meet-
ing with resistance at the bar-
gaining table from the em-
ployer,” wrote ONA executive
Paul Goldberg June 26. “Please
let our new brothers and sisters
know that they have the full sup-
port of the Oregon Nurses Asso-
ciation. We will be pleased to
help educate our membership
about your struggle for repre-
sentation and offer our support
to your campaign in any way we
can to assist in achieving a fair
contract.”
The IBEW bargaining team
presented the letters to their
management counterparts on
June 30, and the next day, the
Siemens negotiators came back
with an offer even better than
what the union had last pro-
posed. Ratified in ballots
counted Aug. 1, the four-year
contract gives workers a one-
time $2,000 bonus, a one-time
pay bump of $1,000 to $6,000 a
year for workers who are consid-
ered underpaid relative to their
co-workers, annual merit pay
raises of 2.75 to 3.75 percent,
stand-by pay for being on-call,
and pay for travel time in some
cases. It also locks in existing
benefits like medical insurance
and a 401(k) match, and it pro-
vides an array of union rights
and benefits, including progres-
sive discipline process, griev-
ance and arbitration procedures,
and a successor agreement so
that union contract terms con-
tinue if the company is sold.
The American Federation of
State, County and Municipal
Employees (AFSCME) has
reached a tentative agreement
on a new two-year contract with
the state of Oregon.
The sides came to terms at
about 11 p.m. on July 7, follow-
ing almost 14 hours of bargain-
ing. Economic highlights of the
proposed two-year agreement
include:
• Cost-of-living adjustments (CO-
LAs) totaling 5 percent over the
contract: 2.25 percent on Dec. 1,
2015, and 2.75 percent on Dec.
1, 2016.
• Health insurance plans with op-
tions of a 95-5 percent split for
employees who choose the more
expensive of the two plans, or
99-1 percent for those choosing
the plan of less cost.
• The day after Thanksgiving as a
paid holiday for AFSCME-rep-
resented state employees.
“This agreement makes par-
ticular advancements on health
care issues and equitable wage
increases,” said Ken Allen, ex-
ecutive director of Oregon AF-
SCME Council 75 and chief ne-
gotiator. “We will whole-
heartedly recommend passage
to our membership.”
The contract includes all AF-
SCME-represented state agen-
cies except the Department of
Corrections; negotiations with
the DOC continue. The state
contract covers over 3,000 AF-
SCME-represented workers; the
DOC contract covers roughly
another 3,000.
Union members will begin a
ratification process this month.
Janus Youth Programs employees vote to join AFSCME
Residential treatment employ-
ees at Janus Youth Programs in
Portland voted 26-12 July 21 to
join Oregon AFSCME. There
are 49 employees in the bargain-
ing unit. They will join Local
1790, newly established for Ba-
sic Rights Oregon employees.
Janus Youth is a private non-
profit that operates around Port-
land. The clients range from age
13 to 21, with those 18 and older
housed separately from the
younger kids.
“Our new members are pri-
marily case managers and skills
trainers,” said Council 75 Or-
ganizer Doug Lantz, the lead
AFSCME staffer on the organ-
izing campaign. “They work
with the youth in treatment pro-
grams, teaching them a wide
range of topics from basic life
skills to job searching.”
Lantz said a group of Janus
workers contacted AFSCME
about six months ago express-
ing a desire to join the union. He
says economics was a key issue,
but not the only factor.
“A lot of these workers have
college degrees, and this is the
field they want to work in, mak-
ing a difference in young peo-
ples’ lives,” Lantz said. “But at
Janus, many are barely above
minimum wage. So that is big
factor, as they want to create
new standards that will allow
them to be able to afford to stay
at Janus. And they’d like to see
just better overall accountability
for and from management. ”
First contract negotiations
will begin soon.
A separate group of five pro-
fessionals at Janus voted 3-2 not
to unionize with the bargaining
unit.
Janus workers at the organi-
zation’s Street Light homeless
shelter are represented by the In-
dustrial Workers of the World
(IWW) Local 650.