SERVING ORGANIZED LABOR IN OREGON AND SOUTHWEST WASHINGTON SINCE 1900
NORTHWEST
LABOR
PRESS
VOLUME 116, NUMBER 20
INSIDE
AFL-CIO confab
Meeting Notices
Classified ads
Awards Night
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4
6
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PORTLAND, OREGON
OCTOBER 16, 2015
Obama signs TPP
The 12-nation pact would favor the rights of investors over workers
By Don McIntosh
Associate Editor
The secret negotiations are
complete. The Trans-Pacific
Partnership (TPP) — kind of a
quadruple NAFTA — was fi-
nalized Oct. 5 and will be head-
ing to Congress for a ratifica-
tion vote. TPP is a partnership
between corporate lawyers and
government leaders from 12
Pacific Rim nations — to write
a massive set of rules that
would lock in corporate profits
and protect investors from
democracy.
But that’s not how President
Barack Obama’s trade czar put
it. U.S. Trade Representative
Michael Froman is a former
Citigroup executive and Har-
vard Law classmate of
Obama’s. During his Senate
confirmation it came out that
he owned substantial funds in a
Cayman Islands tax haven.
Froman’s the guy who led the
TPP talks to completion, and
he wants you to think TPP is all
about benefiting American
workers.
For details of the sales pitch,
or just to witness the Obama
Administration’s world-class
chutzpah, take a look at Fro-
man’s brand-new propaganda
web site — ustr.gov/tpp. The
site features a red-white-and-
blue logo that reads “TPP:
Made In America,” and the
“We already know
enough to oppose the
TPP. It’s going to off-
shore jobs and drive
down wages.”
— Citizens Trade Campaign
director Arthur Stamoulis
tagline, “leveling the playing
field for American workers and
American businesses.” The
TPP “includes the strongest
worker protections of any trade
agreement in history,” the web
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HEALTH CARE
Machinists Lodge 63 member Sam Beekman (right) at the starting
line at Timberline Lodge with his friend Brian Epps ... and below at
the finish line in Seaside.
’Fighting Machinist’ completes Hood
to Coast route … in a wheelchair
ALS doesn’t stop Sam Beekman’s
quest for adventure.
By Michael Gutwig
Editor & Manager
Longtime Machinists Lodge 63
member Sam Beekman put to-
gether a four-man team of ALS
patients to help raise awareness
about the disease. They did it by
riding their wheelchairs 175
miles from Timberline Lodge
on Mt. Hood to the promenade
in Seaside on the Oregon coast.
Initially, the idea was to enter
a team in the popular Hood to
Coast Relay, an annual event
that Beekman and the Machin-
ists Union — The Fighting Ma-
chinists — participated in for
more than a decade starting in
the mid-’90s. Race officials,
however, worried about their
safety, so the plan was nixed.
Beekman and his friend Brian
Epp, who also has ALS, came
up with Plan B — wait until a
few weeks after the Hood to
Coast Relay, and do it on their
own. So, at 9 a.m. on Sept. 25,
Beekman and Epps set out from
Timberline Lodge for the first of
nine legs of the “non-sanc-
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Premiums continue to outpace
inflation and workers’ wages
Deductibles triple in 10 years,
and family premiums now aver-
age $17,545 a year
The Kaiser Family Founda-
tion’s 17th annual nationwide
employer survey confirms
what most workers are already
feeling: Health care costs are
gobbling up more and more of
their wages.
Employers are the principal
source of health insurance in
the United States, providing
health benefits for about 147
million Americans who are un-
der 65. But most workers share
the cost of the medical services
they use. That cost sharing can
take a variety of forms, includ-
ing a share of the premium de-
ductibles, co-payments (fixed
dollar amounts per visit), and
co-insurance (a percentage of
the charge for services).
Who’s covered?
The premium
In 2015, 57 percent of employ-
ers offer health benefits to at
least some of their workers, sta-
tistically unchanged from the
55 percent in 2014. That in-
cludes 98 percent of large firms
(200 or more workers) but just
47 percent of the smallest firms
(three to nine workers).
Single and family premiums
for employer-sponsored health
insurance rose an average of 4
percent between 2014 and
2015. Since 2005, premiums
have grown an average of 5
percent each year, down from
the 11 percent annually they
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