NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS | October 16 , 2015 | PAGE 5
Oregon governor names IBEW 48’s Gary Young to Port Commission
Young replaces ILWU’s Bruce
Holte as one of two labor reps on
the nine-member commission.
Oregon Gov. Kate Brown has
appointed IBEW Local 48 Busi-
ness Manager Gary Young to a
seat on the nine-member Port of
Portland Commission.
Young takes the spot that was
held by former International
Longshore and Warehouse
Union (ILWU) Local 8 Presi-
dent Bruce Holte, whose second
four-year term expired Aug. 1.
The Port Commission sets
policy and oversees manage-
ment of the Port of Portland.
Port of Portland runs the Port-
land International Airport, four
marine terminals, and several
industrial parks. It’s a public
agency supported by property
taxes, and has a mission of re-
gional eco-
nomic devel-
opment.
Young was
installed at
the commis-
sion’s Oct. 14
meeting (af-
ter this issue
went
to
Gary Young
press). He’ll
serve along-
side Oregon AFL-CIO President
Tom Chamberlain on a body
that is otherwise peopled by
business representatives.
The Port of Portland is vitally
important to organized labor,
and not just to ILWU, which has
about 500 members who load
and unload ships. As a commer-
cial property manager, the Port
is a major employer of building
trades union members. The Port
is also landlord to numerous
union manufacturing enterprises
at the Swan Island Industrial
Park, Rivergate Industrial Dis-
trict and other industrial proper-
ties. Hundreds of airline union
members work at the airport.
And about 30 IBEW Local 48
members work year-round
maintaining equipment at the
airport and at marine terminals.
The Port has also been the site
of several recent labor disputes.
Service Employees International
(SEIU), the Machinists union,
...Trans-Pacific Partnership
From Page 1
site says.
The public has only the ad-
ministration’s word for that, for
now. The text of the agreement
will continue to be classified un-
til it’s released in about a month.
In his 2008 presidential cam-
paign, Obama said he’d preside
over the most transparent admin-
istration ever. But his trade talks
were even more secret than
those of the Bush years. Almost
everything about the talks was
classified. Even members of
Congress had to go to a special
room just to see what the U.S.
was proposing in the talks —
and they weren’t allowed to take
notes or pictures. What does
Froman’s TPP web site say
about that?
“President Obama made the
TPP negotiations the most trans-
parent in American history.”
Arthur Stamoulis is executive
director of the labor-backed Cit-
izens Trade Campaign in Wash-
ington, D.C. Reached by phone,
he chuckles wearily when asked
if he thinks TPP has strong
worker protections.
“Nobody in labor is buying
it,” Stamoulis says.
Judging by the details so far
released, Stamoulis says the
claim of strong workers’ rights
protections looks pretty flimsy
for two reasons. First, TPP na-
tions would commit to meet the
core labor standards of the Inter-
national Labor Organization, but
TPP negotiators chose to define
those standards by the broad
principles of the ILO’s “Decla-
ration on Fundamental Princi-
ples and Rights at Work” — not
the specific enforceable lan-
guage of ILO Conventions. Sec-
ond, it’s enforcement that mat-
ters, not pretty promises. To
protect foreign investor rights,
TPP lets foreign investors sue
governments directly in special
dispute resolution panels. But
workers and unions wouldn’t
have a similar right to sue gov-
ernments when they violate TPP
worker rights provisions: Only
governments can make those
complaints. And the past record
doesn’t inspire confidence, Sta-
moulis says. The Bush Adminis-
tration lauded CAFTA for its
“enforceable” workers rights
standards before it passed in
2005. Today CAFTA-signatory
Guatemala is one of the dead-
liest countries on earth for trade
union organizers, and has faced
no meaningful sanction under
CAFTA.
“We’ve heard it before: ‘Trust
us; this is going to do a better job
on labor and environment.’” Sta-
moulis said.
TPP is also said to be better
for workers than past agree-
ments because it would require
countries — like Vietnam — to
have a legal minimum wage; it
doesn’t say how high, just that
they have a law.
“Can you imagine the Obama
Administration going to
PhRMA [the pharmaceutical in-
dustry lobby group] and saying
this is a good agreement because
we require them to have patent
laws?” Stamoulis said.
And there are other reasons
besides weak worker protections
to oppose TPP, Stamoulis said.
Its Investor-State Dispute Reso-
lution process would create in-
centives to offshore. Its govern-
ment procurement rules would
seriously limit efforts to buy
American or buy local. And its
rules-of-origin provisions are
worse than those of NAFTA —
it would treat autos as “Japanese
made,” even when they have lots
of Chinese parts.
“We already know enough to
oppose the TPP,” Stamoulis said.
“It’s going to offshore jobs and
drive down wages.”
UA Local 290 to politicians: Which side are you on?
A resolution passed by members of
Plumbers and Steamfitters Local 290
asks members of Congress to oppose TPP.
“The world cannot afford a ‘NAFTA of the
Pacific,’” the resolution declares. “There-
fore … be it resolved, our organization
will not endorse, fund or support any
candidate for political office that votes
for … the TPP.” After the TPP was final-
ized, Local 290 members delivered copies
of the resolution to the Vancouver offices
of U.S. Senators Maria Cantwell and
Patty Murray and Congresswoman Jaime
Herrera-Beutler. See the resolution on-
line at bit.ly/1jZhpaw
and UNITE HERE have waged
organizing campaigns among
airport workers. And SEIU and
UNITE HERE have called on
the Port Commission to raise
workplace standards — though
without nearly the success simi-
lar campaigns have had at other
major West Coast airports.
Meanwhile, ILWU and the
Port itself have been at odds
over the union’s dispute with
ICTSI — the company the Port
contracted with to manage Ter-
minal 6. ILWU is accused of or-
chestrating a workplace slow-
down at Terminal 6. That
contributed to shippers Hanjin
and Hapag-Lloyd pulling out of
the terminal, which ended
nearly all container shipping in
Portland. On Sept. 24, the Na-
tional Labor Relations Board in
Washington, D.C., upheld a
2013 administrative law judge’s
ruling that ILWU committed an
unfair labor practice when it en-
couraged the slowdown and
took other actions targeting
ICTSI. ILWU is reportedly
planning to appeal the decision
in federal circuit court.
Despite those frictions, Holte
says he was honored to be part
of the Port Commission, one of
the highlights of his life. He said
he takes pride in Port accom-
plishments he was part of, in-
cluding the building of a new
Port of Portland headquarters,
and installation of new baggage
and de-icing systems.
...Health costs rising
faster than wages
From Page 1
grew between 1999 and 2005.
The average annual pre-
mium for single coverage is
$6,251, of which workers on
average pay $1,071 ($89 a
month). The average family
premium is $17,545, with
workers on average contribut-
ing $4,955 ($413 a month).
That means workers contribute
on average 18 percent of the
premium for single coverage
and 29 percent for family cov-
erage. Those percentages have
remained about the same since
2000. There are still some
workers who don’t pay out-of-
pocket for the employer-pro-
vided coverage: 16 percent of
covered workers with single
coverage and 6 percent of cov-
ered workers with family cov-
erage work for a firm that pays
100 percent of the premium.
The deductible
Since 2010, both the share of
workers with deductibles and
the size of those deductibles
have increased sharply. About
81 percent of covered workers
today are in plans with a gen-
eral annual deductible. And
since 2010, deductibles have
risen almost three times as fast
as premiums and about seven
times as fast as wages and in-
flation. For single coverage,
average deductibles were
$584 in 2006, $917 in 2010,
and $1,318 in 2015.
Co-pay and coinsurance
Of covered workers who are
admitted to a hospital, about
65 percent pay coinsurance (a
percentage), while about 14
percent pay a copayment. The
coinsurance rates average 19
percent. The copayment aver-
ages $308 per hospital admis-
sion.
The same goes for visits to
a primary care physician of-
fice. There, 68 percent of cov-
ered workers have a copay-
ment, averaging $24; and 23
percent have coinsurance, av-
eraging 18 percent.
Goodbye to retiree coverage
Of large firms (200 or more
workers) that offer health ben-
efits to their employees, just 23
percent offer retiree coverage
in 2015. That’s down from 66
percent in 1988, and 34 per-
cent in 2006.
ONLINE EXTRA
See the complete report online at
http://kaiserf.am/1iKCViK
