SERVING ORGANIZED LABOR IN OREGON AND SOUTHWEST WASHINGTON SINCE 1900
NORTHWEST
LABOR
PRESS
VOLUME 116, NUMBER 21
The top health care lobbyist for
the national AFL-CIO says ef-
forts to repeal Obamacare’s
“Cadillac tax” may be gathering
momentum. The Cadillac tax,
which is due to take effect in
2018, is a 40 percent excise tax
on high-cost employer health
benefits. It was the part of the
Affordable Care Act that labor
union leaders most objected to
when the bill was making its
way through Congress in 2010,
and they’ve have been calling
for its repeal ever since.
The tax was sold as a way to
put a lid on premium increases
— and cap what is now an
open-ended tax subsidy for em-
ployer-paid health coverage.
Local Motion
Union Meetings
Classified Ads
Healthy Retirees
PORTLAND, OREGON
Bipartisan push to kill
Obamacare ‘Cadillac tax’
What do Hillary and Bernie have
in common with Paul Ryan? All 3
want to dump the looming 40%
tax on employer health benefits
INSIDE
Here’s why it makes sense …
in theory. What an employer
pays for employee health bene-
fits isn’t taxed. If that money
went instead to wages or profits,
it would be subject to income
and payroll taxes. So there’s a
cost to the U.S. Treasury for
every dollar employers spend on
employee health benefits. But if
the federal government levies a
punitive tax on every dollar they
spend on health benefits above
a certain limit, employers would
find a way to keep health benefit
spending below that limit. Ac-
cording to the theory, that can be
done without hurting workers,
since the reason premiums are
so high is that benefits are too
generous. Workers pay too little
for their healthcare, the theory
goes, and that causes them to
use unnecessary medical serv-
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NOVEMBER 6, 2015
Westmoreland
Union Manor
undergoes major
renovation
WITH ASSIST FROM UNION
PENSION FUNDS. Westmore-
land Union Manor, one of the
largest affordable housing
projects in the state, is under-
going a $45 million facelift.
Built in 1966 by the Union La-
bor Retirement Association,
the seven-story, 300-unit
complex located in Southeast
Portland’s Sellwood-More-
land neighborhood is home
to 333 low-income seniors.
ULRA is a nonprofit founded
in 1962 by Earl B. Kirkland
and other leaders of Port-
land’s building trades unions.
The rehabilitation of the
building includes the com-
plete replacement of the
building envelope, new do-
mestic water and HVAC sys-
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Oregon AFL-CIO resolves to ‘Fight for a Change’
Delegates say Black Lives Matter,
trade votes have consequences,
and corporate taxes – and the
minimum wage – must go up
By Don McIntosh
Associate editor
SEASIDE—Ready to fight?
Because ready or not, the fight
is coming. That was the mes-
sage for 240 delegates from
more than three dozen unions
who gathered Oct. 22-25 in Sea-
side for the biennial convention
of the Oregon AFL-CIO. In
2016, President Obama will try
to pass a trade deal that could
make NAFTA’s impact on U.S.
manufacturing jobs look small
by comparison, and the U.S.
Supreme Court is expected to
deliver a body blow to public
sector unions.
The AFL-CIO is the volun-
tary federation that most U.S.
unions belong to. It promotes la-
bor unity and coordinates union
MORE CONVENTION COVERAGE
See what they resolved, who got top
honors, and more on Pages 4 and 5.
electoral and political work.
Oregon’s AFL-CIO is sustained
by dues from 117,609 members
of affiliated unions. And its con-
vention is where those affiliates
set official policy. Elected lead-
ers from each union appoint del-
egates, who debate priorities
and strategy at the convention.
This year, delegates resolved
not to endorse members of Con-
gress who voted for Fast Track;
they embraced the Black Lives
Matter movement; they en-
dorsed campaigns to raise cor-
porate taxes and the minimum
wage; and they approved a
phased-in 10 cent-per-member
monthly dues increase to fund
field operations around the state.
They also heard from U.S. Sen.
Jeff Merkley about the effects of
decades of bad trade policy, and
from top public sector union
leaders about their preparations
for the fight of their lives.
“As I stand before you today,
we face great peril,” Oregon
AFL-CIO President Tom Cham-
berlain declared, opening the
convention.
“Winter is coming” said Ran-
fis Giannettino Villatoro of the
Voz Workers’ Rights Education
Project. The saying comes from
the HBO hit show Game of
Thrones. In the show, humanity
is threatened by an army of ice
zombies and must find a way to
unite before it’s too late. In the
same way, unions must unite
and find allies in order to resist
corporate trade agreements and
survive the impact of the
Supreme Court case, Friedrichs
vs. California Teachers Associ-
ation. The court is expected to
rule on the case between March
and June of 2016, and the result
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I’D LIKE TO MAKE A MOTION. Oregon AFSCME Executive Director Ken
Allen— crediting Gov. Kate Brown’s involvement for the best state workers
contract in a decade — moves to endorse her re-election. Allen was one of
four longtime labor leaders who were recognized at their last Oregon AFL-
CIO convention, along with John Mohlis, Chip Elliott, and Paul Goldberg.