SERVING ORGANIZED LABOR IN OREGON AND SOUTHWEST WASHINGTON SINCE 1900
NORTHWEST
LABOR
PRESS
VOLUME 116, NUMBER 22
INSIDE
Election results
Apprenticeship
Meeting Notices
Classified ads
PORTLAND, OREGON
NOVEMBER 20, 2015
Obama releases text of his Pacific trade deal
Commissioners vote to oppose
any future oil, coal, or natural
gas terminals, or the shipment
of oil by rail through Portland
this is the most progressive
agreement ever negotiated,” Lee
told the Labor Press. “The truth
is most of the ‘progress’ was
made by George W. Bush, a Re-
publican president. They took
that and added some pretty in-
significant tweaks to it.”
TPP is the largest free trade
agreement the United States has
ever negotiated; it would elimi-
nate tariffs and create uniform
foreign investment rules in 12
Pacific Rim nations. TPP would
marry developed democracies
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Leaders and supporters of the labor-community coalition Fair Shot for All gather Nov. 12 at the Voz MLK Workers
Center to announce the group’s 2016 legislative agenda.
Union coalition gets ready for Round Two
The labor-community coalition
that helped pass Oregon’s paid
sick leave law this year an-
nounced Nov. 12 that it will
push a minimum wage increase
and tougher laws on wage theft
and racial profiling when the
Oregon Legislature meets again
in February 2016.
The coalition — Fair Shot for
All — includes the Oregon
AFL-CIO, Service Employees
Local 503 and non-profit groups
like Causa, Family Forward
Oregon, and Voz Workers
Rights Education Project. Ear-
lier this year the coalition won
passage of four out of five of its
priorities: besides sick leave,
Portland City Council:
No new fossil fuel infrastructure
The veil is off the Trans-Pacific
Partnership, and it’s not pretty
By Don McIntosh
Associate Editor
Now that the gag order is off,
Thea Lee can speak. Lee, the
chief international economist at
the national AFL-CIO, was one
of a handful of official labor ad-
visors that by law the Obama
Administration had to include in
the trade negotiations over the
Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).
Lee could see initial U.S. pro-
posals — even when members
of Congress couldn’t — but she
couldn’t talk about them; they
were classified. Now, with
agreement announced Oct. 5 and
the text released Nov. 5, she can.
“Barack Obama [is] saying
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““Many workers don’t report wage theft
out of fear of losing their jobs. That’s
something I’ve seen first-hand.”
— Sheet Metal Local 16 member Darrin Boyce
that included “ban the box” and
racial profiling laws, and a state-
sponsored retirement savings
system that will debut in 2017.
But its top priority — raising
the minimum wage — was
stopped by Oregon Senate Pres-
ident Peter Courtney (D-Salem).
It’s not clear Courtney has
changed his position, but the
coalition will try again when the
Legislature holds its one-month
short session in February. If law-
makers again fail to raise the
wage, the group will have five
more months to gather signa-
tures on a ballot measure that
would raise it to $13.50 and lift
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In unanimous resolutions passed
Nov. 4 and 12, Portland City
Council ended all possibility of
large-scale fossil fuel projects in
Portland.
The resolutions are a re-
sponse to a series of proposals
to construct marine terminals in
the Pacific Northwest to trans-
port fossil fuels. Other local ju-
risdictions have also voted
against proposed oil, gas, and
coal terminals, including Van-
couver, Washougal, Hood River,
The Dalles, Mosier, and Steven-
son, but the Portland resolutions
go much further.
The first resolution, spon-
sored by Commissioner
Amanda Fritz, puts the City on
record opposing any proposed
project that would increase the
amount of crude oil transported
by rail through Portland and
Vancouver. The second, spon-
sored by Mayor Charlie Hales,
is a blanket ban on approving
any new infrastructure whose
purpose is to store or transport
fossil fuels in or through Port-
land or its adjacent waterways.
The resolutions don’t have the
force of law. Rather, they de-
clare City Council’s objective,
with legally binding city code to
be worked out later by city plan-
ners and then brought back to
Council for approval.
Several building trades union
officials spoke against the reso-
lutions, but overall, public testi-
mony was overwhelmingly in
support, and several other union
leaders spoke in favor.
“Portland’s businesses and
residents are moving away from
fossil fuels, and we must, be-
cause we have been told we
have only a little time to make a
difference in climate change,”
said Hales, opening discussion
of the resolutions Nov. 4.
Hales was one of 60 mayors
from around the world who met
this summer with Pope Francis
to talk about climate change.
Hales said the pope’s message
was this: There’s very little time
left, but it’s not too late to avoid
a 5 degree centigrade change in
the world’s average tempera-
ture, a rise which would trigger
catastrophic climate change.
At the Nov. 4 City Council
hearing, climate activist Bill
McKibben, leader of the cam-
paign to block the Keystone XL
pipeline project, joined by skype
from Washington, D.C., where
he’d held a rally with U.S. Sen.
Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon) and
presidential candidate Bernie
Sanders (I-Vermont), announc-
ing the introduction of a bill to
halt new oil, natural gas and coal
leases on federal lands or coastal
waters.
“Portland will go down as a
leader among all jurisdictions if
it does this.” McKibben said.
But not everyone saw it that
way. Willy Myers, executive
secretary-treasurer of the Co-
lumbia Pacific Building Trades
Council, told City Council the
state of Oregon relies on fossil
fuel — the vast majority of
which comes through Portland
— to operate transit systems,
heat and light homes and grow
and harvest crops.
“The negative impact on the
middle class of these resolu-
tions, by opposing infrastruc-
ture, will be devastating,” Myers
said, “and will add to wage in-
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