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About Northwest labor press. (Portland , Ore.) 1987-current | View Entire Issue (March 18, 2016)
SERVING ORGANIZED LABOR IN OREGON AND SOUTHWEST WASHINGTON SINCE 1900 NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS VOLUME 117, NUMBER 6 IN THIS ISSUE UNION BOYCOTTS NABISCO Check the label, Bakers Union says, so you don’t buy Mexican-made. | Page 5 COLD CASE UNIT WANTS TO SOLVE 1974 MURDER Sheriff asks for help from shipyard workers. | Page 7 Labor History p.3 Meetings p.4 Classifieds p.7 PORTLAND, OREGON MARCH 18, 2016 UNION ORGANIZING OREGON Union drive begins at DirecTV Up to 400 technicians in Oregon and Washington could join IBEW A $3.25 TO $5.50 MINIMUM WAGE RAISE BECOMES LAW: Oregon Gov. Kate Brown (seated at center) signs SB 1532 as union staff and officers look on. From left: Beth Cooke, Kevin Billman, Jeff Klatke, Berely Mack, Tom Chamber- lain, Jeff Anderson, Jessica Giannettino-Villatoro, Jason McDaniel, Graham Trainor, Melissa Dronen, and Chris Hewitt. Historic gains in 2016 Legislative session Top issue was minimum wage, but Oregon lawmakers made progress on other fronts as well. By Don McIntosh Associate editor The Oregon Legislature passed the largest set of minimum wage increases Oregon has ever seen last month, putting the state on track to have the highest mini- mum wage in the nation. Under the new law passed by the Dem- ocratic majority and signed March 2 by Gov. Kate Brown, the minimum wage will rise by 2022 to $14.75 in the Portland area, $13.50 in Northwest Ore- gon plus Jackson and Josephine counties, and $12.50 in sparsely populated Eastern and Southern Oregon. At that point even Ore- gon’s lowest rate — in areas comprising 10 percent of the state’s population — will be higher than any other state’s minimum wage. Oregon’s high- est rate will cover not just Port- land but all 25 cities within the Metro urban growth boundary, totaling 38 percent of the state population. The raises will have a big im- pact on Oregon workers. Ac- cording to the Oregon Employ- ment Department, a third of the Oregon workforce — 618,000 workers — currently earn less than $13.50 an hour, and 100,000 workers earn exactly the state’s current $9.25 mini- mum wage. All of those workers Minimum wage SB 1532 raises the wage over seven years to $12.50, $13.50 and $14.75 in different regions. Unemployment insurance HB 4086 extends benefits an additional six months for workers locked out by their employer in a labor dispute. SB 1544 extends UI benefits for workers in apprenticeship programs. Wage theft SB 1587 adds three wage and hour investigators, makes certain prevailing wage violations a Class C felony, and requires employers to provide pay stubs and keep payroll records for three years. Affordable housing HB 4143 prohibits can expect raises. The first in- crease takes place July 1, fol- lowed by annual increases until 2022, after which the wage will rise based on the rate of infla- tion. By 2022, full-time Port- land-area minimum wage work- ers will be earning $11,440 a year more than they do today. The minimum wage measure, Senate Bill 1532, passed 16-12 in the Senate and 32-26 in the House, but not a single Repub- lican voted for it. The only De- mocrats to vote against it were state Sen. Betsy Johnson of Clatskanie and state Reps. John Lively of Springfield and Caddy McKeown of Coos Bay. Increasing the minimum wage has always been broadly popular with the public, but the Oregon Legislature hadn’t voted to increase the minimum wage since 1989. Instead it took rent increases during the first year of month-to-month tenancies and requires 90-day notice for increases after one year. SB 1533 makes limited exceptions to a ban on inclusionary zoning and ends a state ban on construction excise taxes. Construction Jobs HB 5203 approves $30 million in bond funding for partial renovation of the Capitol building. Global warming SB 1547 requires PGE and Pacific Power to end the use of coal to generate Oregon electricity by 2030, and get 50 percent of their electricity from wind and solar by 2040. union-backed ballot measures — in 1996 and 2002 — to raise the wage. This year, the prospect of two more such measures aimed at the 2016 ballot were a big factor pushing the Legisla- ture to act. One ballot measure proposed to raise the wage to $15 within three years, and the other to $13.50 — while lifting a pre-emption on local jurisdic- tions going higher than that. In December, Gov. Brown brought stakeholders including business groups and the Oregon AFL-CIO together for private meetings to work out a compro- mise measure she would pro- pose to the Legislature. Brown’s proposal had two tiers. Law- makers later amended it to cre- ate three tiers, but resisted other changes that would have wa- Turn to Page 2 Beginning the first week of March, organizers for Interna- tional Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) began contact- ing workers in Washington who install and repair satellite TV dishes for DirecTV. They’ll launch a similar effort in Oregon in the coming weeks. Last year, nonunion DirecTV was ac- quired by AT&T, a heavily unionized company which has neutrality agreements with IBEW and Communications Workers of America (CWA). Under the agreements, AT&T doesn’t oppose union cam- paigns, and grants union recog- nition if a majority of workers in a unit sign cards within 60 days of the beginning of a union cam- paign. IBEW represents other satel- lite TV workers in the Pacific Northwest, including subcon- tractors for DirecTV’s competi- tor Dish Network. If IBEW signs up a majority of the roughly 400 Oregon and Wash- ington DirecTV workers, they would begin bargaining a first contract and would eventually become members of IBEW Lo- cal 89, a telecommunications lo- cal headquartered just north of Everett, Washington. Labor fights back against Freedom Foundation A coalition of 19 labor and al- lied groups in Oregon and Washington is urging the Inter- nal Revenue Service to revoke the tax-exempt status of the Freedom Foundation, an anti- union group operating in Wash- ington and Oregon. Contribu- tions to Freedom Foundation are tax-deductible because it’s or- ganized as a charitable/educa- tional non-profit under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Rev- enue Code. But so-called 501(c)(3) groups aren’t allowed to do explicitly political work. Freedom Foundation took part in an April 2014 fundraiser for Vancouver Republican Lynda Wilson, who went on to defeat Democrat Monica Stonier for state Senate. Freedom Foun- dation has also filed a series of anti-union lawsuits in Oregon and Washington, and its leaders have said on several occasions that the group’s purpose is to drain union resources to weaken them politically. Needless to say, that’s not a legitimate charitable purpose. Labor leaders are also calling on Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum to perform an independent investigation to en- sure that the group is operating for a charitable purpose in ac- cordance with the state Charita- ble Trust and Corporation Act, and to determine if tax exemp- tion under Oregon law is appro- priate. KGW-TV on trial for labor violation In contract bargaining with that would justify such a pro- IBEW Local 48, KGW-TV is proposing to end exclusive union jurisdiction — and let oth- ers do the work of union camera operators and technicians. Man- agers say they’re proposing that in order to better compete with companies like Google and Amazon. But when Local 48 asked for detailed information posal, parent company Gannett (now Tegna) refused. The Na- tional Labor Relations Board thinks that refusal violated the law’s requirement to bargain in good faith. A federal judge will decide the matter based on argu- ments from the two sides in a three-day hearing that took place March 8-10.
