SERVING ORGANIZED LABOR IN OREGON AND SOUTHWEST WASHINGTON SINCE 1900
NORTHWEST
LABOR
PRESS
VOLUME 117, NUMBER 7
IN THIS ISSUE
THE MAN WHO FOUGHT FOR $15 Seattle union
leader David Rolf tells how $15 caught on. | Page 4
WAGE THEFT CRACKDOWN - ANOTHER DAY Theft of
wages is a problem – for next year’s lawmakers. | Page 11
Meetings p.6
Labor History p.9
Classifieds p.10
PORTLAND, OREGON
APRIL 1, 2016
Latest TriMet provocation:
‘Paid union orientations are illegal’
BERNIE SANDERS:
Over 10,000 people turned up to
Portland’s Moda Center on two
days notice March 25 to hear
Democratic presidential candi-
date Bernie Sanders.
Much of what he outlined in
the mid-Friday rally synched up
with proposals that organized la-
bor has made, like paid family
and medical leave, universal
single payer health care (aka
Medicare for all), the creation of
millions of decent-paying jobs
in energy efficiency and sustain-
able energy, and comprehensive
immigration reform with a path
to citizenship. Sanders also
called for the largest banks to be
“Nobody who works 40 hours a
week should be living in poverty.”
broken up, and for free tuition at
public colleges, paid for by a tax
on Wall Street speculation.
Sanders said he’s not propos-
ing to do all that alone, but with
a political revolution in which
ordinary people get involved.
Real change comes from below,
Sanders said, like the workers
who came together a century
ago to form unions and bargain
collectively — or today’s fast
food workers who went on
strike calling for $15 an hour,
which Sanders is proposing
should be today’s federal mini-
mum wage.
Before Sanders took the stage,
Oregon Working Families Party
field organizer Cole Richardson
reminded rallygoers that Oregon
voters must register as Democ-
rats by April 26 to vote in the
Democratic primary on May 17.
The union-backed party has en-
dorsed Sanders nationally.
Last month Sanders won
Democratic caucuses and pri-
maries in Washington, Idaho,
Alaska, Hawaii, Utah, Col-
orado, Minnesota, Oklahoma,
Kansas, Nebraska, Michigan,
Maine, and Vermont. He cap-
tured 73 percent of the vote in
caucuses held in the state of
Washington on March 26.
Supreme Court tie means reprieve for unions
Union win in Friedrichs case de-
pended on Justice Scalia’s death
Friedrichs v. California Teach-
ers Association is dead. The
U.S. Supreme Court, split 4-4
on the case, announced in a sin-
gle-sentence order March 29
that a lower court ruling against
plaintiff Friedrichs will stand. A
5-4 decision overturning the
lower court was expected until
conservative justice Antonin
Scalia died Feb. 13.
The case was about Rebecca
Friedrichs, a teacher who said it
violated her free speech rights
for her to have to pay “fair
share” fees covering the cost of
bargaining and enforcing her
union contract. A well-funded
anti-union legal foundation
picked her as the vehicle for a
lawsuit specifically designed to
give the Supreme Court the
chance to reverse a 1977
Supreme Court decision, Abood
vs. Detroit Board of Education.
The Abood decision said that
union-represented public em-
ployees couldn’t be required to
become union members, but
could be required to share in the
expense of representation. But in
the court’s 2014 Harris vs.
Quinn decision, a 5-4 majority
called Abood into question: The
court said home care workers
couldn’t be required to pay dues
or the equivalent, but for techni-
cal reasons they stopped short of
overturning Abood.
If Abood had been over-
turned, it would have created a
“right-to-work” situation for all
public employee unions in
America: No union-represented
public employee would have
been required to pay the costs of
union representation. That likely
would have been a crippling
blow to unions. The split court
means that it will continue to be
up to states whether to require
public-sector union fees.
If the 2014 vote approving a new
union contract at TriMet was
supposed to signal a new era of
labor peace, it was short-lived.
Leaders of Amalgamated Transit
Union (ATU) Local 757 say
Oregon’s largest public transit
agency has returned to its previ-
ous pattern of anti-union provo-
cations. The latest: TriMet man-
agement is ending its decades-
old practice of letting new hires
go to the union hall on paid time
to attend union orientation, cit-
ing legal advice that doing so vi-
olates a new Oregon law and the
Oregon Constitution.
That’s news to Jeff Klatke,
president of 25,000-member
Oregon AFSCME. Klatke says
AFSCME has plenty of public-
sector contracts that allow new-
member union orientation to
take place on paid work time —
including the contract that cov-
ers lawyers at the state attorney
general’s office.
“You should be concerned
about the quality of legal coun-
sel you have received,” Klatke
told the TriMet board of direc-
tors at its March 23 meeting.
Klatke was part of a delegation
of ATU officers and allies that
called on board members to in-
tervene before the acrimony
worsens. The current contract
covering 3,200 current and for-
mer TriMet employees expires
Nov. 30, 2016, and the two sides
expect to begin negotiations this
summer.
TriMet senior labor relations
manager Christine Stevens ex-
plained the rationale for ending
paid union orientation in a Feb.
5 memo to Local 757 President
Shirley Block. Any TriMet em-
ployee may go to ATU’s offices
on their own time outside of
their normal working hours, the
memo says. But for TriMet to
Turn to Page 4
Are Oregon Democrats backtracking
already on the minimum wage?
Less than two weeks after Ore- training wage],” Kotek said,
gon’s minimum wage increase “but the business community
was signed into law, Democratic kept bringing it up, and so we
House Speaker Tina Kotek and said ‘Okay, we’ll talk about it,
Senate Majority Leader Ginny but we don’t know where we
Burdick told the Portland Busi- would go with that.’”
ness Alliance they’ll
State Sen. Michael
propose changes to it
Dembrow and State
next year, including
Rep. Paul Holvey —
lower wages for
both chairs of labor
younger workers and
committees — say they
trainees — according to
plan to discuss a train-
a report in the Oregon-
ing and/or youth wage,
ian. Only, Kotek tells
but they also say other
the Northwest Labor
solutions to youth un-
Press, that’s not accu-
employment might be
Tina Kotek
rate.
as good or better — like
Kotek says there are
targeted tax credits or
no plans to adjust the wage scale additional state support for
that was put in place over the youth work programs.
next six years. But she said leg-
“Our job as the Legislature is
islators are willing to have con- to continue to talk about all is-
versations about a lower wage sues that people bring up,”
for trainees and young workers Kotek said. “Whether or not we
— as a solution to the problem move forward on anything that
of youth unemployment.
adjusts wages for youth or train-
“I can’t even gauge what in- ing is really hard to tell at this
terest there would be in doing [a point.”