PAGE 4 | April 1 , 2016 | NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
MAKING A STAND: About three dozen members and supporters of ATU Lo-
cal 757 mobilized for a March 23 TriMet board meeting, and stood up as lead-
ers and allies asked the board for more a respectful tone from management.
TriMet provocation
From Page 1
The Fight for $15
The Right Wage for a Working America
David Rolf — president of Service Employees In-
ternational Union (SEIU) Local 775 in Seattle —
has been a leading figure in the national fight for
a $15 minimum wage. When fast food strikes
erupted nationwide in 2012 and 2013 behind the
slogan “$15 and a union,” it was thanks to be-
hind-the-scenes work and resources from SEIU.
The strikes were especially successful in Seattle,
where the union and many allies went on to pass
a $15 ballot measure for airport workers in SeaTac
in 2013. After it became a campaign issue in Seat-
tle as well and pro-$15 mayor Ed Murray won of-
fice, Rolf was appointed co-chair of the task force
that wrote the $15 minimum wage ordinance,
which passed in 2014. Now he’s written a book
about the movement: “The Fight for Fifteen: The
Right Wage for a Working America.” The North-
west Labor Press interviewed him by phone.
Where did $15 come from, and why are we
hearing about $15, and not $10.10 an hour, or
$20 for that matter? The real answer is: It’s a
bold moral aspirational goal, along the lines of the
eight-hour day. One can talk about the relative
economic justifications of $15. If you look at the
high point of the spending power of a minimum-
wage earner — 1968 — and you accelerated the
minimum wage according to the increase in pro-
ductivity since then, it would be $21 an hour. If
you accelerated it according to inflation, it would
be between $10.50 and $11 an hour. So $15 is a
relative midpoint. But this was not cooked up in
a science lab. This was workers on the ground,
first in Brooklyn in November 2012, deciding
that $15 was worth going on strike over. That
wasn’t any more scientific than why we have an
eight-hour day instead of an 8.25- or 7.79-hour
day. It was a firm round number that workers felt
motivated and inspired by.
First SeaTac then Seattle going to a $15-an-
hour minimum wage got a lot of national at-
tention. A lot of observers who aren’t in Seattle
may think that the wage is already $15 there
now. Can you tell us about the compromise
and the reality? It’s quite complex. And this is
how we got consensus with a majority of the busi-
ness community and a unanimous vote on city
Council. There are essentially four different rates
of acceleration to $15. For big businesses who
don’t provide healthcare to their employees, it’s a
three-year path - $11, $13, and $15. This is the
$13 year; next January it will be $15. Think Mc-
Donald’s or Target, Amazon, Rite Aid … big
companies with 500 or more employees nation-
ally that don’t provide healthcare for employees.
For those that do provide health care benefits —
say Nordstrom, Macy’s, Safeway or QFC gro-
ceries — they have an extra year, so it’s a four-
year phase-in. For small employers (under 500
employees nationally) who don’t provide health-
care, it’s a five-year phase-in. And for small em-
ployers whose employees do receive healthcare
or tips that add up to the minimum wage of $15,
there is a “phase-in, phase-out” tip and health care
credit. But everyone has to be at a clean $15 seven
years from the original passage, which is the year
2021. There’s a lot of complexity. It’s really the
product of the mayor and the negotiators — my-
self and Howard Wright on the business side —
feeling like we had to have not just a majority vote
on the task force but a strong majority if we were
not going to be subject to potential efforts to
amend or repeal via ballot measure.
What has been the impact, so far, of the incre-
mental raises? Workers have more money.
Has Seattle become a ghost town with business
closures? San Francisco and Seattle, which are
the two highest-wage cities in the country, have
the largest number of restaurants per capita in the
United States, higher than New York, higher than
Washington, D.C. We have seen overall growth
in the number of restaurants operating in Seattle.
We have about 3 percent unemployment. There’s
a waiting list to rent a construction crane in Seat-
tle. Our biggest problem is that more people want
to live here than there are housing units. So there
are really fast rates of housing price inflation.
I think that gets to my next question which is:
How do you answer the argument that if you
try to raise the minimum-wage significantly, it
will cost jobs and actually hurt the people it’s
trying to help? It’s a lie. It’s never happened. Not
Turn to Page 10
allow “newly hired union em-
ployees to go to the ATU offices
on District paid time for pur-
poses of orienting them to their
membership in ATU” would be
unlawful under a 2013 law,
Stevens wrote.
That law, ORS 243.670, says
a public employer may not use
public funds to assist, promote
or deter union organizing. It was
drafted by pro-union legislators,
and was meant to stop public
employers from spending public
money fighting union cam-
paigns — like University of
Oregon, which spent hundreds
of thousands of dollars on legal
work to frustrate and delay a
union campaign by college pro-
fessors. Nothing in the bill’s leg-
islative history suggests that it
was supposed to apply to al-
ready unionized workers, or that
it was supposed to ban union
orientation from taking place on
paid time.
“That is a real distortion of
what we were trying to do,” says
State Sen. Michael Dembrow,
who sponsored the bill.
But in case TriMet’s legal in-
terpretation of ORS 243.670
doesn’t hold up, Stevens’ memo
also says paid-time union orien-
tation “may violate the Oregon
constitution” — because it’s an
expenditure of public money for
a non-public purpose.
TriMet spokesperson Mary
Fetsch didn’t answer a question
from the Labor Press as to
whether the legal opinion came
from in-house or outside attor-
neys. But Fetsch said by email
that TriMet’s position is that it
violates Oregon law for employ-
ees to go to the union hall on
paid work time for “long orien-
tations that last hours.”
“Members certainly can go to
the ATU union hall on their per-
sonal time, and the ATU may
make orientation presentations
to new employees of reasonable
duration during TriMet’s orien-
tation on its property,” Fetsch
wrote.
In the past, TriMet trainers
dropped new hires off at the Lo-
cal 757 hall for a one- to two-
hour paid union orientation at
the end of a training shift.
At the March 23 board meet-
ing, Oregon AFL-CIO Secre-
tary-Treasurer Barbara Byrd
told TriMet board members that
the point of Oregon’s Public
Employee Collective Bargain-
ing Act was to encourage a har-
monious and cooperative rela-
tionship between government
and its employees.
“Our federation is concerned
by signals that TriMet manage-
ment has not made a good-faith
effort to maintain a productive
relationship with ATU. In fact
the entire labor community is
concerned about poor labor-
management relations at
TriMet. TriMet management
sets a bad precedent, and their
conduct sends a bad message to
other public employers.”
After union president Block
addressed the board, TriMet
board chair Bruce Warner said
he’d be more than willing to
meet with union leaders, and
would work with them to set a
date for a meeting.
“The entire labor community is con-
cerned about poor labor-management
relations at TriMet. TriMet management
sets a bad precedent, and their conduct
sends a bad message to other public
employers.”
— Oregon AFL-CIO secy.-treasurer Barbara Byrd