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About Northwest labor press. (Portland , Ore.) 1987-current | View Entire Issue (June 3, 2016)
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS | June 3, 2016 | PAGE 3 To stay afloat, Working Families Party needs more voters by August The labor-backed political party gave up its own members to help Bernie Sanders’ revolution. The Oregon Working Families Party was so committed to Bernie Sanders that its staff called and emailed the party’s own members asking them to re-register as Democrats — so they could vote for him in the May 17 primary. Sanders won Oregon, 56 to 44 percent. Now the union-backed minor party needs those former members to return. Under Oregon law, minor parties can maintain their ballot status (the right to run candi- dates in the general election) in two ways. They can show that at least half a percent of the elec- torate is registered as members. Or they can field a candidate who wins at least 1 percent of the vote in a statewide election. Oregon Working Families Party hasn’t run a statewide candidate in the last two general election cycles, so if it wants to be on the ballot this November, it has to have at least 10,825 registered voters by Aug. 10. The party had well more than that before Sanders came along. From January to September 2015, its membership grew from about 9,000 to 11,817, thanks to a paid canvass. But by the May 2016 primary, it had dropped to fewer than 9,600 registered voters. Now the party is scrambling to re-recruit its lapsed members, and reaching out to unaffiliated voters who became Democrats for Bernie. It helps that Oregon makes it easy to change party registration: Voters can do so online at bit.ly/1xB8oEc . The party is holding caucus meetings, and will decide at a July 23 meeting who to endorse and whether to run its own can- didates in the November elec- tion. Shanti Lewallen — a union Longshore worker who earned a law degree — is campaigning to be an Oregon Working Families Party candidate to challenge Democratic U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden. But the party’s ability to endorse or run its own candi- dates in the general election de- pends on whether it can get to 10,825. OREGON WORKING FAMILIES PARTY: WHAT IS IT? Oregon Working Families Party is the little party that could. Though it has never elected a candidate on its own ballot line in Oregon, it has endorsed and helped to elect major party candidates who commit to its working families agenda, and it was a big part of the coali- tion that passed the state paid sick leave law. It’s backed by a number of labor organizations, including UFCW Local 555, Operating Engineers Local 701, Teamsters Local 206, CWA Local 7901, ILWU, Laborers Local 483, IBEW Local 48, and UNITE HERE Local 8. It’s also part of a national organization with active chapters in New York and other states. Burgerville to meet with union At its May 23 meeting, North- west Oregon Labor Council (NOLC) — the local council of AFL-CIO-affiliated unions — endorsed the Burgerville Work- ers Union, which launched April 26. Delegates passed a resolution pledging to support their strug- gle, and encouraging affiliated unions and members to do so too. Most workers earn at or near the minimum wage at Burg- erville, a regional fast food chain with about 40 stores. Burgerville Workers Union—affiliated with the Industrial Workers of the World—is calling for a $5 an hour raise; quality, affordable health care; paid parental leave; and childcare and transportation stipends. The union hasn’t re- quested government certifica- tion, but no law prevents the company from meeting with the union if it chooses to. At a Vancouver TED Talks- style event May 26, CEO Jeff Harvey had just finished speak- ing about Burgerville’s mission of serving good food “with love” when a group of Burg- erville workers approached and asked if he’d meet with them. Harvey said he couldn’t meet with them as a group, but would be willing to meet singly. Asked by the Labor Press to confirm that, Burgerville emailed a state- ment saying employees may ex- press individual viewpoints to appropriate personnel, but Burg- erville won’t meet for collective bargaining with any employee or group of employees until a showing of majority support for a union in a National Labor Re- lations Board (NLRB)-super- vised election. Burgerville worker Jordan Vaandering says the union will take Harvey up on the individual meeting. A delegation of students from Portland State, Reed College, Lewis and Clark College, and Cleveland High School visited Burgerville headquarters May 23 to deliver signatures of sup- port for the union effort from over 500 students and faculty. And at press time, union sup- porters await final resolution of a discipline case. Ivy Fleak, an outspokenly pro-union worker at the Vancouver Plaza Burg- erville, was suspended for what supporters say were trumped-up violations. In a charge filed May 23 with the NLRB, the union says the discipline was illegal retaliation. At Bernie Sanders’ primary election night party in Portland, Oregon Working Families Party field manager Ian Johnson — a member of CWA Local 7901 — staffs the beer station. Johnson was one of three Oregon Working Families Party staff devoted full-time to the Sanders’ campaign in the months leading up to the May 17 vote.
