SERVING ORGANIZED LABOR IN OREGON AND SOUTHWEST WASHINGTON SINCE 1900
NORTHWEST
LABOR
PRESS
VOLUME 118, NUMBER 6
IN THIS ISSUE
U.S. HOUSE VOTES TO SABOTAGE RETIREMENT
SAVINGS But it won’t stop Oregon plan’s launch | Page 2
IN MEMORIAM Retired labor leader, political activist Lon
Imel dies. | Page 6
Meeting Notices p. 4
Who’s On Our Side? p. 6
PORTLAND, OREGON
$790 million Portland Public Schools bond
could spell years of work for the trades
Portland Public Schools Board
voted unanimously Feb. 28 to
move forward with the largest
construction bond request in
Oregon history. If approved by
voters May 16, the $790 million
measure would fund system-
wide upgrades for Oregon’s
biggest school district — and
years of work for hundreds of lo-
cal building trades workers.
Columbia Pacific Building
Trades Council is an early en-
dorser of the bond measure, and
other labor organizations are
likely to follow. Because the
work would pay prevailing
wages and benefits, union-signa-
tory contractors would be likely
to outcompete nonunion con-
tractors and secure much of the
work. And the projects are broad
in scope, says Building Trades
Executive Secretary-Treasurer
Willy Myers —touching nearly
every craft.
The bond proposal includes
the demolition and new con-
struction of Lincoln High School
and Kellogg Middle School, and
Portland’s Franklin High School, pictured above as it looked in July 2016, is
on track to reopen this September after a two-year, $113 million remodel —
funded by the first of three planned school modernization bonds.
comprehensive retrofits of Ben-
son and Madison high schools.
It also includes health and safety
improvements at every school in
the district, including repairing
or replacing leaking or deterio-
rating school roofs; replacing old
pipes and fixtures to reduce lead
and improve water quality; re-
moving or encapsulating ex-
posed lead paint and asbestos;
improving building foundations
and ventilation to decrease radon
exposure; upgrading fire alarm
and sprinkler systems; and im-
proving accessibility for people
with disabilities. Finally, the
bond would pay to begin plan-
Turn to Page 5
PERS under threat … again
By Don McIntosh
For the fifth time in 14 years,
Oregon’s Public Employee Re-
tirement System (PERS) is un-
der attack in the Legislature.
Business groups, arguing that
PERS is too costly, are clamor-
ing for lawmakers to slash ben-
efits and make current employ-
ees pay to help make up for the
system’s investment losses.
Certainly the losses were
massive. PERS was established
in 1945 as a traditional “defined
benefit” pension: Employers
promise workers a cost-of-liv-
ing-adjusted monthly check
once they retire, and to meet that
obligation, employers and em-
ployees contribute over the
years. Those contributions are
pooled and invested, and the re-
turns help the system pay the
promised benefits. But like so
many other pension funds,
A DEAL IS A DEAL Everice Moro worked 30 years as an educational assistant
at Estacada School District expecting to get a monthly pension with a cost-
of-living increase (COLA). Then the Oregon Legislature reduced her COLA to
save money. Moro became the lead plaintiff in a suit that went to the Oregon
Supreme Court and overturned the cuts. Above, she holds up the framed
letter she got announcing that PERS would be restoring the COLA.
PERS lost a big fraction of its in-
vestments’ value in the 2008 fi-
nancial crash — 29 percent. That
Turn to Page 3
MARCH 17, 2017
Abhe & Svoboda fires union ‘salt’
amid safety complaints
Nonunion paint contractor
Abhe & Svoboda is under in-
creasing scrutiny for its man-
agement of a $22 million Ore-
gon Department of Transporta-
tion (ODOT) painting project
underneath the Ross Island
Bridge, which spans the Wil-
lamette River between south-
west and southeast Portland.
Oregon-OSHA (Occupa-
tional Safety and Health Ad-
ministration) is still investigat-
ing a Feb. 8 accident in which
a worker fell 40 feet and landed
on another worker, sending
both to the hospital after a Port-
land Fire Bureau ladder rescue.
Oregon Bureau of Labor
and Industries is investigating
a pair of civil rights complaints
filed Feb. 28 by an African-
American Navy veteran who
was fired Feb. 4. Among other
things, the worker says Abhe &
Svoboda badly mishandled a
complaint about sexual harass-
ment, tolerated an atmosphere
of racial hostility, and fired her
in retaliation for making a
safety complaint — after she
was injured on the job.
Finally, the National Labor
Relations Board is investigat-
ing charges that the company
fired worker Omar Rubi Feb.
16 in retaliation for legally pro-
tected activity — including
telling co-workers they have
the right to voice safety con-
cerns. Rubi, a union ‘salt,’
spoke with the Labor Press,
and before the ink was dry on
our Feb. 17 story, was fired in
person by company president
James Svoboda — right after a
site visit from agents of ODOT
and OSHA.
Malarkey Roofing withdraws
from pension in new contract
Members of United Steel-
workers (USW) Local 330
voted 54-41 March 9 to accept
a “last best and final” offer
from Malarkey Roofing Prod-
ucts. Voting to reject the con-
tract offer would have meant
authorizing a strike by the 115
workers at the company’s
North Columbia Boulevard
roof tile factory in Portland.
The vote came after the
company backed off several
“union-busting” proposals.
Malarkey, represented by em-
ployer consultant Jim Frazer,
had proposed to halt employer
collection of union dues, end
the requirement that repre-
sented employees become
union members, and eliminate
“just cause” discipline.
Under the new agreement,
Malarkey will stop making
pension contributions and pay
$6.5 million to withdraw from
the union-sponsored multi-em-
ployer pension plan. The $1.7
billion pension plan, known as
PIUMPF (PACE Industry
Union-Management Pension
Fund), has more than twice as
many retirees as active mem-
bers, and it’s projected to be-
come insolvent in less than 20
years. USW inherited the pen-
sion when it absorbed the Pa-
per, Allied-Industrial, Chemi-
cal and Energy Workers
(PACE) union in a 2005
merger.
Malarkey has been con-
tributing $1.38 an hour to the
pension plus a rehabilitation
surcharge.
In place of the defined ben-
efit pension, Malarkey will en-
roll union members in the
company-sponsored 401(k),
matching employee contribu-
tions dollar for dollar for the
first 2 percent of salary, and 50
cents on the dollar after that up
to 10 percent.
The contract runs through
April 2019. It provides annual
wage increases of 1.5 percent,
retroactive to the June 1, 2016,
expiration of the previous
union contract. Wages at the
roof tile plant currently range
from $16.50 to $25.96 an hour.