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About Northwest labor press. (Portland , Ore.) 1987-current | View Entire Issue (May 19, 2017)
SERVING ORGANIZED LABOR IN OREGON AND SOUTHWEST WASHINGTON SINCE 1900 NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS VOLUME 118, NUMBER 10 ‘Right to work’ coming to the public sector By Don McIntosh If public employees are required to pay at least some costs of the union that represents them, does that violate their First Amend- ment rights of freedom of speech and association? For 40 years, U.S. courts have said it doesn’t, in obedience to a unan- imous 1977 U.S. Supreme Court decision in a case called Abood v Detroit Board of Edu- cation. But the April 7 confir- mation of Supreme Court Jus- tice Neil Gorsuch starts the clock ticking on a case that is expected to overturn that — and result in court imposition of the anti-union “right-to-work” idea on all public sector workplaces in America. Under the Abood decision, union-represented workers don’t have to become union members, or pay anything to support the union’s political work if they disagree with that. But they can be required to pay fees to cover the union’s costs to represent workers in discipli- nary cases and negotiate and en- force the union contract. The fees are called “fair share” fees or “agency” fees. In the 23 states that allow unions to charge fair OFFICE & PROFESSIONAL EMPLOYEES #11 Maureen Colvin elected executive secretary-treasurer. | Page 3 OREGON AFSCME CONVENTION Respect for public service. | Page 7 Meeting Notices p.4 Stamping Out Hunger p.6 PORTLAND, OREGON On Feb. 11, Oregon AFSCME mobilized dozens of people — including Council President Jeff Klatke and staff rep Allan MacLean above — to visit and talk to AFSCME-represented workers who hadn’t become full union members. A Supreme Court ruling that ‘fair share’ fees are unconstitutional is likely 6 to 13 months away. IN THIS ISSUE share fees to represented non- members, the fees typically run about 85 percent of full union dues. And in those states, on av- erage about 7 percent of repre- sented workers pay fair share fees instead of full union dues. The case that could overturn Abood is called Janus v AF- SCME. The lead plaintiff is Mark Janus, an AFSCME-rep- resented public employee in Illi- nois. The case was dismissed by the 7th District U.S. Court of Appeals in March, but the Supreme Court could agree to hear an appeal when it begins its next session this October. Last year, the Supreme Court split 4-4 on Friedrichs v Cali- fornia Teachers Association, a similar challenge to Abood. The four Republican-appointed jus- tices voted to overturn Abood, and the four Democratic ap- pointees voted to uphold it. It’s assumed that Gorsuch would vote with the other Republican appointees if the court hears the Janus case. That means public sector unions have between six to 13 months before union fees be- come strictly a voluntary deci- sion. Many public sector unions are getting ready by appealing to their fair share fee payers one- by-one to become full members. Turn to Page 8 MAY 19, 2017 Hundreds of Oregonians overflow a Northeast Portland gymnasium at a Jan. 15 “Save Our Healthcare” rally. The end of Obamacare? The American Health Care Act, dubbed Trumpcare, would worsen Obamacare’s flaws. The Affordable Care Act (pop- ularly known as Obamacare) is complicated, expensive and flawed. But the American Health Care Act (AHCA), which passed the U.S. House May 4, wouldn’t “repeal and replace it” as Republicans promised; it would tweak it and break it, making it much worse. To see how, you need to un- derstand a little about how the ACA works. ACA tries to re- duce the number of uninsured by expanding Medicaid to cover all those below or near the poverty line, and adding fi- nancial carrots and sticks to get others onto an insurance plan. Individuals get subsidies to buy insurance on regulated state- level exchanges, and face tax penalties if they don’t buy in- surance. Big employers pay penalties if they don’t provide insurance. Small employers get incentives for buying insurance on exchanges. [But not union small employers that get health insurance through union-spon- sored trusts; they were left out.] And all this is paid for with supervisory worker earned $37,632 in 2016, the AFL-CIO reported. That’s a CEO-to- worker pay ratio of 347 to 1. “This year’s report provides further proof that the greed of corporate CEOs is driving America’s income inequality crisis,” says AFL-CIO presi- dent Rich Trumka. “Big corpo- rations continually find ways to rig the economy in their favor and line their CEOs’ pockets at the expense of the workers who make their businesses run.” Turn to Page 3 CEO PAY According to the 2017 edition of AFL-CIO Executive Pay- Watch, America’s average CEO got a 5.9 percent raise last year. Based on an analysis of the most recent available data, CEOs of S&P 500 companies received, on average, $13.1 million in total compensation in 2016. [The S&P 500 is a list of 500 big companies whose stock is publicly traded on U.S. stock exchanges.] Meanwhile the av- erage U.S. production and non- Top-paid Oregon CEOs Top-paid Washington CEOs #1 Nike Mark G. Parker $47,615,302 (2016) #2 Precision Castparts Mark Donegan $15,812,373 (2015) #3 Rentrak William P. Livek $13,233,446 (2015) #4 Schnitzer Steel Tamara L. Lundgren $7,070,553 (2016) #5 Greenbrier William A. Furman $6,544,136 (2016) #1 Expedia Dara Khosrowshahi $94,603,552 (2015) #2 T-Mobile US John J. Legere $24,457,987 (2015) #3 Starbucks Howard Schultz $21,815,498 (2016) #4 Boeing Kevin G. McAllister $20,865,820 (2016) #5 Microsoft Satya Nadella $17,692,031 (2016) #11 Portland General Electric James J. Piro $3,317,633 (2016) #12 Northwest Natural Gas Gregg S. Kantor $3,240,919 (2016) #14 Columbia SportswearTimothy P. Boyle $3,080,147 (2015) #9 Weyerhaeuser Doyle R. Simons $10,338,964 (2016) #13 CostcoW. Craig Jelinek $6,503,276 (2016) #14 Nordstrom Peter E. Nordstrom $5,838,769 (2016) #23 Alaska Air Group Bradley D. Tilden $4,246,312 (2016) #38 Amazon.com Jeffrey P. Bezos $1,681,840 (2016) SEE THE WHOLE LIST at aflcio.org/paywatch
