NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS |
WORKERS RIGHTS
Oregon Supreme Court hears TriMet case
The public transit agency wants
to keep union negotiations
closed to the public
Attorneys for Amalgamated
Transit Union Local 757 and
TriMet faced off in front of the
Oregon Supreme Court June 14
in a legal dispute over whether
the public has the right to ob-
serve public-sector labor nego-
tiations. Oregon law seems
pretty clear about it: “Labor ne-
gotiations shall be conducted in
open meetings unless negotia-
tors for both sides request that
negotiations be conducted in ex-
ecutive session,” says ORS
192.660 (3).
Normally, that’s moot be-
cause both sides prefer to bar-
gain in private, seeing that as
more likely to result in agree-
ment. But in 2012, Local 757
decided to let the public in.
TriMet sued and asked the
court to agree that its bargaining
sessions aren’t subject to Ore-
gon’s Public Meetings Law —
because the law defines “meet-
ing” as “the convening of a gov-
erning body for which a quorum
is required in order to make a
decision or deliberate toward a
decision,” — and TriMet never
set a quorum requirement for its
eight-member bargaining team.
...Oregon will be first state to
curb schedule abuses
From Page 1
can PUBLIc EMPLOYEE UnIOnS LEt thE PUBLIc OBSErvE BargaIn-
Ing? Absolutely, Aruna Masih, attorney for ATU Local 757, told the court.
When TriMet attorney Keith
Garza restated that argument
June 14, Oregon Supreme Court
justices seemed skeptical.
“Essentially that interpreta-
tion creates a situation where the
public body can completely
control whether or not the nego-
tiations are open depending on
who they have doing the nego-
tiating,” said Justice Meagan
Flynn.
“I have to confess: I don’t fol-
low your argument,” Justice Jack
Landau told Garza. “Sub-section
3 says labor negotiations shall be
conducted in open meetings …
What the bargaining team is do-
ing, is it labor negotiations?”
“Yes,” Garza replied.
“Okay, so whatever the team
is doing, it has to be accom-
plished in an open meeting …
What am I missing?”
Local 757’s attorney, Aruna
Masih of the Bennett Hartman
firm, argued that text, context,
and legislative history all support
ATU’s interpretation of the
statute.
“We believe based on the
context that the Legislature
made clear there were very spe-
cial rules they intended to apply
to labor negotiations in general,”
Masih told the court.
Masih says it’s impossible to
know how a court will rule. The
court is expected to issue a de-
cision later this year.
—DM
July 7, 2017 | PAGE 3
Then Local 555 and the Ore-
gon Working Families Party
prepared to take the issue to
voters in 2018 via ballot meas-
ure.
“As the bill was heading
South in the Senate, we were
heading to the polls, and
that’s what brought the other
parties back to the table,” said
Local 555 Secretary-Trea-
surer Jeff Anderson. It helped
that a law pre-empting city-
level action was about to ex-
pire, and UFCW was also
prepared to push scheduling
ordinances in Portland, Eu-
gene, Ashland and Corvallis.
Facing a farther-reaching bal-
lot initiative and the prospect
of a patchwork of local ordi-
nances, business groups got
on board with a compromise
fair scheduling bill, and
brought Republicans along.
Sponsors credited Senate
President Peter Courtney (D-
Salem) for engineering the
compromise. To win majority
support, the bill was amended
significantly. The bill origi-
nally had provisions that ap-
plied to all employers, and its
strictest provisions applied to
retail, hospitality and food-ser-
vice establishments with 100
or more employees nation-
wide — including a require-
ment to offer additional hours
to existing employees before
hiring new employees or sub-
contractors.
Passage of Oregon’s “Fair
Workweek” law adds momen-
tum to similar efforts else-
where. San Francisco’s “Retail
Workers Bill of Rights” was
the first such legislation to
pass, in 2014, followed by
Seattle in 2016, and New York
City in May 2017.
UNIONIZATION ] MAY-JUNE 2017
The following are Oregon and Southwest Washington workplaces where workers have decided
whether to be represented by a union. The thumbs-up symbol means workers will be union-
represented. Thumbs-down means they’ll be on their own. “Decert” means a decertification
election, where union-represented workers voted whether to remain union. The information
comes from the National Labor Relations Board and the Oregon Employment Relations Board.
Union election results
Employer (Location) Union
Rogue Valley Sewer Servcs. (Central Point) Teamsters Local 223
Yes-No =
DECERT
19-6
^
21-2
^
2-3
%
24-0
^
■ 25 employees; a majority voted against decertification
PeaceHealth Sacred Heart (Springfield) Oregon Nurses Association
■ 38 registered nurse care managers
Raymond Thomas
James Coon
Providence St. Vincent (Portland) Operating Engineers Local 701
■ 5 painters, carpenters, and fire safety employees
Trillium Charter School (Portland) Oregon School Employees Assn.
■ 33 teachers, secretaries, cooks, custodians, bookkeepers, and guards
Cynthia Newton
Melissa Haggerty
Chris Frost
Sydney Montanaro
Get your
disability
application
done right,
right from the
beginning.
We help folks
from the start.
820 SW Second Ave., Suite 200,
Portland, OR 97204
Scott Sell
Chris Thomas
www.tcnf.legal
Three Js Distributing (Clackamas) Teamsters Local 206
32-56 %
■ 96 drivers, mechanics, warehouse workers, janitors
University of Oregon (Eugene) U of O Police Association
16-0
■ 21 campus police officers (formerly in SEIU 503, chose to form a stand-alone union.)
Department of Public Safety Standards & Training (Salem)
38-33-0
■ 100 classified employees (3-way election: Ore. Pub. Safety Assn. vs. AFSCME 3955 vs. no union)