SERVING ORGANIZED LABOR IN OREGON AND SOUTHWEST WASHINGTON SINCE 1900
NORTHWEST
LABOR
PRESS
VOLUME 118, NUMBER 20
IN THIS ISSUE
PARDON OUR DUST A $45 million remodel of
Westmoreland Union Manor is complete. | Page 6
BALLET DANCERS UNITE! Keller Auditorium is now
wall-to-wall union. | Page 8
Meeting Notices p. 4
In Memoriam: Norm Malbin p. 7
PORTLAND, OREGON
OCTOBER 20, 2017
IN THE AFTERMATH OF HURRICANE MARIA:
NATIONAL
Union volunteers mobilize for Puerto Rico
Trump/GOP tax plan:
Cut taxes on the rich
Six Oregon nurses join 300 other
union members for a two-week
stint in the hurricane’s wake
By Don McIntosh
By night they slept on army cots
in a baseball stadium. By day,
they brought medical attention
to stricken communities. Six
Kaiser Permanente nurses are
back in Portland after spending
two weeks in Puerto Rico with
300 other union volunteers from
around the country— helping
residents cope with the after-
math of a Category 5 hurricane.
Hurricane Maria hit Puerto
Rico Sept. 20 with winds of up
to 155 miles per hour. It battered
the island for more than 30
hours, dropping up to 37 inches
of rain — as much as Houston
got over three days from Hurri-
cane Harvey. The electric grid
was devastated, leaving Puerto
Rico’s entire population of 3.4
million without power. Roads
were out, and communications
were down, with up to 85 per-
The proposal would slash the
corporate tax rate from 35 to
20 percent and end the estate
tax on the biggest fortunes
Union nurses from Oregon, ready for takeoff at Newark International Airport.
From left: Maureen Upton, Katherine Salinas, Andreana Gentile, Susan
Gillispie, Misty Richards, and Tammie Tally-Ingrao (front).
cent of the island’s cell towers
out of service. Several million
people were without access to
safe drinking water.
Six days after the hurricane,
labor leaders in Puerto Rico set
up a phone call between the
mayor of San Juan and national
AFL-CIO President Richard
Trumka. Trumka called Sara
Nelson, president of the Associ-
ation of Flight Attendants union,
and she called the CEO of
United Airlines. They worked
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“A con game.” That’s what
AFL-CIO President Richard
Trumka called the new tax
plan President Trump and Re-
publican Congressional lead-
ers released Sept. 27.
“And working people are
the ones they’re trying to con,”
Trumka said. “Here we go
again. First comes the promise
that tax giveaways for the
wealthy and big corporations
will trickle down to the rest of
us. Then comes the promise
that tax cuts will pay for them-
selves. Then comes the prom-
ise that they want to stop off-
shoring.”
How bad is it? Here’s what
the GOP plan would do:
■ Slash the corporate tax rate from 35% to
20%
■ Cut or eliminate taxes multinational
corporations pay on their offshore profits
■ Eliminate the estate tax, which is only
levied on estates worth more than $5.5
million (the top 0.2%)
■ Eliminate the alternative minimum tax,
which limits the use of loopholes by
high income taxpayers to avoid taxes
■ Lower the top tax rate from 39.6% to
35% on the highest incomes
■ Raise the tax rate for those in the lowest
income bracket from 10% to 12%.
■ End the tax deduction that individuals
get for the state and local taxes they pay
■ Reduce the top individual tax rate from
39.6% to 25% for hedge fund
managers, real estate developers and
law firms
HEALTH CARE
Dec. 15, 1923 — Oct. 6, 2017
Medicare-for-all:
The time has come
Oregon lost a working woman’s
hero Oct. 6 with the passing of
labor leader Nellie Fox-Ed-
wards at age 93. Hers was a life
spent championing the rights of
women, union workers, and the
mentally ill.
Nellie Fox opened the door for
women in the labor movement in
1975 when she was elected di-
rector of political education and
legislation for the Oregon AFL-
CIO. At the time, she was the
highest elected woman union of-
ficial in the United States.
She was a founder of the Ore-
gon Pioneer Chapter of the Coali-
tion of Labor Union Women
(CLUW), and she served as pres-
ident of the Pacific Northwest La-
bor History Association.
Fox-Edwards got her start in
the labor movement working as a
clerk at a downtown Portland
jewelry store, which was repre-
By Don McIntosh
When Medicare passed Con-
gress in 1965, its authors
thought it would be the first
step toward universal national
health insurance. Medicare is
the public health insurance pro-
gram that covers Americans 65
and older. It’s sponsored by the
federal government and paid
for with payroll taxes, general
revenues, and participant pre-
miums — currently $134 a
month for most enrollees.
Medicare negotiates with
health care providers over
prices, to limit costs.
But proposals to expand it to
all Americans have fared
poorly in Congress. Demo-
cratic Congressman John
Conyers of Michigan has intro-
IN MEMORIAM
Nellie Fox-Edwards, a pioneer for women in labor
The proposal has record support
in Congress and in polls
Nellie Fox-Edwards with Oregon AFL-CIO officer Rosie McDonald.
sented by Retail Clerks Local
1257 (now part of United Food
and Commercial Workers Local
555). She became active in the lo-
cal and in 1962 was appointed a
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duced a “Medicare for All” bill
in every session of Congress
since 2003, but it has never
made it out of committee.
When then-Senator Max Bau-
cus (D-Mont.) held a 2009
hearing on the bill that later be-
came the Affordable Care Act
(ACA), he barred any discus-
sion of a universal program.
ACA greatly expanded
Medicaid (the state-adminis-
tered federal health insurance
program for the poor), and it
created state-level exchanges
for otherwise uninsured indi-
viduals to purchase coverage
with the help of income-de-
pendent subsidies and tax
credits. But four years after the
exchanges opened for busi-
ness, 28 million Americans are
still without health insurance,
and premiums continue to rise.
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