PAGE 2 | November 17, 2017 | NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
NORTHWEST
LABOR
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COLLECTIVE BARGAINING
DCTU reaches tentative agreement
The deal with the City of Portland
delivers long-overdue raises and
more gender parity.
Two weeks after members
voted to authorize a strike, Dis-
trict Council of Trade Unions
(DCTU) reached tentative
agreement with the City of
Portland Nov. 3 on a new
three-year contract covering
nearly 1,100 City employees.
AFSCME Local 189 Presi-
dent Rob Martineau, a member
of the union bargaining team,
said it’s one of the best contracts
he’s seen at the City, but he
added that it wasn’t until after
DCTU members got engaged,
mobilized, and vocal that the
City moved to compromise.
The agreement includes an
immediate 3.85 percent raise
retroactive to the July 1, 2017
expiration of the previous union
contract. (It’s a 1.65 percent
across-the-board raise plus a 2.2
percent cost-of-living increase.)
The agreement then delivers
two more annual cost-of-living
increases indexed to inflation.
Workers in a number of job
classifications will also get sep-
arate raises of up to 10 percent
— in cases where both the City
and the unions agreed that they
were underpaid compared to
their counterparts at other public
employers. Some of those un-
derpaid classifications were in
jobs traditionally held by
women, like the City’s parking
code enforcement officers; both
sides agreed there was a historic
gendered pay discrepancy,
which a 9.65 percent raise will
remedy. And for about 100 po-
lice records specialists, the gen-
der-parity raises will even be
retroactive, a $1.95 an hour in-
crease going back more than
two years. That stems from a le-
gal case the DCTU won in
which the City labor relations
director was accused of failing
to bargain in good faith.
One key sticking point that
delayed agreement was resolved
with a compromise. The City
proposed to double the em-
ployee share of insurance pre-
miums (to 10 percent) for any
employees who failed to get a
medical checkup at least once
every two years. DCTU nego-
tiators objected on the grounds
of medical confidentiality, but in
the end, the two sides crafted
contract language assuring that
managers won’t have access to
the medical screening results.
Several management propos-
als also were dropped for the
sake of the deal. City negotiators
said it can be hard to recruit new
employees in some job classifi-
cations, and proposed to give
managers the discretion to bring
new hires in half-way up the
salary scale and with more paid
vacation than the union contract
otherwise entitles them to.
DCTU argued that was unfair to
existing employees and said if
the City had trouble recruiting,
they should raise the starting
wage for all, not give managers
discretion to grant favors.
Martineau said. The deal
now goes out for ratification
among members of the six
unions that make up the DCTU
coalition: AFSCME Local
189, IBEW Local 48, Machin-
ists Lodge 63, Painters District
Council 5, Plumbers and Fit-
ters Local 290, and Operating
Engineers Local 701.
NOTE: As this issue went
to press Nov. 14, the two sides
became aware they were not
in total agreement on what
they agreed on, which could
delay taking it to a vote. See
nwlaborpress.org for updates.
Legacy Emanuel
settles with SEIU
Strike averted, hospital support
workers ratify a new contract
Members of Service Employees
International Union (SEIU) Lo-
cal 49 at Legacy Emanuel Hos-
pital, Randall Children’s Hospi-
tal, and Unity Behavioral Health
Center voted 238-31 on Nov. 6 to
ratify a new three-year union
contract. The agreement was
reached Nov. 1 as workers pre-
pared to walk off the job for a
two-day strike that was slated for
Nov. 8 and 9.
The contract provides raises
totaling 7.75 percent over three
years for the 750-member unit,
which consists of certified nurs-
ing assistants, emergency techs,
housekeepers, cafeteria workers
and other support workers. It also
gives the most senior workers an
additional $1.10 an hour.
Legacy also agreed to a sys-
tem of personalized financial as-
sistance for members who are
unable to pay their medical bills.
That comes as Legacy was em-
barrassed in a Nov. 1 Willamette
Week story about a Local 49
member at Legacy Emanuel who
was sent to collections for lym-
phoma treatment — at Legacy.
The deal also comes as
Legacy faces a record-busting
fine of $276,680 from the Ore-
gon Bureau and Labor and In-
dustries for 4,439 instances in
which surgical and housekeeping
employees at Legacy Emanuel
failed to be given legally man-
dated meal breaks.
The new contract runs through
June 30, 2020, three years after
the previous contract expired.
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