SERVING ORGANIZED LABOR IN OREGON AND SOUTHWEST WASHINGTON SINCE 1900
NORTHWEST
LABOR
PRESS
VOLUME 119, NUMBER 1
PORTLAND, OREGON
JANUARY 5, 2018
NATIONAL
Trump Administration comes out
for ‘right-to-work’ in public sector
Justice Department files amicus
briefs in looming Supreme Court
case Janus v AFSCME
TOP OREGON STATE REPRESENTATIVE CALLS
ON NEW SEASONS TO RESPECT WORKERS’
RIGHTS: The campaign to unionize New Seasons
Market — backed by United Food and Commercial
Workers Local 555 — got support from Oregon
House Speaker Tina Kotek at a Dec. 19 solidarity
rally outside the chain’s Arbor Lodge store in Port-
land. New Seasons has been scheduling employ-
ees to attend anti-union meetings led by union-
busting consultants. “Workers coming together
and organizing to better their working conditions
creates a more fair economy for all of us,” Kotek
said. “I believe the right to organize is a basic hu-
man right. And New Seasons needs to be serious
about respecting that right to organize. Let’s not
play games.… Let’s respect the rights of the work-
ers to organize.”
Video of the rally, featuring two New Seasons work-
ers who say they were fired for backing the union, is
at facebook.com/weheartnewseasonsworkers
BACK TO WORK
Daimler plant: Welcome back, retirees
By Don McIntosh
Hugs and handshakes rippled
through Daimler Trucks North
America’s Swan Island plant
Dec. 13 as 51 mostly grey-
haired retirees in orange safety
vests made their way through
the assembly line, visiting co-
workers they hadn’t seen in
years, and seeing once again
the place where they spent
decades of their lives.
The massive former Freight-
liner truck plant is a secure fa-
cility, behind fences, a turnstile,
and a guard house. But on this
Wednesday, plant manager
Mike Foley gave the order to
wave retirees through, and wel-
comed them back personally in
the employee break room. Af-
ter lunch, retirees roamed
freely throughout the plant, re-
uniting with former co-workers
and observing the ways the
plant has changed.
Quieter, and less crowded,
some said. Even as late as
2000, the plant employed over
3,000 workers assembling
The U.S. Supreme Court has set
Feb. 26 as the date it will hear
oral arguments in Janus v. AF-
SCME, a lawsuit that seeks to
declare it unconstitutional for
any public employees to have to
pay union dues. Last year, the
Court split 4-4 on a similar case,
Friedrichs v California Teachers
Association. With the confirma-
tion of Trump appointee Neil
Gorsuch to the Supreme Court,
it’s considered likely that a 5-4
majority will rule in favor of
plaintiff Mark Janus, overturn-
ing a unanimous 1977 U.S.
Supreme Court decision, and
imposing a so-called “right-to-
work” regime on all public em-
ployee workplaces nationwide.
Right-to-work is the usual term
for state laws that bar any col-
lective bargaining agreement
that requires union-represented
workers to pay union dues.
On Dec. 6, Trump Adminis-
tration lawyers in the U.S. Justice
Department filed a “friend-of-
the-court” brief arguing that in
the public sector, “speech in col-
lective bargaining is necessarily
speech about public issues.”
“Virtually every matter at
stake in a public-sector labor
agreement … is a matter of pub-
lic policy concerning all citi-
zens,” wrote solicitor general
Noel Francisco. [The office of
the solicitor general represents
the U.S. government at the
Supreme Court.] “To compel a
public employee to subsidize his
union’s bargaining position … is
to force him to support private
political and ideological view-
points with which he may
strongly disagree.” And that, the
Trump Administration lawyer
argues, would violate the First
Amendment, which says “Con-
gress shall make no law …
abridging the freedom of
speech.” The amicus brief is a
reversal of the Obama Adminis-
tration’s position on the issue.
GOP finalizes tax cuts
Daimler Trucks North America plant manager Mike Foley greets union re-
tirees who returned for a visit to the truck plant where most worked for
more than three decades.
Freightliner’s over-the-road
trucks. Today, there are about
570, and they make Daimler’s
heavy-duty Western Star line of
trucks. Daimler shifted Freight-
liner production to Mexico and
North Carolina, and the last
Freightliner rolled off the Port-
land truck plant in 2007.
Back in the day, old-timers
recall, “mother Freightliner”
was like a big family. Fathers
and sons, husbands and wives,
cousins, and nephews staffed
the assembly line. There were
sometimes layoffs, but these
were (and still are) union jobs
with benefits that you could
buy a home and raise a family
on. You started at age 20,
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The newly passed law contains
the biggest corporate tax cut in
history, and nearly all its bene-
fits go to the richest Americans
They finally did it: On Dec. 20,
Republicans in Congress passed
a historic and massive tax cut
for corporations, alongside
modest tax cuts for high income
earners and regular Americans.
The cuts are expected to in-
crease the federal debt by $1.46
trillion over the next 10 years (it
currently stands at $14.9 tril-
lion). The bill passed the Senate
by 51-48 and the House by 224-
201, with no votes whatsoever
from Democrats, and 12 House
Republicans also voting against
it. President Donald Trump
signed it into law Dec. 22.
The heart of the package is
the largest one-time reduction
in the corporate tax rate in U.S.
history. The nominal corporate
income tax rate now drops to 21
percent (from 35 percent previ-
ously). That cut amounts to $1
trillion over the next decade.
The package also lowers in-
come taxes for millionaires:
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