NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS |
January 5, 2018 | PAGE 3
JOBS
National Building Trades call the
change in a position a betrayal
U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.)
— in a Dec. 7 op-ed in the Med-
ford Mail-Tribune — came out
against the union-endorsed Jor-
dan Cove project, a proposed
liquid natural gas (LNG)
pipeline and export terminal in
Coos Bay.
North America’s Building
Trades Unions (NABTU), a 14-
union federation based in Wash-
ington, D.C., issued a strongly
worded response Dec. 13, say-
ing that Merkley, by publicly
opposing Jordan Cove, “demon-
strated a callous lack of concern
for the economic prospects of
Oregon’s working families.”
“The actions taken by Sena-
tor Merkley is a stunning rever-
sal and the latest example of
elected officials abandoning
working class voters who have
repeatedly been disappointed by
political elites,” NABTU said in
the statement.
Building trades unions have
been supporting the Jordan
Cove project because it would
be union-built under a project
labor agreement. The $8 billion
project would mean the equiva-
lent of about four years of em-
ployment for 2,100 construction
workers. It would also result in
200 permanent jobs, and $60
million in annual payments to
Coos, Douglas, Jackson and
Klamath counties.
Merkley has remained neutral
on Jordan Cove. He told the
Building Trades during his 2014
re-election campaign that he
supported letting the permitting
process play out. But in the op-
ed, Merkley said the project —
and the world — have changed
since 2012, when Jordan Cove
first announced its plans.
“It is still true that the project
would create hundreds of good-
paying construction jobs,
strengthen union pension funds
and train apprentices,” Merkley
wrote. “But it is no longer true
that the LNG shipped to Asia
would reduce pollution. Since
2012 we have learned more
about natural gas escaping from
fracking fluids and gas pipelines,
which by many estimates makes
it at least as carbon-polluting as
coal.”
Meanwhile, Merkley said the
project sponsors dropped earlier
assurances that the terminal
would be powered by renewable
energy, and that the company
Photo by Alex Garland, courtesy of the BlueGreen Alliance Foundation
Merkley comes out against Jordan Cove natural gas export terminal
wouldn’t seek to use eminent
domain against property owners
who don’t want the pipeline on
their land.
Oregon State Building and
Construction Trades Council
Executive Secretary Tim Frew
said his phone was burning up
with calls from angry building
trades union leaders after the op-
ed appeared. But Merkley’s
change of heart didn’t take Frew
by surprise.
Not long after Merkley got
back from attending an early
November United Nations cli-
mate summit in Bonn, Ger-
many, he called to let Frew
know he was rethinking his po-
sition on the project.
“We were pretty disap-
pointed,” Frew told the Labor
Press.
In reaction to the op-ed, Frew
sent a letter to the governor and
all state legislators, reiterating
the state building trades coun-
cil’s support for Jordan Cove
and asking that elected leaders
support the project and allow it
to proceed through the permit-
ting and approval process. The
project has support from Coos
Bay-area state legislators from
both parties.
Merkley’s change in position
may result in the Building
Trades not endorsing or con-
tributing to his campaign in
2020, Frew said.
“It doesn’t mean we wouldn’t
go to Jeff Merkley to ask him
for something,” Frew said. “But
let’s just say nerves are pretty
raw right now.”
Merkley has been regarded as
a true-blue pro-union Democrat
and close friend of labor. He’s
an outspoken opponent of job-
killing NAFTA-style trade
agreements and a strong advo-
cate of federal spending on in-
frastructure and renewable en-
ergy.
No other member of Ore-
gon’s Congressional delegation
has opposed Jordan Cove, and
Merkley doesn’t actually have
any say over the project. Thus
far, the project has been held up
by the Federal Energy Regula-
tory Commission, which twice
rejected Jordan Cove permit ap-
plications. Project backers are
hoping a third application, now
pending, will get a more favor-
able result in the Trump Admin-
istration.
ONLINE EXTRA
See Merkley’s op-ed, the full
NABTU statement, and the Oregon
Building Trades letter to the gover-
nor in response, at
http://bit.ly/2BT9Dcx
WORKERS’ RIGHTS
Trump NLRB majority moves fast to reverse Obama-era decisions
In just three months, the new
Board has reversed major gains
Republicans had a majority on
the National Labor Relations
Board (NLRB) for three
months, and moved quickly to
overturn several Obama-era
NLRB rulings that made it eas-
ier for workers to unionize and
defend against employer labor
law violations. For now, further
reversals of union-friendly
Obama-era policies are on hold
until President Donald Trump
nominates a new member to fill
a vacancy on the Board.
The NLRB is the independ-
ent federal agency that enforces
and interprets the National La-
bor Relations Act (NLRA), the
1935 law, revised in 1947, that
sets out the union and collective
bargaining rights of private-sec-
tor workers. The agency con-
sists of two parts:
• The Office of General Coun-
sel, which includes a network of
branch offices where agents ad-
minister union certification elec-
tions and investigate and prose-
cute labor law violations.
• The Board itself, a five-mem-
ber quasi-judicial body that in-
terprets the NLRA as a kind of
labor law Supreme Court.
By law, the Board is filled
with three members of the pres-
ident’s party and two from the
other party. Democratic and Re-
publican Board majorities used
to have a kind of consensus on
how to interpret and enforce the
law, but in recent decades, the
NLRB has made major swings
based on which party is in the
White House. In the George W.
Bush years, the NLRB rolled
back collective bargaining rights
for nurses and graduate students,
for example, while the Obama-
era NLRB worked hard to move
the other direction, modernizing
the law’s requirements, making
the agency’s processes more ef-
ficient, and restricting the ability
of employer-side lawyers to gum
up the process.
Now Trump appointees are
undoing that progress.
To serve as General Counsel,
Trump named Peter Robb, the
anti-union lawyer who wrote the
memo that allowed President
Ronald Reagan to fire striking
air traffic controllers in 1981.
And to the Board he nominated
Marvin Kaplan and William
Emanuel. Kaplan is a former at-
torney for House Republicans
who drafted legislation to over-
turn Obama-era NLRB rulings.
Emanuel is a former partner at
Littler Mendelson, one of the na-
tion’s premier antiunion law
firms, representing Amazon,
Target, Uber, and FedEx and
over 100 other clients. (He says
he’ll recuse himself if he’s called
upon to judge cases they’re in-
volved in). Trump also elevated
Republican Obama appointee
Phillip Miscimarra to chair the
five member Board.
When Emanuel was con-
firmed by the Senate Sept. 25,
Republicans had a three-two
majority, and got busy:
■ The ‘ joint employer decision: When
temp or franchise workers want to
unionize, who’s their employer?
Companies have long used two-party
legal structures to evade the obligation to
recognize unions or to avoid liability for
labor law violations. Then the Obama
NLRB, in its 2015 Browning-Ferris
decision, expanded its definition of ‘joint
employer’ to better hold them
accountable. On Dec. 14, the Trump NLRB
reversed that decision. Unions will again
have to prove that one entity directly
exercised control over essential
employment terms of another entity’s
employees.
■ The so-called ‘micro-union’
decision: In its 2011 Specialty Healthcare
decision, the Obama NLRB curbed
employers’ ability to delay union elections
using legal challenges over what’s an
appropriate bargaining unit. The ruling
said a union’s proposed unit didn’t have to
be the ‘most appropriate,’ it just needed to
be appropriate. On Dec. 14, the Trump
NLRB overturned that [See related story
on Page 2.]
■ Expedited union elections: Over the
decades, employer attorneys developed
an array of legal objections they’d deploy
to delay union elections, including
challenges as to who is eligible to vote. In
2015, the Obama NLRB general counsel
issued new rules saying union elections
could go forward with those challenges
resolved afterward. That shortened the
time between the union election request
and the vote itself. Employer groups
protested what they called “quickie”
elections — which didn’t give them
enough time to squelch union campaigns.
On Dec. 13, the NLRB announced it’s
reconsidering the expedited election rule,
and is soliciting public comments on the
rule, asking whether it should be
rescinded, modified, or retained, with a
deadline of Feb. 12.
Chair Miscimarra surprised
many when he announced he
would not serve another term.
His term ended Dec. 31, leaving
a vacancy on the Board. Presi-
dent Trump appointed Kaplan
chair on Dec. 22, but he’ll have
to nominate another member—
and get the Senate to confirm
that person — before the work
of undoing Obama-era deci-
sions can continue.