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About Northwest labor press. (Portland , Ore.) 1987-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 19, 2018)
PAGE 6 | January 19, 2018 | NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS COLLECTIVE BARGAINING Shipyard workers reject Vigor contract offer Shipyard workers at Vigor In- dustrial LLC in Portland and Puget Sound overwhelmingly rejected a three-year master contract proposal in voting held Jan. 15. The union bargaining team recommended passage. The master agreement falls under the direction of the na- tional Metal Trades Department, AFL-CIO. Side agreements are bargained separately by the Metal Trades Council of Port- land and Vicinity, the Puget Sound Metal Trades Council, and Boilermakers Local 104. More than 1,000 employees at those locations have been working under the terms of an extended master agreement that expired Sept. 1, 2017. That deal was the result of an extension to side agreements with the re- spective metal trades councils that expired Nov. 30, 2016. The master contract’s original expi- ration date was June 1, 2017. Changes in health insurance plans with higher deductibles, and a “rolling 40” for overtime when called back from layoff during the week were key issues in workers rejecting the contract proposal, said Robert Petroff, a union rep for Machinists Dis- trict Lodge W24. At press time, no new bar- gaining dates had been set. Metal trades craft unions rep- resent workers at Vigor Marine Portland, Cascade General Port- land, Washington Marine Re- pair Seattle, Vigor Marine Seat- tle, and Vigor Shipyard Seattle. Vigor Marine Portland and Vigor Marine Seattle operate as a single company. Nearly a dozen craft unions are affiliated with the respective metal trades councils in Oregon and Washington. They include Plumbers and Fitters, Machin- ists, Electricians, Laborers, Painters, Operating Engineers, Teamsters, Sheet Metal Work- ers, Insulators, and Boilermak- ers. ... Bills Oregon lawmakers will consider From Page 1 Here are some of the proposals they’ll be following: Paid family leave Federal law says companies with 50 or more employees must allow employees to take up to 12 weeks leave to care for a newborn or a family member or their own serious health condition. But workers often can’t afford to use it. California, New Jersey, New York and Rhode Island have made the leave paid. Will Oregon join them? One proposal, to be taken up by state senator Kathleen Taylor (D-Portland), is to levy a small payroll tax to create a fund so folks could go on paid leave if have a kid or a close relative gets very sick. Prescription drug prices State representative Rob Nosse (D-Portland), plans to introduce legislation to require pharmaceutical companies to give 60 days’ notice if they want to raise the price of a drug more than 10 percent a year for drugs that cost more than $100 a month. They would also be required to give state regulators detailed explanations of the price hikes and their effects on healthcare costs. California passed a similar proposal last year. More money for affordable housing Alissa Keny-Guyer (D-Portland) will sponsor a proposal to increase the real estate transaction recording fee to $75 (currently it’s $35) to generate $112.5 million a year to build affordable housing. Bargaining over class size A bill sponsored by State Rep. Brian Clem (D-Salem) would make class size a mandatory subject of bargaining in teachers union negotiations. Up to now, unions have wanted to negotiate limits to class size, but districts have often refused even to discuss it. Cap and invest The most impactful proposal lawmakers will take up is the Clean Energy Jobs bill. See the separate article on Page 1 for details. ... Oregon Cap and invest? From Page 1 nouncement that the United States will abandon commit- ments president Obama made at the Paris Climate Agreement, it’s falling to state and local gov- ernments to take action on cli- mate change. Oregon’s Clean Energy Jobs bill would create what propo- nents are calling a “cap-and-in- vest” program. It would set a cap on greenhouse gas emis- sions, issue permits for that amount of emissions, and auc- tion off the permits. The amount of allowed emissions would shrink each year until 2050, at which point Oregon greenhouse gas emissions would be at least 80 percent lower than 1990 lev- els. The cap would only apply to fossil fuel importers and enter- prises responsible for emitting the equivalent of 25,000 metric tons of CO2 emissions a year, about 100 companies in all. Emissions from agriculture and forestry operations wouldn’t be covered; nor would marine and aviation fuels. The bulk of the funds the pro- gram collects — 85 percent — would pay for things like build- ing efficiency, electric grid im- provements, fuel-efficient trans- portation, and projects that promote resiliency in forestry, agriculture, and coastal areas. Unlike with previous ver- sions of this proposal, represen- tatives of organized labor were invited to take part in crafting the bill, and while it’s not ex- actly as unions might have writ- ten it, the bill goes a long way to address concerns labor leaders raised about the potential for job loss and about the quality of the jobs the program would create. For example, energy-inten- sive industries like paper mills and aluminum smelters that are exposed to foreign competition would be issued some al- lowances at no charge, which they could sell to fund energy efficiency improvements. Elec- tric and gas utilities would also get allowances at no cost, and use the proceeds to reduce en- ergy bills. For any construction projects funded through the program, contractors will be required to participate in state-registered apprenticeship programs, and would have to have a history of compliance with all safety and labor laws. And state agencies administering funds could re- quire the use of project labor agreements. Any workers displaced by the program [and credible studies show there have been no job losses to date from a similar program in California] would get financial support including unemployment insurance and retraining and relocation assis- tance. The proposal also mandates seats for labor union representa- tives on advisory committees that would oversee the pro- gram’s implementation. The program would start in 2021. Who’s on our side? By Tom Chamberlain Oregon AFL-CIO President Elections matter Too often, folks are turned off by the political process. They are tired of the noise of the 24-hour news cycle. In an era when all one has to do is flip the channel to find Fox News pushing the conservative agenda or MSNBC for the leftist viewpoint, many have grown tired of the bickering between political parties and the failure to move anything but a cor- porate agenda in Congress. We often forget that elections do matter and our votes do count. While many of us have been distracted by the president’s daily tweets or if the Russians meddled in the 2016 election, many have not paid attention to an under-the-radar agenda to weaken workers’ rights. And 2017 was a banner year for that agenda. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is the in- dependent federal agency responsible for interpreting pri- vate sector collective bargaining and refereeing disputes be- tween employers, unions and workers. President Trump’s two appointments to the Board changed the majority of the Board from progressive to conservative. And they made short work of reversing many of the gains organized labor achieved under the Obama Administration. In 2011, the NLRB’s Specialty Healthcare decision paved the way for workers to organize smaller bargaining units within a larger workplace. For example, nursing as- sistants could create a bargaining unit to hold a union elec- tion without including all the facility’s dietary aides, main- tenance workers, or other employees. That decision has been reversed in 2017 under the new anti-union Board. Employer legal teams have developed a strategy of de- laying union elections by submitting an array of legal ob- jections in an effort to slow down union elections, with the goal of draining union resources and organizing momen- tum. In 2015 the NLRB developed and implemented a rule allowing for union elections prior to a ruling on the em- ployer objections. This shortened the timeframe for elec- tions to a few weeks. On Dec. 13, 2017, the NLRB an- nounced that they were reconsidering the expedited election rule. Under the Obama Administration, the Department of La- bor (DOL) issued a rule starting in December 2017 which raised the threshold for those eligible for overtime from $23,660 to $47,476 per year. The DOL rule expanded mandatory overtime to 4.2 million workers. The rule was necessary because many employers were misclassifying their workers to skirt paying overtime. Recently, the Depart- ment of Labor hinted that they will be reevaluating the rule. Elections do matter. The Red Wave of the 2016 election ushered in so-called ‘right-to-work’ in Kentucky and Mis- souri, bringing the number of ‘right-to-work’ states to 28. We now know that the corporate conservative agenda is about destroying the American union movement. Do not fool yourselves: Any state, including Oregon, is just an elec- tion away from ‘right-to-work.’ 2018 is not the time to retreat and disengage from the po- litical process. Rather, it is a time to push back by electing strong, pro-union candidates, growing our pro-worker ma- jorities in the state House and Senate, and reelecting Gov. Kate Brown. The Oregon AFL-CIO and our affiliates will be on the doorstep and in the workplace talking and listening to work- ers and their families in our efforts to advance a pro-worker agenda in Oregon and in Washington, D.C. I hope we can count on you to join us. The Oregon AFL-CIO is a 138,000-member-strong federation of labor unions.
