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.