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About Northwest labor press. (Portland , Ore.) 1987-current | View Entire Issue (June 15, 2018)
SERVING ORGANIZED LABOR IN OREGON AND SOUTHWEST WASHINGTON SINCE 1900 NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS VOLUME 119, NUMBER 12 IN THIS ISSUE WESTERN STATES OPEIU PENSION ASKS FOR CUTS A 30 percent cut now could prevent insolvency. | Page 3 JANUS, READY OR NOT How public sector unions will react to the right-to-work Court decision | Page 6 Meeting Notices p. 4 A new wave of media unions p. 7 PORTLAND, OREGON JUNE 15, 2018 NATIONAL UNION ORGANIZING Trump slashes federal union rights Faculty unionize at OSU and OIT New executive orders speed the firing of federal workers and slash the use of paid union time to defend them. By Don McIntosh President Donald Trump signed a trio of executive or- ders on May 25 to speed the process of firing federal em- ployees, slash union officers’ use of paid time to defend fed- eral workers, and order federal agencies to renegotiate union contracts. “This is more than union busting – it’s democracy bust- ing,” said J. David Cox Sr., AFGE national president, in a press statement reacting to the orders. “These executive orders are a direct assault on the legal rights and protections that Con- gress has specifically guaran- teed to the 2 million public-sec- tor employees across the country who work for the fed- eral government.” AFGE, which stands for “ This is a democracy, not a dictatorship. No president should be able to undo a law he doesn’t like through administrative fiat .” —AFGE president J David Cox American Federation of Gov- ernment Employees, is the largest union of federal employ- ees, with 318,000 members. On May 30 it filed a lawsuit asking that the order slashing paid union time be struck down by a federal court. AFSCME joined the suit June 1. Trump’s Executive Order 13837 says no federal em- ployee can spend more than a quarter of their paid time on union responsibilities. The or- der also limits total union paid- time hours to one hour per em- ployee per year. [A report from Office of Personnel Manage- ment says the federal average is currently 2.95 hours of paid time per employee.] And the or- der requires agencies to bill unions at commercial market rates for use of meeting rooms, phones, computers, and other agency assets. “The United States Constitu- tion does not vest the president with the power to legislate,” AFGE said in the lawsuit. “[The order] seeks to impermis- sibly rewrite portions of the Federal Service Labor-Man- agement Relations Statute, which governs labor relations in the federal civilian work- place.” Under that law, passed in 1978, union officers are al- lowed to fulfill their representa- Turn to Page 2 COLLECTIVE BARGAINING UPS Teamsters authorize strike About 280,000 workers could walk out as soon as Aug. 1 Teamsters members at UPS voted by more than 90 per- cent to authorize a strike if no agreement is reached before their current five-year union contract expires July 31, the union announced June 5. If that happens, 280,000 Teamsters would walk off the job. It would be the largest U.S. strike since UPS work- ers last went on strike in 1997, for 16 days. UPS is the largest private-sector union employer in the United States. The two sides have been negotiating since late March, but Teamsters are balking at a Oregon’s labor movement just grew by 2,500 new members. Faculty at Oregon State Univer- sity (OSU) and Oregon Institute of Technology (OIT) are going union. On June 5, union cam- paigns at both universities deliv- ered union authorization cards to the Oregon Employment Re- lations Board. The two schools were the last public universities in Oregon where faculty were not yet unionized. Under Oregon law, public employees unionize once a majority of a proposed bar- gaining unit signs cards. At OIT the unit is 172 full- time faculty, instructors and li- brarians. They’ll be members of American Association of Uni- versity Professors (AAUP). At OSU, it’s 2,400 faculty in all departments and campuses. They’ll be members of United Academics of Oregon State University, a joint project of AAUP and American Federa- tion of Teachers (AFT). AFT al- ready represents graduate stu- dents at OSU, while support staff there are represented by SEIU Local 503. The union campaign among OSU faculty, years in the making, has been OSU profs Darrell Ross and Aurora Sherman turn in union cards June 5. collecting cards since February. Union organizing committee member Darrell Ross says OSU faculty are unionizing to win a greater say in university gover- nance and to secure better work- ing conditions. In his 27 years as an entomologist in the OSU College of Forestry, Ross says he’s seen steady deterioration in faculty working conditions. “There’s increasing reliance on contingent faculty who work in contracts of at most one year,” Ross said. “They have lit- tle job security, they’re not paid well, and they often don’t know until the last minute if they’ll have their contracts renewed.” During the campaign, OSU faculty heard from academics at UO and Rutgers about how unions halted that slide and im- poved job security. Machinists win toehold at Boeing South Carolina plant UPS proposal to create a new class of driver that would work weekends at no pay premium. Current full-time drivers now earn an average of $36 an hour. Last year, UPS had $5 billion profit, and paid its CEO $14.6 million in total compensation. A group of 176 flight-line readi- ness technicians and inspectors at Boeing’s factory in North Charleston, S.C., voted 104 to 65 May 31 to join the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Work- ers (IAM). It’s the first group of workers to union- ize at Boeing’s South Carolina factory since the IAM was voted out there in 2009. Back then, the plant employed 300. Today it employs about 6,700 workers assembling Boeing 787 Dream- liners. In 2011, the National La- bor Relations Board (NLRB) determined that Boeing located 787 assembly in non-union South Carolina in part to punish its union- ized Puget Sound workforce for striking. South Carolina is the least-union- ized state in the nation, with just 2.6 percent of workers there in a union. Turn to Page 7
