PAGE 10 | September 7 , 2018 | NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
UNION ORGANIZING
OHSU grad students unionize with AFSCME
Graduate student teaching and
research assistants at Oregon
Health and Science University
(OHSU) submitted a petition for
union recognition to the Oregon
Employment Relations Board
on Aug. 29. A clear majority of
the 250 students signed authori-
zation cards designating Oregon
AFSCME as their union.
Graduate students conduct
valuable research, but many feel
more could be done to support
their struggling colleagues.
“We’re building our union
because we want to be recog-
nized and respected for our
work,” said Breanna Caruso, a
second year graduate-employee
in the Cell, Developmental &
Cancer Biology Program, in a
union press statement. “We’re
not just advancing our educa-
tion, we’re producing tangible
contributions that benefit the
university. It’s time that gradu-
ate students were fairly compen-
sated for the value of our work.”
Once the union petition is
certified, students will prepare
to meet with OHSU administra-
tors to discuss a host of ongoing
issues, including equity and di-
versity on campus, available
mental health services, and
more.
THE ANTI-UNION OPPOSITION
Trump-pardoned felon will raise anti-union funds
Far-right culture warrior Dinesh
D’Souza — a campaign finance
felon who received a Trump pres-
idential pardon — will headline a
$115-a-plate fundraiser for the
union group Freedom Founda-
tion. Freedom Foundation is set
up as a tax-deductible educa-
tional/ charitable non-profit. But
the group’s reason for existence
— “making life miserable for
government employee unions,”
as a group spokesperson once put
it — doesn’t sound like a mission
most people would recognize as
a charitable cause. It’s funded by
an array of right-wing founda-
tions set up by billionaires and
millionaires. Freedom Founda-
tion uses public records requests
and legal action to obtain public
employee union membership
lists, and then follows up with
mailings, phone calls, and in-per-
son visits to union members’
workplaces and homes to try to
get them to drop their union
membership.
Freedom Foundation staffers
are positively giddy with a June
2018 decision of the U.S.
Supreme Court. In the Janus v.
AFSCME case, the court made
“right to work” the law of the
land for public sector workplaces,
in that no public employees can
be required to pay anything to the
union that bargains and defends
their contract.
D’Souza and the Freedom
Foundation will be celebrating
the decision at the fundraiser, to-
... An end to NAFTA?
From Page 2
softwood lumber exports, but
there’s little basis to support
Trump’s allegation of “abuse”
in the relationship. In fact, the
United States has had slight
trade surpluses with Canada in
every year but one since
NAFTA took effect in 1994.
Canada’s economy is even
more tightly entwined with the
U.S. economy than Mexico’s,
particularly in sectors like au-
tomotive. And the two are
close enough legally and polit-
ically that many U.S.-head-
quartered unions have Cana-
dian locals. Canadian locals
are what explains the “interna-
tional” in the name of most
American unions, as well as
the custom of referring to the
top-level union bodies as “in-
ternationals.”
Whatever final deal is
worked out, Trump will have
to formally submit to Con-
gress, which would schedule
an up-or-down vote on it 90
days later.
— Don McIntosh
gether with government workers
who have successfully opted out
of union fees.
In 2014, D’Souza was sen-
tenced to eight months in jail, five
years probation and a $30,000
fine after pleading guilty to a
felony violation of a federal cam-
paign finance law. The law limits
contributions to $5,000 from any
individual to any one candidate,
but D’Souza tried to get around
that by giving $25,000 in the
names of five other people.
D’Souza is now promoting a
movie he produced that compares
Democrats to Nazis.
Seattle-area labor unionists are
planning to picket the Sept. 28
event, which will take place at the
Hilton in Bellevue, Washington.
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