PAGE 2 | October 5, 2018 | NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
LABOR
PRESS
(International Standard Serial Number 0894-444X)
Established in 1900 in Portland, Oregon as a voice of the la-
bor movement. Published on a semi-monthly basis on the
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ration owned by 20 unions and councils including the Ore-
gon AFL-CIO. Serving more than 120 union organizations in
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...Union members running for office
From Page 1
In 2017, to maintain the Med-
icaid-funded Oregon Health
Plan, lawmakers had to find a
way to raise revenue, knowing
that whatever money they raised
would be matched 9-to-1 by the
federal government. The plan
majority Democrats came up
with was to increase a tax on
hospital revenue, and levy a 1.5
percent tax on health insurance
premiums. Parrish, the Repub-
lican state rep for House District
37 (West Linn), didn’t just vote
against it. She led an initiative to
refer it to voters in an effort to
stop it. Voters rubber-stamped
the Legislature’s plan by a
whopping 62 percent, but not
until after Oregon unions spent
hundreds of thousands of dollars
defending health care for seniors
and low-income Oregonians.
Parrish also voted against the
minimum wage increase, and
against the bill that guaranteed
workers paid sick leave. That
record bothered Prusak as a
nurse and as a citizen so much
that she sought out training from
the union-affiliated Oregon La-
bor Candidates School, and
threw her hat in the ring.
St. Monica Apartments, a group foster home for pregnant young women in crisis, opened this May in Keizer. with
Northside Electric's help, IBEW Local 280 member Mike Ellison got the electrical portion of the project donated.
Now, backed strongly by her
own union, Oregon Nurses As-
sociation, and by the wider labor
movement, Prusak is house-call-
ing voters, not just patients. She
estimates she’s personally
knocked on the doors of over
3,000 registered voters, and
campaign volunteers have
knocked on another 22,000. If
Prusak wins, she’ll enter the
Legislature as a staunch advo-
cate of tax fairness, single payer
healthcare, and smaller class
sizes. And Oregonians will have
a nurse in the room when laws
about health care and health in-
surance are being crafted.
Photo by Christopher Hoy
NORTHWEST
Want union power? Put an
electrician in the House
In an era when working people
are falling behind, in a state
where labor and greens quarrel
while forests burn, union electri-
cian Mike Ellison is ready to be
Turn to Page 3
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