PAGE 6 | February 1, 2019 | NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
OREGON
What’s at stake for working people in the 2019 Oregon Legislature
contractors too often refusing to take responsibility for
the wrongdoing. The practice doesn’t just hurt workers,
it hurts honest business competitors, and it hurts the
state, which loses out on revenue. Construction unions
want to remedy that by making general contractors
responsible, increasing civil penalties for wage theft,
and requiring more contractors to post wage bonds.
Pass the Oregon Corporate Accountability Act
Corporations are increasingly locking employees out of
the right to sue when they are wronged, by requiring
them to sign arbitration clauses as a condition of
employment. This year UFCW Local 555 is advocating
for a bill that would allow workers to get around those
limitations. Modeled on California’s Private Attorneys
General Act, it would allow private individuals to sue
over labor law violations — on behalf of the state.
Democrats hold an 18-to-12 majority in
the Oregon Senate, and a 38-to-22 major-
ity in the Oregon House. Organized labor
helped many of them get there, and now
will ask them to deliver results for working
people. Here are some of the top pieces of
legislation to be considered in this year’s
session of the Oregon Legislature.
CARBON
Create Clean Energy Jobs A special Joint Committee
on Carbon has been working for some time on
legislation that would cap carbon emissions, auction
off emissions permits, and use the revenue to create
jobs in the clean energy sector. Gov. Kate Brown and
Democratic legislative leaders have said this is a major
priority. The Oregon AFL-CIO and the Oregon Building
Trades Council will be keeping tabs on the legislation
and try to maximize the jobs potential while
minimizing job losses. The devil (as well as the angels)
will be in the details. A draft bill was expected after this
issue went to press, and its first hearing was scheduled
for Feb. 1. The Building Trades Council wants to see the
law require payment of the prevailing wage on any
construction projects that are paid for by the carbon
pricing scheme, and it wants union apprenticeship
programs to be included when displaced workers are
retrained.
HOUSING
Enact rent control and an end to no-cause
eviction Oregon has rapidly become an unaffordable
place to rent or buy, and lawmakers are feeling
pressure to do something about it. Their key vehicle
will be Senate Bill 608, which is set to have its first
hearing Feb. 4. It would end sudden outrageous rent
hikes: Landlords would not be allowed to raise rent
more than 7 percent plus inflation in any year. The bill
would also end no-cause evictions after 12 months of
tenancy.
CONSTRUCTION
they increased a hospital provider tax and added a tax
on insurance companies. To go the final distance, Gov.
Brown this year is proposing to increase those two
taxes, raise cigarette taxes, and levy a new fee on
employers who don’t provide health coverage to
employees.
Claw back hospital tax breaks Lawmakers will also
consider limiting property tax breaks for non-profit
hospitals — if they spend too little on the charity care
that’s supposed to justify those tax breaks.
Provide health coverage to part-time public
college faculty At state colleges and universities,
full-time permanent faculty jobs are getting rarer, and
more and more instructors find themselves teaching
classes at multiple institutions. This year lawmakers
will consider a proposal to have the state offer health
insurance to public college faculty who find
themselves in that predicament.
REVENUE
HEALTH CARE
Fund the Medicaid expansion The 2010 Affordable
Care Act, aka Obamacare, greatly expanded Medicaid
to cover everyone at or near the poverty level. But it
also required states to gradually pony up a greater and
greater portion of the cost of that Medicaid expansion
— until 2020, at which point the state contribution
will stabilize at 10 percent of the tab. Oregon
lawmakers have had to get creative about how to
come up with the money for the state Medicaid
program, known as the Oregon Health Plan. In 2017,
Ask business to pay its fair share Oregon K-12
schools, state colleges and public services have been
chronically underfunded since the 1990s, when voter-
passed ballot measures limited property taxes and
imposed a supermajority rule that makes it easy for
lawmakers to cut taxes but hard to raise them. That’s a
big part of why businesses pay lower overall taxes in
Oregon than any other state. This year, Democrats
finally have the supermajority needed to raise revenue
— if they can come together around a proposal. One
possibility on the table is a “commercial activities” or
“gross receipts” tax on businesses. Washington has this
kind of tax. Oregon public sector unions proposed a
version of it in Measure 97, but it failed at the ballot in
2016.
Pass the Oregon Taxpayer Reimbursement Act
When employees have to rely on food stamps,
Medicaid, and other forms of public assistance to get
by, their employers are getting a kind of public subsidy.
UFCW Local 555 wants to see the state get that money
back with a bill that would penalize large retail,
hospitality and call center businesses (100 or more
employees worldwide) if they have any part-time
employees who receive public assistance.
WORKERS’ RIGHTS
End independent contractor misclassification In
recent decades, employers have increasingly come to
cheat employees by classifying them as “independent
contractors” as if they owned their own businesses. To
be an independent contractor means a worker lacks
many standard legal benefits like workers’ comp,
unemployment insurance, and employer Social
Security contributions. Last year, the California
Supreme Court cracked down on this abuse,
mandating a uniform test to determine whether a
worker is really an independent contractor. Oregon
unions will call on lawmakers to pass a similar
standard this year.
Crack down on construction industry wage theft
In the construction industry, wage theft is all too
common among subcontractors, with general
Enact prevailing wage in Enterprise Zones - On big
publicly-funded projects, Oregon pays the prevailing
wage to construction workers — so that contractors
can compete on quality, not on who can pay the least.
But what about construction projects that are funded
with tax breaks instead of tax dollars? Google,
Facebook, and other big tech firms benefit from public
investment in the form of generous property tax
exemptions in areas designated as Enterprise Zones.
The Oregon Building Trades Council will push to make
those tax breaks contingent on payment of the
prevailing wage.
Simplify the prevailing wage by using the union
rate To calculate the prevailing wage for each
construction trade, you could conduct a labor-intensive
and expensive government survey of employers, as
Oregon now does. Or you could do what Washington
recently resolved to do: Accept the fact that the rates
that unions collectively bargain with employer groups
are the most common wage paid – and serve as
proven market-tested standards for their industries.
Expand apprenticeship utilization requirements
To draw more (and more diverse) applicants into
construction, lawmakers will consider proposals to
increase the number of apprentices required on public
projects, lower the dollar threshold so that the
requirement applies to more projects, and extend the
requirement to Oregon Department of Transportation
projects which up to now have been exempt.
Get good answers to a really important question
The Building Trades Council will ask legislators this year
to mandate a study by the Bureau of Labor and
Industries of the economic impact of the prevailing
wage law.
—Don McIntosh
Isn’t it about time for a budget bump for BOLI?
Two weeks into her role as
Oregon’s labor commissioner,
Val Hoyle told a gathering of
200 union officers that her
number one priority will be to
restore funding for her agency,
the Oregon Bureau of Labor
and Industries (BOLI). Hoyle’s
predecessor Brad Avakian
never made that an issue during
his eight years in office.
“I want to make sure work-
ers in this agency have the re-
sources they need to get the job
done,” Hoyle told attendees at
the Oregon Labor Law Confer-
ence Jan. 25.
Hoyle said BOLI today has
half the staff it had two decades
ago, even as Oregon has grown
in population, and the agency
has more laws it’s responsible
for enforcing. When Jack
Roberts began as labor com-
missioner in 1995, BOLI had
200 staff members. Today it
has 97, including just a dozen
compliance specialists who are
responsible for enforcing min-
imum wage, overtime, prevail-
ing wage, and sick leave laws
for 2 million Oregon workers.
BOLI also enforces civil rights
laws, and oversees apprentice-
ship training programs.
“My number one priority is
to get the resources to hold em-
ployers accountable when
they’re not doing the right
thing,” Hoyle said.
Hoyle said she will ask Ore-
gon lawmakers to step up and
restore BOLI funding this year.
—DM
Labor Commissioner Val Hoyle