NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS | February 15, 2019 | PAGE 7
...Merkley
From Page 1
There's talk of a Green New Deal.
Are you behind it? The Green
New Deal is a continuation of the
bill I introduced last cycle. It's the
concept of driving a transition to
100 percent clean renewable en-
ergy, creating millions of good-
paying jobs, and seeking to make
sure that underserved communi-
ties, communities of color, low-in-
come communities benefit from
clean energy and from the job cre-
ation. And then throw in an ele-
ment of just transition for people
in the fossil fuel world. Our coal
miners, at great cost to their own
personal health, have provided
the energy to drive our country for
generations. They should be able
to be a the front of the line for jobs
in the renewable energy world.
We should get as many of those
jobs into existing communities as
possible. I like the name "Green
New Deal" because it emphasizes
job creation. We're talking about
an investment that might ap-
proach a trillion dollars a year for
10 years.
You came out against the Jordan
Cove project. Why? I had a very
close consultation with our labor
union leaders here and nationally
about it. We’ve come to realize that
natural gas is a huge contributor to
climate chaos. At the point of
burning it's much cleaner than
coal, and uses less carbon for a
given amount of energy. But it
leaks a tremendous amount of
Raymond Thomas
Cynthia Newton
Melissa Haggerty
SHOULD U.S. SENATOR JEFF MERKLEY RUN FOR PRESIDENT? Take our reader poll at twitter.com/nwlaborpress
methane gas in the pipeline sys-
tem and thus is no better than coal
in general. And we are seeing such
a vast change quickly in the im-
pact of carbon dioxide and
methane on our climate. We see it
here in Oregon in multitudinous
ways. We have to artificially
change the chemistry of our sea-
water for our oysters. We are expe-
riencing lower average snowpacks
that affect our winter sports and
our irrigation water and the health
of our trout and salmon streams.
We have more aggressive pine
beetle infestations because the
pine beetles aren't killed by a cold
enough winter. And the biggest
factor we see is forest fires. The
longer, drier, hotter summers in
combination with more lightning
strikes is the main culprit. Most of
these things were theoretical 15
years ago, and we see them in re-
ality today. … So I reached the
conclusion that we have so much
infrastructure work to do … let's
build things that build a better
world for our children and our chil-
dren's children, not fossil fuel infra-
structure that will do deep dam-
age to our children and our
children's children. It's the tough-
est decision and conversation I've
ever gone through. I come from a
small town, Myrtle Creek, and then
Roseburg, and I think about a
coastal community that lost a lot
of its timber mills. I mean, we're
shipping raw logs out of there to
China which just irritates the hell
out of me. And I've worked a lot on
stitutional government. And by
that I mean gerrymandering and
voter suppression and dark
money. They're being used by the
privileged and powerful to pro-
duce government not by and for
the people but by and for the
powerful. We see that with the tax
bill that raided the treasury for $2
trillion and gave it to the wealthi-
est people in America, the biggest
companies. The second is the
foundations for thriving families
— housing, health care, educa-
tion, living wage jobs — are being
deeply neglected or damaged.
There's just no substitute for a
good paying job. I live in a blue
collar neighborhood, the same
neighborhood I was in from third
grade through high school. And
there's fewer electives in my high
school today. The classes are more
crowded. Folks who used to be
able to afford to buy a house on
working wages can't. Families are
now saying, “Well, the only way
we'll own a house is to inherit one.”
Families are not sure they should
encourage their kids to pursue
higher education. There aren't as
many pathways for apprentices.
We don't have shop classes to the
same degree that we had them.
There's so much we have to do to
invest in early childhood educa-
tion, to invest in career and tech-
nical education, and create the
multiple pathways into the work-
ing world. So that's the second big
area, investment in families. The
third is climate caps, carbon polu-
MORE ONLINE Our conversation
was much longer than we had
room for in print. We talked about
Medicare for All, taxing the rich,
saving troubled union pensions,
and much more. See it all at
nwlaborpress.org/JeffMerkley
James Coon
Chris Frost
Sydney Montanaro
You need a
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Scott Sell
Coos Bay infrastructure, helping to
save a railroad, and other efforts to
support their economy. So that
was a very very tough decision.
You’ve called NAFTA a disaster
for American workers. Why? Well
we've watched trucks that were
built here go to Mexico. We've
watched Oreos that were baked
here go to Mexico. I've talked to
Freightliner workers who had to
go down and train their replace-
ments in Mexico. And they felt
enormously guilty about it. But
they had mortgages to pay and it
gave them six months more work,
and somebody was going to do it.
But if you give full access to our
market for products that are built
under a different set of rules - low
environmental rules, low labor
rules, lower wages, then the fac-
tory is going to move. And manu-
facturing is a huge part of middle
class America.
What do you think of Trump’s
NAFTA 2.0? There's nothing in
that that would have stopped a
company going to Mexico. It has
little tiny improvements on auto
parts and dairy. That's about it.
Are you running for president?
I'm still exploring.
You were the only Senator to en-
dorse Bernie Sanders. Is your de-
cision based on whether he de-
cides to run? No, I'm trying to
evaluate the whole complexity of
that journey. There are big issues
that keep me awake at night. One
is the deep corruption of our Con-
tion. You can't undo the carbon in
the environment. We've aceler-
ated. When I was born we were in
teh vicinity of 312 parts per billion.
now we're approximately 100
parts higher, so about a 30 per-
cent increase in carbon in the at-
mosphere. That's a massive
change in the chemistry of the
planet in a single generation. And
the rate is increasing. When I was
born it was going up one point
every two to three years. Now it's
going up two to three points a
year.
You've laid out these three issue
areas. Are these the themes of
your presidential campaign
then? Those are the three things
I've talked about everywhere in
the country I've gone this last year.
Those are the mega issues where
we're vastly off track.
What is your decision making
process? What would make you
want to run or not? I am not in
the luxury of being outside my
Senate cycle. So I have my senate
campaign cycle to weigh against
a presidential campaign. The
question is: Where can I be most
effective in influencing these is-
sues? It comes down to that. I'm
the only senator thinking about
the race who couldn't be on the
ballot for both.
Chris Thomas
www.tcnf.legal
St. Charles nurses present a signed petition calling for a fair contract.
Nurses ratify contract
at St. Charles in Bend
Nine hundred nurses at St.
Charles Medical Center in Bend
have a new four-and-a-half-year
contract following a 98 percent
vote by 664 members of Oregon
Nurses Association (ONA). The
agreement provides for across-
the-board wage increases of 1 to
2 percent every six months, to-
taling 11.5 percent as of July 1,
2022. The agreement runs
through Dec. 31, 2022. Nurses
agreed to pay an additional 5
percent of the cost of health pre-
miums in 2021, bringing the to-
tal to 10 to 15 percent. Other
changes include:
■ New hires will come in at a step pay level
consistent with their years of experience.
■ Nurses will have greater input into staffing
and practice issues: Half the members of
all hospital shared governance committee
will now be nurses.
The hospital is the flagship in
the non-profit St. Charles Health
System, which also operates fa-
cilities in Redmond, Prineville,
and Madras. At the Redmond
and Prineville facilities, nurses
are also represented by ONA;
their contracts expire next year.