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About Northwest labor press. (Portland , Ore.) 1987-current | View Entire Issue (May 17, 2019)
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS | May 17, 2019 | PAGE 7 UNION ORGANIZING UNIONIZATION ] MAR-APR 2019 The following are Oregon and Southwest Washington workplaces where workers have decided whether to be represented by a union. The thumbs-up symbol means workers will be union- represented. Thumbs-down means they’ll be on their own. The information comes from the National Labor Relations Board and the Oregon Employment Relations Board. Union election results Employer (Location) Union Yes-No Legacy Good Samaritan Medical Center (Portland) SEIU Local 49 2-3 % ■ 6 communications operators Ore. Child Development Coalition (Wilsonville) LiUNA Local 737 61-56 ^ ■ 132 preschool teachers and support staff in Mulino, Silverton, Brooks, and Woodburn Burgerville (Portland) Burgerville Workers Union 15-9 ^ 14-7 ^ ■ 28 crew members employed at 8218 NE Glisan St. Burgerville (Portland) Burgerville Workers Union ■ 37 crew members employed at 1135 NE Martin Luther King Blvd. Laborers Local 737 leaders Ben Guzman (left) and Zach Culver (right) celebrate with union supporters after a suc- cessful union campaign at non-profit child care centers in Marion and Clackamas counties. Four migrant day care centers join Laborers 737 About 130 workers at four non- profit child care centers in Mar- ion and Clackamas counties ex- pect to begin contract bargain- ing later this month, after voting 61 to 56 to unionize with Labor- ers Local 737 on March 20. The taxpayer-funded centers are run by the non-profit Oregon Child Development Coalition (OCDC). OCDC provides early childhood education to about 4,000 children of migrant farm workers at 24 locations in 13 Oregon counties. Workers at several OCDC fa- cilities have been union-repre- sented since 2008, when they were members of what was then Laborers Local 320. At OCDC’s Gresham location, workers voted out the union in 2012, and so did workers at the Silverton and Woodburn facilities in 2013. The Laborers union has con- tinued to represent workers at OCDC centers in Cornelius in Washington County. The recent union vote brings the Silverton and Woodburn fa- cilities back into the union, along with OCDC day care cen- ters in Brooks and Mulino. Workers at OCDC child care centers in Klamath Falls, Chilo- quin, and Malin, Oregon voted to join AFSCME in 2015. “This is a group of brave women and men,” Local 737 or- ganizer Ben Guzman said. “They do this work and do it well, and they want to be repre- sented.” Psych nurses want union At Unity Center for Behavioral Health in Northeast Portland, more than 170 out of the 215 registered nurses have signed cards seeking to join Oregon Nurses Association. Unity Cen- ter is a 24-hour psychiatric emergency room and behavioral health center. It’s operated by Legacy Health System as a joint venture with several other local health networks. Nurses Jeff Ferrier and Sher- rie Neff told the Labor Press they and their co-workers want a union so they can have more say in decision making and a safer environment for patients and staff. Since it opened in 2017, Unity Center has faced multiple investigations over vi- olations of safety rules. Veterans nursing home workers re-run union election A nursing home for veterans is heading for a second union elec- tion after management labor vi- olations tainted the first one. The facility, located in Lebanon, Oregon, is run by non- profit Veterans Care Centers of Oregon. United Steelworkers of America (USW) represents about 170 workers at a veterans nursing home in The Dalles, Oregon, that is run by the same group. USW District 12 staff repre- sentative Jim Kilborn says more than 60 percent of the Lebanon nursing home’s 215 workers had signed union authorization cards as of Feb. 7, when USW asked the National Labor Rela- tions Board (NLRB) to hold a union election. But when the election was held on March 4, the tally was 58 to 59: USW lost by one vote. Kilborn says some union sup- porters didn’t cast ballots be- cause managers were loitering near the balloting area. And that tactic was the culmination of a series of coercive statements and actions by nursing home managers. Three pro-union workers were given formal warnings for passing out union literature in the parking lot and in the break room, and sending pro-union text messages. Managers also told employees not to talk about the union while working. One worker — told to leave for talk- ing about the union — was fol- lowed out of the building. Managers also said there would be no union, and that a union wouldn’t be able to help. All of those things violated federal labor law, USW charged. The NLRB agreed. The NLRB also objected to em- ployee handbook policies that prohibited workers from distrib- uting union literature, and barred workers from being on the premises when off the clock. To settle the charges with the NLRB, Veterans Care Centers of Oregon agreed to revise its handbook, rescind the discipline of the three workers, and coop- erate on a new election. It’s scheduled for May 20. The proposed collective bar- gaining unit includes registered nurses, certified nurse assistants, licensed practical nurses, med- ical records clerks, activities co- ordinators, barbers, and mainte- nance and transportation work- ers. Meanwhile, workers at the nursing home in The Dalles ex- pect to vote soon on a tentative three-year agreement that will raise wages 15 percent. For the first time, the agreement also in- cludes union security — a re- quirement that all represented workers pay union dues. Unionization by majority signup Employer (Location) Union Oregon State Board of Examiners for Engineering and Land Surveying (Salem) SEIU Local 503 ■ 13 non-supervisory employees JOBS Pharmaceutical-labor coalition releases jobs report The biopharmaceutical industry helped drive over $190 million in private infrastructure invest- ment in Oregon from 2012- 2017, resulting in more than 97,000 hours of work for union building trades workers — ac- cording to a new report commis- sioned by a coalition of unions and pharmaceutical companies The report was released May 2 at the United Association of Plumbers and Fitters Local 290 facility in Tualatin. It looked at major projects of $5 million or more in 11 states at any point be- tween 2012 and 2017. All told, 249 projects were identified, which required at least 15.6 mil- lion labor hours by union work- ers, and yielded at least $454 million in wages and tens of mil- lions of dollars for union health insurance and pension benefits. Oregon projects included a $125 million Genentech plant expansion in Hillsboro; $60 mil- lion at two expansion projects for Bend Research Inc. in Bend; and $5.7 million in renovation work at Patheon/ Thermo Fisher Scientific in Bend. The report estimated at least 97,000 hours logged by union workers in 14 trades, resulting in at least $2.9 million in union wages. The report also identified eight construction projects in Washington that required 323,250 hours of work, generat- ing $10 million in earnings for union workers. “The life sciences sector has been a source of significant op- portunities for union construc- tion workers in Oregon for many years,” said Robert Camarillo, executive secretary of the Ore- gon State Building Trades Coun- cil. “The sophisticated and tech- nical nature of the work to build biopharmaceutical facilities re- quires the type of highly-skilled labor that union craft workers in Oregon are accustomed to.” Other speakers at the press announcement were Columbia Pacific Building Trades Council Executive Secretary Willy My- ers. Local 290 Business Man- ager Lou Christian, and Genen- tech lobbyist Tim Layton. The study was produced by the Institute for Construction Economic Research (ICERES) at the request of the Pharmaceu- tical Industry Labor-Manage- ment Association (PILMA). PILMA is a coalition of labor or- ganizations and pharmaceutical companies that touts the value of union labor and issues joint statements on national legisla- tion affecting the pharmaceutical industry. ICERES is a network of academic researchers who study the impact of prevailing wage laws and construction unions in the economy. Data for the study were provided by In- dustrial Information Resources, a consulting firm specializing in market data on power, energy, and industrial infrastructure projects in the United States.
