NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS |
...Lawmakers cut PERS … again
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itive. All but three Republican
legislators voted against the bill,
because they didn’t think the cuts
went far enough. Democrats, all
of whom were endorsed by pub-
lic employee unions, led the
charge and provided the votes.
Even Democrats who come out
of the labor movement voted for
SB 1049. Tiffiny Mitchell is a
public employee herself and just
won office last November with
the help of her union, SEIU Local
503. State Rep. Rob Nosse, a
union rep at Oregon Nurses As-
sociation, voted for it even
though it meant cutting his own
members’ compensation.
What SB 1049 does
The bill is meant to lessen the
burden the PERS system is
placing on public budgets.
Allow a longer catch-up period The bill
gives public employers more time to
restore the investment value that was lost
in the 2008 crash. It changes that
“amortization period” from 20 to 22 years
starting in 2020. This generates two-
thirds of the bill’s savings.
Divert public worker compensation
Current retirees won’t be affected, but
beginning July 1, 2021, public sector
employers will “redirect” part of the 6
percent of salary that’s now being
contributed to public employees’ 401(k)-
State Sen. Michael Dembrow
— a public employee and long-
time former officer in American
Federation of Teachers-Oregon
— also voted for it, even though
it cuts his own compensation.
In an email to constituents,
Dembrow explained why he
and other Democrats voted for
it. Employer contributions to
PERS have risen steadily be-
cause Oregon is working to re-
duce the funding shortfall cre-
ated by the 2008 financial crash.
Those increases have pinched
public budgets. Democrats
wanted more revenue, but a
three-fifths supermajority vote
requirement made that challeng-
ing. Lawmakers got over that
style retirement savings plan - to reduce
PERS’ unfunded liability. Employees with
annual salaries under $30,000 won’t be
affected. For those above that, the
reduction will depend on which PERS tier
they’re in. More senior employees who
are in the more generous PERS Tiers 1 & 2
will see a redirect of 2.5 percent of salary.
Tier 3 employees will see a redirect of 0.75
percent. The diversion will continue until
PERS is 90 percent funded, which is
projected to take 10 to 15 years. [Currently
the PERS system is considered around 80
percent funded.] If employees want to
keep 6 percent of salary going into their
retirement savings accounts, they can opt
to put their future salary increases into the
fund. This provision of SB 1049 accounts
for about 20 percent of the savings.
three-fifths hump earlier this
year in a vote to increase K-12
funding by raising taxes on big
corporations by a billion dollars
a year.
But Dembrow explained it
was a package deal: “In order to
get the necessary votes, to get
Senate Republicans back into
the building (they used their
constitutional ability to deny a
quorum), and to get business to
stand down, there was an im-
plicit understanding that we
would follow school funding
with PERS reform in short or-
der, and that the changes to
PERS would need to include
contributions from current pub-
lic sector employees.”
Welcome retirees back Starting January
2020, restrictions on retired public
employees going back to work will be
eliminated. They just won’t accrue new
pension benefits if they return; instead,
whatever the employer would otherwise
have paid into their retirement will go to
shore up PERS.
Cap PERS benefits Effective 2021 the
earnings that generate PERS benefits will
be capped at $195,000. The change will
only affect top-paid government
executives, coaches, and doctors.
Transfer public funds $100 million in
unanticipated General Fund revenue will
go to reduce the unfunded liability, and
80 percent of annual revenues from a
new lottery sports betting program will
go to incentivize public employers to
make additional payments.
How they voted
It was Democrats who
provided the votes to divert
public employee compensa-
tion into pension reserves.
SENATE: Passed 16 to 12
Aye: 13 Democrats, 3 Republicans
Lee Beyer (D-Springfield)
Ginny Burdick (D-Portland)
Michael Dembrow (D-Portland)
Lew Frederick (D-Portland)
Fred Girod (R-Stayton)
Bill Hansell (R-Athena)
Mark Hass (D-Beaverton)
Betsy Johnson (D-Scappoose)
Tim Knopp (R-Bend)
James Manning Jr (D-NW Eugene)
Laurie Monnes Anderson (D-Gresham)
Floyd Prozanski (D-Eugene)
Chuck Riley (D-Hillsboro)
Arnie Roblan (D-Coos Bay)
Elizabeth Steiner Hayward (D-NW
Portland/Beaverton)
President Peter Courtney (D-Salem)
Nay: 5 Democrats, 7 Republicans
Herman Baertschiger Jr (R-Grants Pass)
Cliff Bentz (R- Ontario)
Brian Boquist (R-Dallas)
Shemia Fagan (D- Portland)
Sara Gelser (D-Corvallis)
Jeff Golden (D-Ashland)
Dallas Heard (R-Roseburg)
Dennis Linthicum (R-Klamath Falls)
Kathleen Taylor (D-Milwaukie)
Kim Thatcher (R-Keizer)
Chuck Thomsen (R-Hood River)
Rob Wagner (D-Lake Oswego)
Excused: Alan Olsen (R-Canby)
Jackie Winters (R-Salem)
June 7, 2019 | PAGE 7
HOUSE: Passed 31 to 29
Aye: 31 Democrats
Teresa Alonso Leon (D-Woodburn)
Janelle Bynum (D-Clackamas)
Julie Fahey (D-Eugene)
David Gomberg (D-Lincoln City)
Mitch Greenlick (D-Portland)
Ken Helm (D-Beaverton)
Paul Holvey (D-Eugene)
Alissa Keny-Guyer (D-Portland)
Tina Kotek (D-Portland)
John Lively (D-Springfield)
Pam Marsh (D-Ashland)
Caddy McKeown (D-Coos Bay)
Susan McLain (D-Hillsboro)
Mark Meek (D-Gladstone)
Tiffiny Mitchell (D-Astoria)
Nancy Nathanson (D-Eugene)
Courtney Neron (D-Aloha)
Rob Nosse (D-Portland)
Carla Piluso (D-Gresham)
Karin Power (D-Milwaukie)
Dan Rayfield (D-Corvallis)
Jeff Reardon (D-Happy Valley)
Andrea Salinas (D-Lake Oswego)
Tawna Sanchez (D-Portland)
Sheri Schouten (D-Beaverton)
Barbara Smith Warner (D-Portland)
Janeen Sollman (D-Hillsboro)
Marty Wilde (D-Eugene)
Anna Williams (D-Hood River)
Jennifer Williamson (D-Portland)
Brad Witt (D-Clatskanie)
Nay: All 22 Republicans, plus these 7
Democrats
Jeff Barker (D-Aloha)
Brian Clem (D-Salem)
Margaret Doherty (D-Tigard)
Paul Evans (D-Monmouth)
Chris Gorsek (D-Troutdale)
Diego Hernandez (D-Portland)
Rachel Prusak (D-Tualatin / West Linn)
... Union report: Men are paid more than women at Fred Meyer
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down mainly to one thing: which
pay schedule employees get as-
signed to by management.
Local 555’s contracts contain
two pay schedules. Schedule A is
for grocery checkers, courtesy
clerks, and workers in produce,
wine, regular grocery, freight,
and the cold wall (dairy and
prepackaged deli meats). Sched-
ule B includes the deli and bak-
ery departments, and cheese and
coffee kiosks. The thing is:
Workers don’t choose which of
those two schedules they’re
placed in. They fill out a job ap-
plication for a general grocery
category, and then get hired and
assigned by managers to jobs in
one of the two pay schedules.
That’s the biggest source of the
gender disparity — because the
average wage is $17.22 for
Schedule A and $13.69 for
Schedule B. That’s a $3.53 dif-
ference.
Guess which schedule most
female grocery applicants are as-
signed to? At Fred Meyer, Local
555 number crunchers found that
women were twice as likely as
men to be hired into the lower-
paying Schedule B jobs. In fact,
the two schedules are mirror im-
ages of each other: Two-thirds of
Schedule B workers are women,
while two-thirds of Schedule A
workers are men.
Local 555 found that age ap-
peared to be a factor as well —
the gender wage gap expands
dramatically for older women.
Among journey-level grocery
workers, the average woman
over 60 makes $2.25 an hour less
than the average man over 60,
Local 555 found.
Men are also more likely to be
given opportunities for promo-
tion. Local 555 found that men
under 30 were twice as likely to
be made foreman as women un-
der 30.
There’s even anecdotal reason
to think that newly hired men
may be given more hours and
therefore progress more rapidly
to journeyman pay, and that male
employees end up getting paid
above the contract minimum
more often than women. UFCW
hasn’t crunched the data to make
those arguments yet; it wanted to
start with just the most clearcut
case — grocery journeyworkers.
The information requested from
Fred Meyer included data for
about 10,000 employees in all
departments in Oregon and
Southwest Washington; Portland
metro area grocery journeyper-
sons make up about a quarter of
that total.
These gendered pay dispari-
ties can add up over time: That
$1.31-an-hour difference would
total $122,000 over a 45-year ca-
reer, Local 555 estimated.
In its campaign around gender
pay equity, Local 555 isn’t actu-
ally accusing grocery managers
of overt gender discrimination.
It’s quite possible that the dis-
parate pay results are simply the
result of many unconscious
choices.
But it is asking Fred Meyer
and other grocery employers to
do something about it.
Local 555 is proposing in con-
tract bargaining that employers
raise wages in Schedule B to
make progress toward parity
with Schedule A, arguing that the
two schedules draw from the
same set of applicants, and the
difference between the work
done in the two sets of jobs is
minimal.
“Time’s up, Fred Meyer: fix
the gap,” is the campaign’s slo-
gan.
The starkly different A and B
pay schedules have been in Local
555 contracts going back as far
as anyone can remember, and it’s
not clear why they originated.
The contracts are part of a set
of multi-employer pattern agree-
ments that includes other grocery
employers like Safeway. Local
555 hasn’t analyzed similar data
for other companies, but union
leaders think they would find
similar patterns if they did.
The Local 555 bargaining
team is proposing wage increases
for all members in its multi-em-
ployer contract negotiation, but if
employers agree to raise wages
even more for Schedule B, that
would disproportionately lift up
female employees who’ve been
placed in jobs where they’re earn-
ing $1.33-an-hour less on aver-
age. Employers have given no in-
dication that they’re interested in
working to eliminate that gap.