Photos courtesy of IBEW Local 48 and NALC Branch 82.
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS | June 21, 2019 | PAGE 5
Union Spirit at the
Portland Rose Festival
Rosie the Riveter has a lot of sisters.
At the June 8 Portland Rose Festival
Grand Floral Parade, IBEW Local 48
entered a drill team consisting of 60
women members dressed as the
working woman icon, including
Susan Rodway (foreground above)
with Shawna Fuller behind her.
Local 48 also fielded about three
dozen superheroes at the June 1
Starlight Parade, including Super
Girl Heather Yeo and Bat Girl Stacey
Sawyer, left. They marched carrying
lit-up shields together with a band
on a lit-up float and several dozen
others wearing Local 48 garb,
including Taylor Johnson and Joe
Ergle, left. This was the third year
union superheroes appeared at the
Starlight Parade, and the second
year the Rosies marched in the
Grand Floral. Parade coordinator
Matt Smyth says the entries pro-
mote union visibility. The Rosies are
also meant to encourage women to
think about joining the union
building trades.
The grand-daddy of union Rose Fes-
tival entrants is National Association
of Letter Carriers Branch 82, which
has been coming up with brightly lit
and entertaining entries in the
Starlight Parade since 1989. [Hence
the giant “30” on the 10’ tall letter
carrier in this year’s march, above.]
...AFSCME to OHSU: Health workers need sick days
From Page 1
fore their June 13 union rally,
hundreds of members and sup-
porters lined up along Sam
Jackson Park Road in a kind of
silent protest vigil, with Post-it
notes covering their mouths.
Why Post-it notes? Because at
the June 5 forum, Hemenway
refused to take questions. In-
stead she directed union mem-
bers to write their questions on
Post-it notes, then cherry
picked which of those they
wanted to answer.
The current contract is set to
expire June 30. The two sides
have been negotiating a new
contract since February, but are
still a considerable distance
apart. For Local 328, the stick-
ing points have been three
items:
▪ Paltry raises OHSU is proposing a
three-year contract with annual raises of
1% for many workers [To be more
specific, OHSU is proposing increases of
1.5 % overall, but then it wants to
withhold 0.5 % of that to address “pay
equity” issues for workers who have been
underpaid.] Either way, those raises are
less than annual inflation, which has
ranged from 1.5 to 2.5% the last few
years. Raises of 1 or 1.5% would have
OHSU workers would be falling behind.
▪ Concessions on paid time off
Workers at OHSU currently have two
separate paid leave accounts: vacation
and sick time. OHSU is proposing a new
Paid Time Off (PTO) system that puts
them in the same basket. After
employees use five sick days a year, any
further sick days would come out of paid
time off they could otherwise use for
vacation. One problem with that: Most
health care workers get sick more than
five days a year, so the new policy would
make them choose between working
while sick and losing vacation time.
OHSU is also proposing to create a new
paid parental leave benefit — and fund
it by cutting down the amount of paid
time off workers can accrue. Right now
workers are allowed to bank up to 250
hours of unused vacation — and cash
that out when they leave or retire. The
OHSU proposal would cut that to 40
hours. Workers who’ve been saving up
vacation time for years as a nest egg
would be forced to use it or lose it. Local
328 President Matt Hilton says the
proposal is a non-starter: “We don’t have
a mandate from our members to go to a
PTO system, and we don’t really have an
interest in fixing what isn’t broken.”
▪ Shifting the cost of health
insurance to employees Up to now,
OHSU has been one of the rare employers
to still provide fully paid health insurance
coverage to employees, something that
was once common. Now, OHSU is
proposing that workers pay 5% of the
premium for employee-only coverage.
Workers who elect spousal coverage do
currently pay 12% of the premium; OHSU
wants to increase that to 17%. And
there’s more: OHSU is proposing that if
premiums go up more than 5%, workers
would have to pay ALL of the increase
above that. In other words, a public
employer with $1.5 billion in reserves
wants to shift the financial risk of
unpredictable health cost increases off its
balance sheet and onto its workers. And
that’s not all. OHSU’s health insurance
benefit covers employees and their
spouses, but now OHSU is proposing a
new charge of $100 a month for any
employee spouses who enroll after
having declined their own employer-
sponsored health insurance. The spousal
surcharge program would rely on the
honor system, but if employees are later
found to have violated the requirement,
they could be disciplined up to and
including discharge under OHSU’s
proposal.
Labor and management ne-
gotiators began meeting with
the help of a state mediator
May 21, with further mediation
sessions scheduled for June 18
and 28 and July 1 and 2. Under
Oregon law, if they’re unable to
reach agreement, either side
could declare an impasse,
which starts a clock ticking. Af-
ter 37 days, would legally be al-
lowed to strike. Local 328 has-
n’t gone on strike at OHSU
since 1995.