NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS |
July 5, 2019 | PAGE 7
HOW WORKING PEOPLE AND UNIONS FARED IN OREGON’S 2019 LEGISLATURE
BILLS THAT PASSED
PERS changes, including public
employee compensation cuts To stop
public employer pension contribution rates
from going up sharply, SB 1049 gives
Oregon’s Public Employee Retirement
System (PERS) more time to restore the
investment value that was lost in the 2008
crash. It also “redirects” a portion of the 6%
of public employee salaries that has up to
now been deposited into their 401(k)-style
retirement savings plans. Employees
earning over $30,000 will have 2.5% or
0.75% of their salary redirected until such
time as the PERS system is 90 percent
funded.
Paid Family and Medical Leave - HB
2005 sets up the most comprehensive paid
family and medical leave program in the
country. When the benefits start in 2023,
the program will cover up to 12 paid weeks
away from work, with an additional two
weeks for pregnancy-related conditions. It
covers all members of the workforce, even
self-employed workers. It’s available to
parents welcoming a new child into their
family; and to adults who need to tend to
their own health condition or that of a
family member, whether or not they’re
biologically related. The program replaces
100% of wages for the lowest income
workers, and a gradually smaller
percentage as income goes up. It’s funded
by a payroll tax to be paid by both
employers and employees.
Greater stability for renters SB 608
makes Oregon the first state in the nation
to enact a statewide rent control law.
Under the law, rents on residential units
older than 15 years can go up no more
than 7% plus inflation. The law also ends
“no-cause” eviction: except in cases where
landlords share housing with a tenant or
need a unit for a family member, they must
have legitimate grounds to evict a tenant.
A response to the anti-union Janus
decision In last year’s Janus vs AFSCME
case, a 5-4 Republican-appointed majority
on the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that it
violates state and local public employees’
free speech rights for them to have to pay
anything at all to the union that negotiates
and enforces their collective bargaining
agreement. The ruling had long been
sought by anti-union groups as a way to
weaken unions. In response, Oregon’s HB
2016 guarantees to union representatives
the right to participate in new employee
orientations, and gives them contact
information and reasonable access to the
employees they represent, including the
right to use employer email to
communicate with workers. It also
guarantees that unions get accurate and
timely lists of represented employees, and
requires public employers to grant
“reasonable paid time” to designated
stewards to conduct union business and
access members during the workday.
Make it legal to limit money in politics
Oregon has almost no limits on money in
politics, because the state Supreme Court
has long ruled that the free speech
protection in the Oregon constitution
applies to political contributions. SJR 18
puts a constitutional change before voters
in the November 2020 election: that state
and local legislators, or the people through
the initiative process, may limit contribu-
tions in connection with political
campaigns.
Tax big business to fund schools HB
3427, known as the Student Success Act,
will provide $1 billion per year in new
funding for Oregon’s pre-K-12 education
system with a commercial activities tax on
businesses that earn more than $1 million
in annual Oregon sales. The bill also
reduces personal income tax rates by
0.25% for Oregonians in the bottom three
tax brackets.
Make non-profit hospitals live up to
their charitable mission Oregon's 60
nonprofit hospitals pay no taxes, not even
property taxes. In return, they’re supposed
to provide charity care. But most act more
like businesses, and their charitable record
can be pretty spotty. HB 3076 puts some
teeth into the requirement; it directs the
Oregon Health Authority to set minimum
charitable spending levels for each hospital
every two years. It also prohibits medical
debt from being passed to family
members, caps interest rates hospitals and
debt collectors can charge on medical debt,
and requires hospitals to provide
information and application paperwork for
their charity care policies before sending
them to a debt collector.
Fund Medicaid Lawmakers passed two bills
to pay for the increased costs of the Oregon
Health Plan, the Medicaid-funded
insurance program for low-income
Oregonians. HB 2270 raises cigarette taxes
$2 (to $3.33 a pack) and levies a new tax
on e-cigarettes at 65 percent of wholesale
price. It will go before voters for approval in
2020. Even at $3.33 the cigarette tax
would be lower than California and
Washington. And 10% of the revenue from
the bill would go to fund tobacco cessation
and prevention programs. HB 2010
increases a tax on hospitals and insurers
that voters approved in January 2018 as
Measure 101, and extends the taxes for six
years. The tax on health insurance providers
(including union health trusts) will rise
from 1.5 percent to 2 percent, and the tax
on hospitals will rise from 5.3 percent to 6
percent.
Move toward single-payer and/or
public option health insurance SB
770 creates a 20-member task force that
will hold statewide hearings and come up
with a proposal for universal health care by
February 2021. It also directs the Oregon
Health Authority to come up with a plan
by May 1, 2020, for how individuals or
families who make too much to be eligible
for the Oregon Health Plan could
nonetheless buy into the plan as a publicly
sponsored insurance option.
without a vote, Local 555 filed the proposal as
a prospective ballot measure and is planning
to take the proposal directly to voters in the
November 2020 election.
Let workers and unions go to the courts
to enforce labor laws SB 750, known as
the Oregon Corporate Accountability Act,
would have allowed private individuals to sue
over labor law violations on behalf of the state.
Modeled on California’s Private Attorneys
General Act, it was meant to address the
limitations of Oregon’s Bureau of Labor and
Industries (BOLI). It died in the Ways and
Means Committee without a vote. UFCW and
the Oregon Working Families Party expect to
push the proposal again in future legislative
sessions.
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 in construction projects that are
subsidized with tax breaks instead of tax
dollars, the prevailing wage law doesn’t apply.
In recent years Google, Facebook, and other
big tech firms have gotten generous property
tax exemptions when they built in areas
designated by the state as Enterprise Zones.
For more than a decade, the Oregon Building
Trades Council has pushed to make those tax
breaks contingent on payment of the
prevailing wage. This year’s version of the
proposal, HB 2408, got farther than any
previous bill: It passed the House 38-20. But it
then died in the Senate Workforce Committee
after Portland City Council and other local
governments argued that a prevailing wage
requirement would wipe out the investment-
attracting value of the Enterprise Zone
incentive. Workforce Committee Chair
Kathleen Taylor said she plans to appoint an
interim workgroup to study the issue and
introduce a bill during the short legislative
session in February 2020.
BILLS THAT FAILED
Get Walmart off the dole When big
employers pay workers so little that they
qualify for food stamps, Medicaid, and other
public assistance, that costs taxpayers. Backed
by UFCW Local 555, the Oregon Taxpayer
Reimbursement Act, HB 3262, would have
helped the state get that money back by
penalizing retail, hospitality and call center
businesses with 100 or more employees
worldwide if they have any part-time
employees who receive public assistance. After
it died in the House Revenue Committee
LERC gets budget reprieve
University of Oregon’s Labor
Education and Research Cen-
ter (LERC) was on track for a
devastating 45 percent budget
cut this year until the Oregon
Legislature stepped in with a
temporary reprieve.
With a staff of 11 and of-
fices in Eugene and Portland,
LERC provides training and
research to Oregon unions,
and has trained thousands of
union stewards and officers
over the last 41 years. LERC
faculty were shocked to learn
in April that UO Provost
Jayanth Banavar and UO
President Michael Schill were
proposing a $488,000 cut to
LERC’s budget. The adminis-
trators justified the cut on the
grounds that most LERC pro-
grams aren’t “student-facing”
but instead serve members of
the community, something
Banavar and Schill regard as
outside of the university’s core
mission.
LERC supporters cam-
paigned hard to get Banavar
and Schill to reconsider.
Union members, students and
faculty from other depart-
ments—and a large number of
unionized graduate student
faculty—packed a May 23
meeting of the University of
Oregon board of trustees, and
kept up public testimony for
more than two hours, oppos-
ing the LERC cuts as well as
proposed tuition increases.
Over a thousand students and
faculty signed a petition.
Elected officials and others
sent letters of support. But Ba-
navar and Schill held firm.
The cuts were slated to take
effect July 1.
That’s when state legisla-
tors on the Joint Ways and
Means Committee stepped in,
adding a line item in the
higher education funding bill
that restores LERC’s budget
for two years. The appropria-
tion isn’t a long-term commit-
ment to fund LERC, but it
means LERC won’t have to
lay off staff or shut programs
for now.
Climate bill dies again
Last month proved to be the hottest June
in global recorded history. But once
again, Oregon lawmakers couldn’t find a
majority to pass major climate legislation,
despite its designation by top Democrats
as a top priority. The legislation, HB
2020, passed the House 36-24 on June
17, but never got a vote in the Senate,
with Senate President Peter Courtney
saying it was one unnamed senator short
of a majority. HB 2020 would have cre-
ated a “cap-and-invest” system in Ore-
gon, capping emissions and selling emis-
sion permits to about 100 of the big fossil
fuel users, and using the proceeds to pay
for a transition to a clean energy economy
and mitigate the worst impacts of climate
change. It was a complicated piece of leg-
islation, and the product of compromise,
with some environmental groups saying
it wouldn’t go far enough, and some busi-
ness groups saying it went too far.
Most of organized labor — even the
labor-environmental group Blue-Green
Alliance — stayed neutral, owing to con-
cerns about potential job losses from
making fossil fuels more expensive. Ma-
chinists District Lodge W24 and one
Steelworkers local opposed the bill. No-
tably, the Oregon Building Trades Coun-
cil came out in support of the bill after
amendments that would have made it the
most labor-friendly climate legislation in
the country. Renewable energy and con-
servation construction projects funded by
the bill would have been required to use
project labor agreements, pay the prevail-
ing wage, offer health care and retirement
benefits, and take part in state-registered
apprenticeship programs. And only “re-
sponsible” contractors would be allowed
to bid —serial labor law violators were to
be barred. Oregon AFSCME, which rep-
resents DEQ employees, was also sup-
portive of HB 2020.