NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS |
August 16, 2019 | PAGE 31
AFL-CIO TO CONGRESS: Pass the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act
By Richard Trumka
President AFL-CIO
On behalf of the 12.5 million
members and 55 unions of the
AFL-CIO, thank you for invit-
ing me to testify today.
I want to thank House Edu-
cation and Labor Committee
Chairman Bobby Scott and his
colleagues for the foresight they
have demonstrated in crafting
this important legislation.
Gallup recently put the pop-
ularity of unions at 62 per-
cent—a 15-year high.
The Wall Street Journal re-
ported that 2018 was the
biggest year for collective ac-
tion in three decades. Teachers
from West Virginia to Arizona.
Google employees. Workers in
every sector and every region
are embracing the transforma-
tional power that comes from
joining together in common
cause.
MIT found that half of non-
union workers would vote to
join a union today if given the
chance. That’s more than 60
million Americans.
So why haven’t we
union. Pro-union work-
seen a rise in union
ers are fired. Employers
membership commen-
refuse to bargain in
surate with this surge
good faith. Some refuse
in approval, recogni-
to bargain at all. And far
tion and desire? The
too often, the financial
answer is clear: Our
consequences for break-
woefully outdated la-
ing federal law are vir-
bor laws no longer
tually nonexistent.
serve as an effective
This must change.
Richard Trumka
means for working
The Protecting the
people to have our voices heard. Right to Organize Act will
The stated purpose of the Na- change it.
tional Labor Relations Act is to
Imagine if, when running for
encourage collective bargain- office, your opponent could
ing. Yet in the more than 80 force the electorate to listen to
years since its passage, every speeches urging them to vote
amendment to the law has made against you. Imagine your op-
it harder for workers to form ponent had the power to punish
unions.
these voters if they supported
Today, union-busting con- you. Imagine that Congress re-
sultants are paid tens of millions fused to recognize your rightful
of dollars to deny workers a election. And then imagine that
voice on the job. And once a once you were finally seated,
union election is won, these you were denied the basic rights
same bad actors do everything and responsibilities that come
in their power to undermine the with the office.
collective bargaining process.
This is the grim reality for a
Workers are forced to sit in huge number of workers seek-
meetings where the only item ing to form a union today. Mis-
on the agenda is bashing the information. Reprisal. Delays.
...Troll on the hill
From Page 1
“We didn’t want to say some-
thing if there was any chance we
were wrong, because the stakes
were high in this,” Miller recalls.
Miller wrote up an article about
what he’d found, but didn’t pub-
lish it, yet.
Then the trolling escalated.
The accounts started posting
anti-union memes, hashtags like
#AFSCMEHypocrisy, and
spreadsheets with phony num-
bers trying to make the case that
union dues were regressive.
“Vragina” began trolling the
union’s Facebook account as
well. After Vragina criticized
union bargaining team member
Jennifer Barker by name, the
union social media team banned
him from the Facebook page.
Then the McFadden and Vragina
accounts changed their Twitter
display names to “Progress Val-
ues 1” and “Luke Warm” and
followed a bunch of Local 328
members. [On Twitter, accounts
have both a permanent user
name, or handle — which comes
after the @ sign — and a display
name, which they can change.]
Miller and the others decided
it was time to go public with
what they’d found. But first,
they’d call Dan Forbes, OHSU’s
vice president of human re-
sources — to give him a courtesy
heads up, but also because they
had suspicions about another
fake account with the name Peter
Pumpkin Eater.
Since April, Peter Pumpkin
Eater had pretended to be a Local
328 member at OHSU’s West
Campus (and complained the
union had been ignoring West
Campus). Recently “Peter” had
started interacting with the Fren-
gle-linked accounts, and held
what seemed like a coordinated
back-and-forth discussion about
how Local 328’s dues are regres-
sive and harmful to lower-wage
workers. Peter Pumpkin Eater
chose for his avatar a picture of
iconic socialist union leader Eu-
gene Debs, who ran for president
in 1918 from a prison cell for op-
posing World War I.
Members of the union social
media team studied the account
closely to see if it had links to any
other member of the bargaining
team. One of the account’s few
early activities had been entering
a contest for concert tickets for
an obscure band — a band that
HR director Dan Forbes hap-
pened to like. Forbes’ middle
name is Peter. Could one of
A REAL ASSHOLE MOVE BY
A MANAGER: OHSU budget
& financial department exec-
utive Patrick Frengle named
his Twitter account “Aanus
McFadden” and used it to troll
the union he sat across from
in contract bargaining.
OHSU’s top executives be pos-
ing as a union member to troll the
union he was sitting across from
at the bargaining table?
When an Oregon AFSCME
staff person called Forbes to tell
him about the trolling, Forbes
was surprisingly silent. He didn’t
ask which member of the bar-
gaining team they had fingered
as the culprit. And while the con-
versation was under way or im-
mediately after, the Peter Pump-
kin Eater account was deleted.
On its blog, Local 328 went
public and outed Frengle for his
trolling. Willamette Week and
other news outlets picked up the
story. Within 24 hours, OHSU is-
And even after all of those ob-
stacles are overcome, an out-
right refusal to recognize the
election results. I’ve included
several such examples in my
written testimony.
That’s why half of non-union
workers want to join a union to-
day, yet less than 12% actually
have one.
Why does this matter? Sim-
ply put, workers in unions bar-
gain for higher wages and are
much more likely to have health
care and a pension. The union
advantage is even greater for
people of color and those with-
out a college degree. Unionized
workers have a real say in criti-
cal workplace issues like time
off to care for a loved one, the
deployment of technology and
protection from discrimination.
A happier, healthier, more
upwardly mobile workforce is
good for our economy as con-
sumers have additional money
to spend. Local tax revenues in-
crease, and education funding is
bolstered. Inequality shrinks.
It’s a virtuous cycle.
sued an apology on Twitter:
“We’re deeply disappointed to
learn about this inappropriate
conduct on social media. We are
sorry. We can confirm that this
individual has been removed
from our bargaining team, effec-
tive immediately, and is prohib-
ited from participating in any fu-
ture negotiations.”
The union then shared what it
knew about Peter Pumpkin Eater
with another OHSU executive.
The next day, OHSU announced
Forbes’ resignation, adding that
he won’t take part in bargaining,
but will continue other duties un-
til November.
If any union member had done
what Frengle and Forbes did,
they’d be walked out by security
and terminated, Miller says.
“The irony of all this was none
of the trolling was well done,”
Miller says. “None of it was ef-
fective. None of it reached many
people.”
It may also have violated Ore-
gon law.
Oregon’s public employee
collective bargaining law, like the
federal labor law that covers pri-
vate sector workers, requires
unionized employers to bargain
in good faith. That doesn’t mean
employers like OHSU have to
agree with union proposals, but
it does mean they have to deal
honestly and respectfully with
the union.
The union movement and all
working people are hungry for
pro-worker reforms to our ex-
isting labor laws. The PRO Act
would do many important
things, chief among them pro-
vide more substantial relief for
workers whose rights have been
violated...ensure a process for
reaching a first contract once a
union is recognized...and create
a true deterrent, so employers
think twice before violating the
law.
Something is happening in
America. Workers are embrac-
ing collective action with a fer-
vor I haven’t seen in a genera-
tion. It is time for our laws to
catch up. It is time to make the
PRO Act the law of the land.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka deliv-
ered this statement before the House Ed-
ucation and Labor Subcommittee on
Health, Employment, Labor and Pensions
in support of the Protecting the Right to
Organize (PRO) Act on July 10.
Showing up at a union meet-
ing in disguise —pretending to
be a member, and then abusing
union volunteers, spreading dis-
information, and trying to cause
dissension — is not good faith.
That’s what Frengle and Forbes
did, only instead of a union meet-
ing it was union social media.
An attorney for Oregon AF-
SCME emailed OHSU manage-
ment asking that it not destroy
any evidence, and on Aug. 9, the
union filed an unfair labor prac-
tice charge against OHSU with
the Oregon Employment Rela-
tions Board. The union could end
up withdrawing the charge as a
peace offering if members ratify
a new contract.
At a marathon 21 hour nego-
tiation session Aug. 13, OHSU
dropped proposals that had been
angering members for months,
including a health insurance
take-back, a two-tier arrange-
ment that would have treated
new hires differently, and an un-
popular paid time off (PTO) pol-
icy that would have incentivized
members to work while sick in
order to save vacation days. With
those obstacles out of the way,
the two sides reached tentative
agreement on a new three-year
contract that will raise wages
9.25% and make other improve-
ments. Members will vote on the
agreement in early September.
