NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS | October 18, 2019 | PAGE 3
PEOPLE
Barbara Byrd wraps up 41-year career in labor movement
After 41 years as a labor educator and 14
years at the Oregon AFL-CIO, Barbara Byrd
is retiring for real.
Two years ago, Barbara Byrd retired
from the Labor Education and Research
Center (LERC) of the University of Ore-
gon after 20 years; last month she
stepped down as Oregon AFL-CIO’s sec-
retary treasurer after 14 years. At 70,
Byrd is wrapping up a 41-year career in
which she’s trained hundreds of union
leaders across four states, promoted the
apprenticeship model of job training, and
urged labor organizations to confront cli-
mate change.
Growing up in San Antonio, Texas,
Byrd got an early union education from
her father, a newspaper reporter who be-
came president of his Newspaper Guild
local and representative for the interna-
tional union.
“He would always say it wasn’t about
wages and benefits,” Byrd told the Labor
Press. “It was about being able to stand
up at work and say what you thought and
not be afraid of getting fired.”
Byrd got a bachelor’s degree in soci-
ology at Rice University in Houston and
a master’s degree in labor studies at the
University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
She discovered labor education at UMass
when she followed an instructor from
union hall to union hall doing steward
training.
“I watched him teach and I watched
the excitement of people in those classes,
and it was like a light bulb going off. It
was like, ‘That’s what I want to do.’ ”
In 1978, she began her first job as a la-
bor educator at Indiana University, teach-
ing union leaders from the steel mills
near Gary, Indiana. When her father had
a stroke, she returned to Texas in 1981
with then-husband Peter Donohue, an
economist and labor union researcher.
She helped start a labor studies program
at San Antonio College, and earned a
Ph.D. in adult education from the Uni-
versity of Texas in Austin. With newborn
daughter Caitlin, they relocated to San
Francisco in 1986 and Byrd took a job
directing the Labor Studies and Appren-
ticeship Department at City College of
San Francisco. But in 1995, frustrated by
the high cost of living in San Francisco,
they moved to Portland and Byrd began
at LERC as a teacher and researcher.
At LERC, her teaching developed the
skills of countless union stewards and
leaders. Her research made the case for
the value of union apprenticeship pro-
grams, and looked at the challenges of at-
tracting and retaining women in that pro-
gram, and minority apprentices. In recent
years, leadership development became
her passion, particularly with the Cas-
cade Region Labor Leadership Initiative.
In that program, about two dozen high-
level labor leaders from Oregon, Wash-
ington and British Columbia meet for
three weeks for seminars on honing a vi-
sion, leading organizational change, and
connecting with movements. They come
away with a clearer game plan for build-
ing their organizations, and a network of
peers to turn to for advice.
Mid-way through her tenure at LERC,
a surprising thing happened. Newly in-
stalled Oregon AFL-CIO president Tom
Chamberlain invited Byrd to become the
union federation’s number two officer,
secretary-treasurer, in 2005. The Oregon
AFL-CIO had just lost 40% of its mem-
bership because of a national union split,
Turn to Page 7
...Multnomah County says seniority rights don’t apply
From Page 1
being met. Although CareOre-
gon may be a nonprofit entity,
their primary perspective will al-
ways be that of an insurance
company.”
“We’re public servants. We
don’t want to work for an insur-
ance company,” said Kristine
Britton Dills, a 19-year County
health department employee
who expects her position to be
transferred to CareOregon. “One
of the benefits of working for the
County is being able to move
around and do different things,
to learn and grow, but always
under the umbrella of the
county’s mission and values, al-
ways as a public servant,” Brit-
ton Dills told commissioners.
The law that Multnomah
County managers are citing says
the transferred employees, for
one year, can’t be laid off or
have their salary reduced. But
after that, at non-union Care-
Oregon, they would be at-will
employees who could have
wages and benefits reduced or
be let go for any reason.
Oregon AFSCME union rep-
resentative Eben Pullman says
the county is misreading the law.
Pullman says the law was in-
tended to give public employees
certain minimum protections if
their job is transferred from one
public employer to another, or to
a non-profit that’s contracted to
do the same work. It wasn’t in-
tended to supersede greater pro-
tections workers might have in a
union contract, like the rights
that come with seniority.
Why seniority matters
“More senior employees are
more invested in the workplace,”
says Local 88 Vice President
Raymond De Silva, explaining
one of the rationales for the
union seniority rights protection.
“They’re closer to retirement. If
they don’t get those last few
years [of employment], this will
impact their whole retirement,
the money they were expecting
after they retire. Some of the
newer employees that might
have been hired just in the last 12
months, yes this would displace
them, but they are not as in-
vested as the more senior em-
ployees.”
De Silva himself has been a
County employee for six years,
and is one of the employees who
expects to have his County po-
sition eliminated in the shift to
CareOregon.
The decision to move to
CareOregon wasn’t the
County’s: The State of Oregon
contracts with non-profit Health
“Many of my classmates and former col-
leagues have chosen to work for pharma-
ceutical companies and insurance carriers,
while I have chosen to serve the public
good. Every day it becomes harder to sus-
tain that decision, as we are continually
asked to do more with less, to earn less
than those who’ve chosen to work for for-
profit corporations, to have our retirement
and all aspects of our work slowly erode…”
— Sherry Yan, County Health Department
Share of Oregon to administer
the Oregon Health Plan’s mental
health and addiction treatment
benefits in Multnomah, Wash-
ington, and Clackamas counties.
Health Share is what’s known in
Oregon health policy jargon as
a “coordinated care organiza-
tion” (CCO). It’s a network that
was set up by the counties and
the big health providers —
Kaiser, Legacy, Providence,
OHSU, and Adventist — to fo-
cus on prevention and manage-
ment of chronic conditions like
diabetes for people enrolled in
the Oregon Health Plan. Until
now, Health Share has subcon-
tracted management of the be-
havioral health benefit to county
health departments. Now it’s
giving the work instead to Care-
Oregon, which administers the
Oregon Health Plan’s health and
dental benefits in the three coun-
ties.
Under the union contract, Lo-
cal 88 could wait until the lay-
offs occur and then file a griev-
ance, but it asked — and the
County agreed — to arbitrate
the dispute before Jan. 1.
In the meantime, with the
transition just 12 weeks away,
workers say they’ve gotten no
information about whose jobs
would be transferred, or what
the wages, benefits, and condi-
tions would be at CareOregon.
De Silva said the union has
asked the County for an official
list and has asked CareOregon
for compensation information,
working titles and roles, on-
boarding documents. Crickets.
Pullman said the list is likely
to include mental health call
center and crisis line workers,
quality control and regulatory
compliance specialists, and IT
and other workers who manage
billing and claims adjudication.
At the Oct. 4 commission
meeting, health department
workers appealed to County
commissioners to step in. The
County doesn’t have to spend
tax dollars to arbitrate the dis-
agreement.
Chair Kafoury and the com-
missioners said nothing.
“I was hoping for some ac-
knowledgment,” De Silva said.
“There was no comment.”
In an emailed statement,
County spokesperson Julie Sul-
livan-Springhetti said the
County knows the move has
been difficult and distracting for
staff, and has been working with
employees who want to stay to
find other open positions at the
County.
“One of the challenges for
everyone is that we are still ne-
gotiating the transfer of this
work and don’t have all the an-
swers at this stage in the
process,” Sullivan-Springhetti
wrote.
De Silva said the union has
met with several commissioners
individually, and has further
meetings scheduled.