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About Northwest labor press. (Portland , Ore.) 1987-current | View Entire Issue (June 19, 2020)
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS | From Page 2 when there’s at least $750,000 of public money involved. Branam said Prosper Portland will be paying for demolition, site preparation, and infrastruc- ture, and that work will be sub- ject to prevailing wage require- ments, and so would any housing that’s subsidized by the Portland Housing Bureau. [Portland Housing Bureau owns 16% of the USPS site, and plans to build 720 afford- able housing units there along- side roughly 1,650 privately- funded market-rate units.] But Continuum would not be re- quired to pay prevailing wage on the privately funded build- ings it constructs on the site, Branam said. Asserting that the whole Broadway Corridor develop- ment should be treated as a sin- gle project, Operating Engi- neers Local 701 asked BOLI to determine whether the prevail- ing wage law applies. But in a May 5 letter, BOLI said it can’t make that determination until Prosper Portland reaches a final development agreement with Continuum. BOLI said the pre- vailing wage requirement would apply to any site work that Prosper Portland pays for. Whether or not it’s required to, coalition members say Con- tinuum has voluntarily agreed that contractors will pay the prevailing wage on the “core June 19, 2020 | PAGE 3 Public-owned broadband study nears completion Multnomah County is running the numbers to see if fiber to the home is feasible. and shell” of buildings, just not on all tenant improvements. Branam says a deal has been reached with SEIU Local 49 covering janitors and security guards on the properties once the project is complete. But on construction equity issues, the two sides appear to be at an impasse. Branam said negotiations have been delayed by COVID, by a land use appeal over pro- posed building heights, and by the complexity of the project. “Right now we’re trying to land four planes at once,” Branam said, listing the CBA; Prosper Portland’s final “devel- opment and disposition agree- ment” with Continuum; an in- tergovernmental agreement with the City bureaus in charge of roads, water, and sewer serv- ice; and the project’s master de- velopment plan, which must be approved by a design commis- sion. “It’s a complicated Ru- bik’s cube.” “We’re still at the table,” Branam said. “We’re all nego- tiating in good faith.” The latest timeline calls for a CBA to be ready for a vote at Prosper Portland’s July 22 board meeting, followed by a City Council vote in August or September. Whether an agree- ment will be reached by then remains to be seen. “At a time when we’re in a nationwide reckoning about the disenfranchisement of the African-American community, we think this is a prime oppor- tunity for Portland and Prosper Portland to get development right,” Satterfield said. By Noah Wass Last October, Multnomah County and its five resident ju- risdictions (Portland, Wood Vil- lage, Gresham, Troutdale, and Fairview) agreed to fund a study of the costs and benefits of pro- viding a publicly owned high- speed broadband network for all of Multnomah County. Origi- nally scheduled to be published by the end of May, the study is now expected to be finalized some time in late July. Multnomah County Commis- sioner Sharon Meieran, a leading voice for public broadband on the Commission, says COVID- 19 delayed the study but also presented an opportunity to en- hance it. CTC Technology and Energy, which was hired to con- duct the study, has added an ad- ditional chapter around COVID. “We have talked about the digital equity gap for a long time, and with COVID, that gap has been shown to be a yawning chasm,” Meieran said. “Now during the emergency, broad- band access is essential for peo- ple to be able to work, to get in- formation for kids to be able to attend school, to get medical care, or to access services.” The commissioner says she expects a draft of the study by the end of the month. Michael Hanna and the Broadband PDX group he helped found have led the union-backed charge for creat- ing a publicly owned municipal broadband network in Mult- nomah County since 2017. Hanna, a data engineer for the County and chief steward and former president of AFSCME Local 88, says he’ll continue to push for the use of unionized la- bor in the construction and maintenance of a high-speed fiber-optic network. “Our main role now is to ad- vocate for the publicly-owned route, rather than just expanding the current corporate for-profit model,” he said. “That is the de- cision that’s before us as a soci- ety: Do we want to perpetuate this for-profit model where hun- dreds of millions of dollars per year leave our local economy, or do we want to build a digital in- frastructure for the future where we as a community own it?” ...Trump NLRB sues Oregon From Page 1 Get your disability application done right from the beginning. We help folks from the start. Raymond Thomas James Coon Cynthia Newton Chris Frost www.tcnf.legal Sydney Montanaro Scott Sell Chris Thomas 820 SW Second Ave., Suite 200, Portland, OR 97204 failed to show they were harmed by either of the defendants. In an April 7 response to the NLRB, Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum’s office asked that the new lawsuit be dismissed for similar reasons because the state itself could not have caused the alleged harm. The Worker Freedom Act allows workers to sue their employer as a private individual. The state has no power to enforce it or bring a lawsuit on any worker’s behalf. The NLRB replied May 21 that the state harmed the NLRB because it wrote and passed the law. According to the filing, the National Labor Relations Act gives the NLRB the ultimate au- thority to regulate and protect an employer’s free speech concern- ing unionization. The NLRB also cites the pre-emption doctrine, which holds that state law, where it conflicts with federal law, must bow to federal law. To fix this conflict, the NLRB wants the Worker Freedom Act declared in- valid when it applies to meetings where unions are the subject. Labor attorney David Rosen- feld, who was involved in the le- gal defense during the 2009 lawsuit, says the new case is quite similar. “Oregon is saying clearly, ‘We don’t enforce the law, so don’t come asking us to do something where all we did was pass the law,’” Rosenfeld say. “You may think its unconstitu- tional, but until you are actually harmed or somebody sues you, the courts shouldn’t get involved. I’m not the district judge, but I think that the state is right here. If the state doesn’t enforce the law, why sue the state?” A hearing is scheduled for July 14 via telephone before U.S. District Court Judge Mustafa T. Kasubhai. For now, the Workers Free- dom Act remains in effect and Oregon workers may still sue their employers should they be threatened or disciplined for not attending an anti-union meeting.
