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.
