NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS |
July 17, 2020 | PAGE 7
Who’s on our side?
By Graham Trainor Oregon AFL-CIO President
A Tale of Two Worlds
For essential workers in Oregon, there
are two very different worlds that exist
in America today.
In one world, Mitch McConnell and
Senate Republicans have unabashedly
picked the side of corporate America
over working America by refusing to
bring a vote on the HEROES Act
(Health and Economic Recovery Om-
nibus Emergency Solutions Act) to the
floor of the U.S. Senate. This bill is the
much-needed COVID stimulus and re-
lief package passed with urgency by
the U.S. House of Representatives over
two months ago that was built upon the
national labor movement’s five eco-
nomic demands:
1) Keep Front-Line Workers Safe and Secure;
2) Keep Workers Employed and Protect Earned
Pension Checks;
3) Keep State and Local Governments, Public Schools
and the U.S. Postal Service Solvent and Working;
4) Keep America Healthy by Protecting and
Expanding Health Insurance for All Workers;
5) Keep America Competitive by Hiring People to
Build Infrastructure.
To date, McConnell has refused to
entertain a serious, urgent, and much-
needed debate about additional relief,
calling the vital funding for state and
local governments in the HEROES Act
a “blue state bailout” and suggesting
that states should just be allowed to go
bankrupt.
In this same world, President Trump
has been carelessly handling a global
pandemic with little regard for the lives
of the nearly 150,000 lost victims of the
coronavirus, or any working person
bearing the brunt of the dangers posed
by this pandemic. It’s also the same
world where his Secretary of Educa-
tion, Betsy DeVos, has pushed to fully
reopen schools in the fall with no en-
forceable safety plan and despite the
rapid increases in new COVID cases at
the same time his Secretary of Labor,
Eugene Scalia, has been using the crisis
as an excuse to dismantle our nation’s
labor laws and protections. And on this
Administration’s watch, federal OSHA
(Occupational Safety and Health Ad-
ministration) has issued just one cita-
tion for workplace violations related to
COVID and has fewer inspectors than
at any time in its history.
This world—where President
Trump and his allies live—couldn’t be
further from the world we live in.
In our world, over 40 million working
Americans have lost their job, and many
of those have also lost their healthcare
when that job ended. Hundreds of thou-
sands of workers have contracted the
virus at work, and many have lost their
lives because of it. BIPOC (Black, in-
digenous, people of color) Oregonians
are bearing a disproportionate brunt of
this crisis, shown clearly in both con-
traction and death rates. At the end of
“THOSE WHO PROFESS TO FAVOR FREEDOM AND YET DEPRECATE AGITATION … WANT
CROPS WITHOUT PLOWING UP THE GROUND. THEY WANT RAIN WITHOUT THUNDER AND
LIGHTNING.”
— FREDERICK DOUGLASS, 1857
this month, millions of workers across
the country will lose the additional $600
in weekly unemployment insurance
benefits —benefits that have greatly
helped keep workers and the economy
somewhat afloat — because of Senate
Republicans’ inaction. This is just one
narrow glimpse at the world we live in
today, one that gets more challenging
and dangerous by the day.
Luckily, Oregonians have two U.S.
Senators who have been fighting for
workers throughout this dark period in
our history. It’s now up to Mitch Mc-
Connell and Senate Republicans to start
acting with the kind of urgency this crisis
demands in passing the HEROES Act.
Without additional federal stimulus and
relief, working Oregonians will, yet
again, suffer due to the inaction, elitism,
and callousness of these leaders. We ex-
pect and deserve better.
The Oregon AFL-CIO is a 138,000-member-strong fed-
eration of labor unions.
Multnomah County contract
extends with 2.9% COLA
Members of AFSCME Local 88
have approved a one-year exten-
sion to their contract with Mult-
nomah County. Union and man-
agement had been bargaining
since Jan. 23 over a successor to
the previous three-year agree-
ment that was set to expire June
30, 2020. But with the economic
uncertainty brought on by the
COVID-19 pandemic, both par-
ties agreed June 24 to a one-year
extension instead. Members rat-
ified the extension in ballots
counted July 1.
The contract extension pro-
vides for a 2.9% cost of living
adjustment July 1. The contract
covers 3,200 County workers.
The two sides will resume ne-
gotiations again by November
2020.