SERVING ORGANIZED LABOR IN OREGON AND SOUTHWEST WASHINGTON SINCE 1900
NORTHWEST
LABOR
PRESS
VOLUME 122, NUMBER 10
IN THIS ISSUE
DEATH ON THE JOB: An AFL-CIO report says OSHA staff
levels are near a 50-year low. | Page 3
A JOURNEYMAN CARD GETS YOU COLLEGE CREDIT
At MHCC, union skills are close to an AA degree. | Page 7
Meeting Notices p.4
Union logo love p.8
PORTLAND, OREGON
MAY 21, 2021
COLLECTIVE BARGAINING
NATIONAL
Providence Milwaukie signs first contract
Biden’s new trade enforcers
Providence fought against the
union of housekeepers and CNAs
at every stage.
By Don McIntosh
A group of 170 hospital support
workers at Providence Mil-
waukie Hospital ratified their
first-ever union contract May 7.
It’s a three-year agreement, and
it took almost three years to get
it. It was June 14, 2018 when
workers there voted 92-54 to join
Service Employees International
Union (SEIU) Local 49. The unit
includes housekeepers, food
service workers, certified nursing
assistants, phlebotomists, and pa-
tient admission representatives at
Providence Milwaukie, a 77-bed
acute care hospital.
Julie Schafer, health unit coor-
dinator in the Providence Mil-
waukie medical surgical unit,
says the union didn’t get an ac-
ceptable offer from Providence
until after members voted to au-
The union bargaining team was all jazz hands after a final 20-hour negotia-
tion session resulted in a first-ever union contract for support workers at
Providence Milwaukie Hospital. From left: Charlene Cox, Julie Schafer, Tyler
Bush, Michelle Hitchcock, Melissa O'Neil, and SEIU 49 President Meg Niemi.
thorize a strike April 20-21. A 12-
year employee of the hospital,
Schafer and the other volunteer
members of the union bargaining
team endured 32 negotiating ses-
sions before the deal was
reached, including a final 20-
hour marathon session that lasted
from 8 a.m. May 3 to 5 a.m. the
next morning. Schafer said they
didn’t move to strike sooner be-
cause workers did not want to
strike during the pandemic.
The unit’s first collective bar-
Turn to Page 2
The Biden Administration
continues to name union fig-
ures to top positions in the fed-
eral government. On May 10,
the U.S. Labor Department an-
nounced the appointment of
Thea Lee to head its Interna-
tional Labor Affairs Bureau.
Lee has long been a fierce
critic of the NAFTA-style
trade deals that make it easier
for U.S. companies to offshore
jobs. Now she’ll be the deputy
undersecretary overseeing en-
forcement of the labor provi-
sions of U.S. trade agreements,
including the labor rights com-
mitments Mexico made in the
2020 trade agreement the
Trump administration negoti-
ated. The same day Lee’s ap-
pointment was announced, the
AFL-CIO and SEIU filed the
first test case under that agree-
ment, charging that Mexico is-
n’t living up the labor rights
commitments it made. An in-
ternational trade economist,
WORKERS’ RIGHTS
Union-busting bakery pays
$580k to settle overtime case
Workers sometimes win when
they raise the union banner,
even when they lose the union.
By Don McIntosh
In the next 90 days, checks will
be mailed out to 176 current and
former workers at an industrial
bakery in Gresham.
Portland Specialty Baking
(PSB) is paying $580,000 to set-
tle a class-action lawsuit over
systematically shorting overtime
pay. The company didn’t admit
to wrongdoing, but did agree to
pay up to $90,000 in attorney
fees, and $30,000 to a settlement
administrator, and $460,000 to
the workers. Checks will go out
to 176 workers who responded
to the lawsuit settlement notice,
out of 581 who worked there Au-
gust 2014 to July 2017 and were
contacted by the court. Checks
will range from $100 to $4,800,
and most will be about $750.
The settlement also commits
the company to let workers leave
the production line to take bath-
room breaks, and to translate in-
formation on their paid sick time
rights into their native languages.
PSB’s workforce consists over-
whelmingly of immigrants and
refugees and they speak at least
a dozen languages. They make
pretzels, cakes, donuts, bagels,
and muffins for Starbucks,
Jamba Juice, Walmart, Costco
and Winco.
Working conditions and wages
near the legal minimum have
contributed to high turn-over at
Portland Specialty baking; it took
at least six months to locate for-
mer workers so they could be
paid what they were owed.
MARCH ON THE BOSS January 11, 2016: Two dozen workers tell Portland
Specialty Baking president Josh Richardson they intend to unionize, accom-
panied by then Bakers Local 114 business manager Terry Lansing, then state
rep Chris Gorsek, and then Oregon AFL-CIO president Tom Chamberlain.
The company hired a union-busting consultant and the union campaign
was defeated.
Multnomah County Circuit
Court Judge Kathleen Dailey ap-
proved the settlement in a
drama-free online hearing May
17, saying it was the longest case
she’d had, where nothing would
happen for long periods of time.
The basic terms were agreed to
by January 2020, but settlement
was delayed when a court-ap-
pointed administrator died.
Workers found out about the
violation at the beginning of
2016, during a union campaign
by Bakers Local 114. An Ore-
gon law requires manufacturers
to pay time and a half after em-
ployees work over 10 hours in
any 24 hour period. PSB was
treating shifts as separate days
even when they overlapped a
24-hour period.
Lee spent 20 years at the na-
tional AFL-CIO as a trade pol-
icy expert and deputy chief of
staff. Since 2017 she had led
the Economic Policy Institute,
a pro-labor think tank.
Meanwhile, Lee’s former
employee at the AFL-CIO,
Celeste Drake, will be the
first-ever “Made in America”
director at the White House
Office of Management and
Budget. President Joe Biden
created that position in a late
January executive order. Her
job will be to crack down on
waivers that federal agencies
ask for whenever they want to
get out of “Buy American” re-
quirements in purchasing steel
and other goods. Drake was
trade policy specialist for eight
years at the AFL-CIO, and left
in 2019 to serve as head of
government relations for the
Directors Guild of America,
the union representing TV and
film directors.
–DM
“The Bakers union made this
lawsuit happen,” said Northwest
Workers Justice Project director
Corinna Spencer-Scheurich, the
lead attorney for plaintiffs on the
case. Spencer-Scheurich said
the lawsuit was only possible
because of the union’s detailed
understanding of the workplace.
The union campaign itself
ended in defeat. The company
brought in a professional union
buster, and scheduled almost
daily anti-union meetings in the
workplace, as well as one-on-
one meetings with managers.
Workers rejected the union 123-
to-38, just three weeks after a
60% majority of the workers
had signaled support for the
union by signing authorization
cards.
But the campaign had an af-
terlife in the form of a lawsuit
filed August 2016 on workers’
behalf by attorneys for the non-
profit Northwest Workers Jus-
tice Project.
Now workers are getting a lit-
tle long-delayed justice.