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About Northwest labor press. (Portland , Ore.) 1987-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 6, 2021)
SERVING ORGANIZED LABOR IN OREGON AND SOUTHWEST WASHINGTON SINCE 1900 NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS VOLUME 122, NUMBER 15 IN THIS ISSUE NLRB CASE DISMISSED Scabby the Rat beats the rap, lives to inflate another day. | Page 2 IBEW LOCAL 48 HOSTS ‘DRIVE-THRU’ PICNICS Union finds creative way to beat COVID-19 restrictions. | Page 7 Meeting Notices p.4 New worker friendly NLRB p.6 PORTLAND, OREGON COLLECTIVE BARGAINING As nation reeled, CEO pay rose Legacy settles as strike nears Times were tough in 2020. Millions of American workers lost jobs as the pandemic hit. But one group did pretty well for themselves: the chief exec- utive officers of America’s biggest corporations. CEO pay increased an in- credible $712,720 last year on average among S&P 500 com- panies, according to the latest annual Executive Paywatch re- port by the national AFL-CIO union federation. The S&P 500 is a stock market index that tracks the 500 biggest U.S. companies that are publicly 1,100 hospital workers were set to walk out July 15; instead they rati- fied a five-year contract. By Don McIntosh Just days before 1,100 support workers at four Portland loca- tions were planning to go on strike, Legacy Health Systems reached agreement on two new union contracts with Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 49. Ratified by the workers on July 14, the collective bargaining agreements will equalize wage rates across locations, bringing Legacy Emanuel up to the higher wage rates that Legacy has paid at Good Samaritan. One of the agreements covers about 400 workers at Legacy Good Samaritan Medical Center in Northwest Portland. The other covers about 700 workers at Legacy Emanuel Medical Center in North Portland, plus the nearby Randall Children’s Hospital and Unity Center for Behavioral Health. Each spells out wages, benefits and workplace rights for workers in over a dozen hospital support classifications, including housekeepers, cooks, certified HELP WITH ADVANCEMENT: Under their new contract, SEIU Local 49 members at Legacy Good Samaritan, above, have access to joint union-em- ployer funds to pay tuition for classes that can help them get ahead. nursing assistants, and patient ad- mission representatives. The agreements run through June 30, 2026. Raises in the first year range from 3% to 9% as lower paid workers are brought up to the new unified wage for each job. After that, all workers will get an- nual across-the-board raises of 3%, 3%, 2.5%, and 2.75% in July of 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025, respectively. That’s slightly above the previous three-year contract, which raised wages 2.5% a year. Workers also get annual “step” increases that reward them for AUGUST 6, 2021 sticking around for the first 10 years. And the contracts add a new top step to the pay scale, which kicks in at an employee’s 15th year. That will help the roughly 40% of members who had already reached the top step. The union has been pushing for that 11th step since at least 2014. The new contracts also raise starting pay for several jobs. Certified nursing assistants will now start at $18.75 an hour, up from $16.75. Customer service workers will start at $16.53, up traded on stock markets. Unlike privately-held com- panies, publicly traded compa- nies have to disclose what they pay top executives. And boy are they doing well. In 2020, CEOs of S&P 500 companies received $15.5 million in com- pensation, on average. Since 2018, publicly traded companies have also had to disclose how much their CEOs make compared to their me- dian employee. For 2020, that was 299 to 1 for S&P 500 CEOs. It’s been going up: In 2019, it was 264 to 1. –DM C-SUITE ARISTOCRATS According to the AFL-CIO’s Executive Paywatch report, here’s some of the most extreme S&P 500 CEO pay for 2020: HIGHEST-PAID CEO Robert Antokol, Playtika Holding Corp., $372 million MOST OUTRAGEOUS CEO-TO-WORKER PAY RATIO Abercrombie & Fitch (6,565 times the median worker pay of $1,820) MOST LAVISHLY PAID OREGON CEO Nike -$53.5 million for John Donahoe II MOST LAVISHLY PAID WASHINGTON CEO T-Mobile -$54.9 million for G Sievert TOP CEO PAY AMONG BIG UNION EMPLOYERS ■ General Motors - $23.7 million for Mary Barra ■ Kroger Co. - $22.4 million for W. WcMullen ■ Boeing Company - $21.1 million for David Calhoun ■ AT&T - $21.0 million for John Stankey Turn to Page 3 Painters Local 10 presses for - and gets - large wage increases The first contract since regaining the right to strike contains the biggest raises in a generation. By Don McIntosh For about 440 members of Painters Local 10 employed by members of the Signatory Paint- ing Contractors Organization (SPCO), the current union con- tract is proving to be life-chang- ing, raising wages by more than $7 an hour over its three-year span. Last year, members rati- fied the overall contract—in- cluding first-year raises of $2.62 to $4.27 an hour—while leaving second- and third-year raises open to further negotiation. On SIGNATORY PAINTING CONTRACTORS ORGANIZATION Effective immediately, these are the hourly wage rates for journeyman painters in year two of the three-year contract (plus $7.06/hr for health insurance and $5.75/hr for pension) COMMERCIAL/RESIDENTIAL $28.76 wage, $42.90 total package INDUSTRIAL $30.56 wage, $44.70 total package BRIDGE $36.23 wage, $50.37 total package July 27, 2021, they voted to ap- prove those second and third year raises: an immediate $2.20 an hour (plus an extra 30 cents for health and pension benefits); and a $2.30 increase on July 1, 2022 (members will decide later how to divide that increase among wages and benefits). The vote to ratify raises that total about $4.50 an hour came exactly three weeks after mem- bers voted down SPCO’s earlier offer of a pair of increases that totalled $2.94. Scott Oldham, field represen- tative for Local 10, said the rapid progress all owes to painters regaining their ability to strike. Prior to 2018, Local 10’s contracts with SPCO specified that if the two sides couldn’t agree on the terms of a succes- sor contract, an arbitrator would decide the terms. That deprived the union of the potential lever- age of a strike. “The relationship changed al- most overnight simply with the power of the strike,” Oldham says. When SPCO this year would- n’t go higher than 25 cents an hour for the contract’s second year increase, Local 10 mem- bers began an escalating series of strikes on May 21. “Those first painters who stood out on the line on those strikes … without them partici- pating and having the strength to do that, we would have never got anywhere,” Oldham said. “Members taking that big step, that’s what did it.” On July 14, Local 10 mem- bers also ratified by 73% a sep- arate agreement with the Asso- ciated Wall and Ceiling Contractors (AWCC) that raises wages $2 an hour now and $2.30 an hour July 1, 2022. The higher wages may help union contractors attract more employees and increase market share vis-a-vis the non-union competition. “We feel like these are wages that we can go out and recruit with,” Oldham told the Labor Press. “We’re excited to get out there in the field and lure the best workers out of the nonunion side.”
