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About Northwest labor press. (Portland , Ore.) 1987-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 6, 2021)
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS | August 6, 2021 | PAGE 3 Legacy: Synching expirations adds union power From Page 1 laBor Helps sponsor covid-19 vaccine clinics. The North- west Oregon Labor Council (NOLC) and the Oregon Health Authority sponsored a series of free COVID-19 vaccine clinics organized by the Professional Business Development Group (PBDG). The clinics were held in Salem, Tualatin, and Northeast Portland from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. over three Saturdays in July. The last clinic was set up July 24 at Laborers Lo- cal 737’s facility in Northeast Portland. At all three locations union mem- bers from a dozen locals and staff from NOLC and Labor’s Community Service Agency volunteered to set up, tear down, and help out at the clinics. Vaccinations — a choice of Pfizer or J&J — were administered by pharmacists from Safeway and Albertson’s. In the photo above, a rep- resentative from the Oregon Health Authority advertises the free clinic on busy 181st Avenue. In the photo below, Anjanet Banuelos-Bolanos, Jani Turner, and Lori Baumann, all members of Laborers Local 737, greet customers. Those coming in for vaccines got lunch and a raffle ticket for prizes that included a PlayStation 5, iPad, Occulus VR set and more. PBDG is a nonprofit construction trade association that supports BIPOC and women-owned firms. Over the three weeks the group delivered 28 shots. HAPPENINGS IBEW 48 golf tournament to benefit sick fund IBEW Local 48 will hold its an- nual golf tournament Aug. 22. The tournament raises money for the Local 48 sick fund, which helps members who are in serious financial difficulty due to illness or injury, who’ve been off work at least 30 days and aren’t getting financial as- sistance from other sources. This tournament is open to IBEW Local 48 members as well as to nonmembers, includ- ing family, pensioners, contrac- tors, vendors and sponsors. It’s not necessary to sign up an entire team. You can register as an individual or indicate a preferred group (in the "Group Members" field below). Due to COVID-19 there won’t be a registration table or gathering at the end of the tour- nament. Boxed lunches will be provided upon departure there will be a virtual raffle at a later date. ■ When: Sunday, Aug. 22, tee times assigned at a later date ■ Where: Glendoveer Golf Course, 14015 NE Glisan St., Portland ■ Cost: $100 per person ■ Info/tickets: ibew48.com/Golf from $15.20. Housekeepers at Emanuel are also celebrating a side agreement that will restore their 8-hour workday. Their hours were cut at the beginning of the pandemic to 7.5 hours per day, a roughly $5,000-a-year cut to their pay. The five-year length of the agreements is unusually long by union standards. Unions tend to prefer more frequent opportuni- ties to win improvements, while employers tend to prefer the greater predictability of longer agreements. Mike Morrison, assistant di- rector of SEIU Local 49’s Healthcare Division, said Local 49 agreed to the five-year dura- tion in exchange for Legacy agreeing to synchronize the ex- piration dates of the two con- tracts. The previous contract at Good Samaritan expired June 30, 2021, while the one cover- ing Emanuel, Randall, and Unity had expired a year earlier. Having the contracts expire the same day will maximize union leverage in the future because a strike would leave Legacy un- able to transfer patients to the non-striking hospital. “Leaving these negotiations with a joint expiration date was the most important thing we “Leaving these negotia- tions with a joint expira- tion date was the most important thing we could do right now.” — Mike Morrison, SEIU 49 healthcare division could do right now,” Morrison said. “Our members said, ‘We are stronger if we’re together.’ And that’s not a tagline; that’s the reality, and they made that an absolute priority.” To demonstrate resolve, Local 49 organized strike votes to take place at Good Sam, Emanuel, Randall and Unity simultane- ously. Members picketed outside Emanuel once, and outside Unity twice. Inside, they took part in coordinated “union sticker” days and wore “ready to strike” bracelets. After a legally required 10-day strike notice, they were set to walk off July 15. “I feel like nobody wants to strike unless they really, really have to,” said Sunita Patel, a housekeeper at Legacy Emanuel and member of the Local 49 ne- gotiating team. “We love to work where we work, and we care about our patients. Nobody wants to neglect them.” It wasn’t easy to get an ac- ceptable agreement out of Legacy, which has a decades-old history of hostility to unions. Legacy’s anti-union history In 2005, SEIU had to strike for a day before reaching a deal at Emanuel, and in 2017, members came close to a strike before a settlement was reached. This time, Legacy stopped deducting union dues from members’ pay- checks during bargaining. At least the hospital support workers have a union. Nurses don’t, for the most part. In the mid-2000s, Legacy defeated a four-year effort to unionize among registered nurses. Today Legacy remains the only major Portland-area hospital chain where nurses are non-union. At Legacy’s Unity Center, nurses joined Oregon Nurses As- sociation in 2019, but they still don’t have a first union contract two years later. The only Legacy facility where union-represented nurses have a contract is its hos- pital in Silverton, Oregon. While it spent the last year ne- gotiating to keep down house- keeper wages, Legacy paid its CEO Kathryn Correia over $1.5 million in 2019, the most recent year for which the tax-exempt nonprofit’s IRS returns are pub- licly available.
