Eugene weekly., July 29, 2021, Page 9, Image 9

nizer Russ Benton says. “He has historically changed the
playing field for construction work.”
Not counting large road construction or public works
projects, Lane County spokesperson Devon Ashbridge
says the county has put out to bid two capital projects
that cost more than $1 million. That includes a Parole and
Probation renovations project, for which Ashbridge says
Bridgeway Contracting, LLC, came in $700,000 less than
the recent cost estimate of $5.79 million while also meet-
ing the community benefits bidding criteria.
“We’re trying to lift up the working families of the
community,” Zuschlag says. “We really built trust with
that Lane County staff. They went out a little bit on a
ledge because there was nowhere in state law that said
you could specifically do this, but there wasn’t anywhere
that said you couldn’t, either.”
He adds that county staff took time to research how to
make community benefits bidding happen legally so the
county wouldn’t engage in illegal preferential treatment.
Months after the county started its community benefits
bidding program, Berney says he authored the bill that
state Sen. James Manning would eventually introduce
on his behalf.
According to the bill’s language, SB 420 requires a
contractor to provide workers with employer-paid family
health insurance and participate in an apprenticeship, as
well as any other requirements a public agency may require.
“It took two years to get the entire [Lane] County staff
to be supportive rather than pushing back because this is
institutional change, which is oftentimes resisted,” Berney
says. Now that SB 420 is law, he says, “every county, every
city, every school district, every water district, every unit
of state and local government now cannot say it’s illegal,
which is what they’ve been saying.”
COMMUNITY BENEFITS BIDDING
GOES ON TOUR
says, as 2021 Lane County chair, the Association of Oregon
Counties invited him to talk with commissioners through-
out the state on how to adopt a community benefits
bidding protocol. But he clarifies he won’t impose himself.
Berney is currently trying to adopt community bene-
fits bidding at Homes For Good, Lane County’s housing
authority that often spends millions of dollars on afford-
able housing developments. “On the one hand, I’m very
supportive of what Homes For Good does,” he says. “On
the other hand, Homes For Good is institutionally resist-
ing change, which I understand. It's natural to push back
against doing things differently. It's a process. They'll get
there. I'll help them.”
On July 21, Homes For Good began discussion on
community benefits bidding. Five of the housing agency’s
seven person board are county commissioners. Early in
the meeting, Executive Director Jacob Fox discussed the
organization’s strategies of increasing diversity, equity and
inclusion. In response, Berney said community benefits
bidding protocol can be crafted to meet that strategy.
At that meeting, conservative Lane County Commis-
sioner Jay Bozievich said he won’t support Homes For
Good adopting community benefits bidding for its proj-
ects. It could result in more expensive costs for building
affordable homes, he said.
But supporters of community benefits bidding say
the programs don’t result in more expensive projects.
“None of this increases the cost of the project. The cost
of the project is determined by prevailing wage laws,” says
Gordon Lafer, Labor Education Research Center faculty
member, University of Oregon professor and a Eugene
School District 4J School Board member.
Lafer is one of the school board members who’s pushing
for community benefits bidding at 4J, which would be the
first school district in Oregon to have such an agreement,
he says. Because community benefits bidding protocols
can be developed according to the needs of the agency,
Lafer says 4J has an opportunity to empower its career
technical education system by prioritizing contractors that
will have apprenticeship programs with high schoolers.
Lafer says he hopes board members will find ways to
develop a strategy to adopt a community benefits bidding
program at their upcoming retreat. But it may be too late
for a community benefits bidding program to be tied to
upcoming construction projects.
Berney says he’s talking with trade unions from Wash-
“We asked for simple things like employers pay full
family health care with the prevailing wage that the state
of Oregon requires,” Benton says. “Our idea was to hire
the contractors that pay these benefits. There’s a reason
they require them.”
But these requests were often rejected wholly or watered
down, he adds.
“When Berney had actually authored the community
benefits bidding program and SB 420, he created a game
changer,” Benton says.
In 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court’s Janus v. AFSCME
changed the organized labor landscape when the 5-4
ruling prohibited unions from collecting mandatory dues
from non-members. But since then, union membership
has risen. According to a 2021 report by the U.S. Bureau of
Labor Statistics, in 2020, the national union membership
rate was 10.8 percent, up .5 percent from 2019. A third of
the nation’s union members were in the public sector, and
private sector workers — like those in the construction
industry — only made up 6.3 percent.
Union representatives tell EW that if construction
contractors decide to meet the demands of a commu-
nity benefits bidding program, it won’t discourage union
growth. In fact, Oregon could see more union construc-
tion workers.
Benton points to full family health insurance, for exam-
ple. Nonunion contractors who work on public projects
often pay workers the cash to cover health insurance, he
says. But if they’re required to provide health insurance in
order to bid for public projects, contractors may decide
to join a union to make qualifying for public projects with
community benefits bidding programs easier.
“We’ve seen it in other jurisdictions, like the San Fran-
cisco Bay Area and Seattle,” he adds, “It actually attracts
companies to become signatory. They find out that it’s
more economical to become a part of our organization
than it is to bid against our organization.”
In those areas, nonunion contractors will sometimes
pay more for health insurance and retirement than if they
were in a union, he says. So if there are more community
benefits bidding protocols throughout Oregon, it could
lead to union growth here, he adds.
“This is going to be a key element in pushing the labor
movement forward,” Benton says. “I really believe this is
going to be a huge shot in the arm for labor organizations
across the state.”
ington, California and Nevada so they can lobby
for community benefit bidding programs there.
If public agencies start requiring community
benefits bidding programs, taxpayer money could
have a multiplier effect throughout communi-
ties, Benton says.
“It creates those family wage careers that boost
up the economy for the entire community that these
projects are taking place in,” Benton says. “The
people who are making these family wages are
putting their money right back into the communi-
ties where they live. It’s direct economic growth.”
And even if community benefits bidding programs
don’t increase union membership in Oregon, Zuschlag
says rising expectations for nonunion workers will benefit
the whole industry.
“To be honest, we represent workers in our union but
we want to help all in our industry,” he says. “We’re all
better off if they get real benefits.”
Berney says now he wants to expand Lane County
government’s use of community benefits bidding proto-
col so all construction projects over $500,000 must
go to contractors who pay a living wage, offer full time
family health insurance, have apprenticeship programs
for underrepresented communities and follow climate
friendly practices.
And Berney wants to include all Lane County contracted
services, not just construction work.
“I felt that we’d have a positive with construction, so
that’s why I picked that first because you need an easy win,”
he says. “I want to leverage those so all contracts are bound
by the criteria of living wages, provision employer pays
health care plans, retirement plans, recruitment for those
who’ve been excluded, proper training and if applicable
operate with greenhouse gas factors and spend money
locally before contract with big corporate entities.” ■
On July 14, Gov. Kate Brown signed SB 420 into law.
Now Berney and union groups are looking to proselytize
community benefits bidding to other agencies, two of
which are in Lane County.
“We’re going to have to go city by city, county by county,”
Berney says. “The building trades are really going to
have to put in their work in this. But we’ve opened a door,
created a template and created a structure that’s going
to enable that. That means lifting the tides for all boats.”
And Berney says he’ll be involved
in talking with other govern-
‘AFTER THE CAMPAIGN I WAS WRESTLING WITH HOW TO MOVE MONEY TO
mental agencies about
LOCAL COMMUNITIES, INCLUDING SPRINGFIELD, TO LOCAL BUSINESS
community bene-
AND HIRING LOCAL WORKERS. I DIDN’T WANT TO BE ANOTHER
fits bidding. For
BULLSHIT POLITICIAN.’ — Joe Berney, Lane County commission chair
example, he
UNION STATE OF MIND
With Lane County’s pilot program kicked off
and Brown’s signature on SB 420, union represen-
tatives say Berney has pulled off a game-changing
policy that they’ve tried to implement in Oregon in the
past. And it could revive the state’s labor movement.
Benton says, in the past, unions and building
trades have approached public agencies,
asking them to adopt “responsible
contractor language.” Rather than
public contracts going to the
lowest bidder, the unions were
just asking public agencies to
prioritize local contractors, he
adds.
E U G E N E W E E K LY . C O M
This story is the first in Eugene Weekly’s reporting series on the labor
movement in Oregon, funded by the Wayne L. Morse Center for Law
and Politics.
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