Page 2
The OSEA News
June 29,1978
Prop. 13 causes feeling of uselessness
(Ulis story first appeared in
the June 26 Oregon Statesman,
Salem’s morning daily and a
member of the
Gannett
newspaper chain.)
By ERIC BRAZIL
Gannett News Service
OAKLAND - Proposition 13
did more overnight to drain
strength from Local 2428 of the
East Bay Regional Park
Workers Union, AFL-CIO, than
a decade of abrasive dealings
with management, and some
employees say they’re hurt that
voters consider their jobs
“meaningless.”
Local 2428 is a small, feisty
union representing naturalists,
maintenance and craftspeople,
gardeners and utility workers of
East Bay Regional Park
District.
In 1975, it battled the two-
county, 39-park district in a 60-
day strike in which the principal
issue was union security.
The one kind of security it was
unable to win for its members,
however, was against a
cataclysm like Proposition 13,
which sheared away 60 percent
of California’s property tax
revenue.
Property taxes pay most of
the salaries of Local 2428 and
supply 82 percent of East Bay
Regional
Park
District’s
general fund budget.
Nearly half of the union’s 130
members
received
layoff
notices, effective July 15, with
their paychecks last Thursday.
Anne Jenks, 36, mother of a 7-
year-old son, a park worker and
Local 2428 member for the past
four years, faces layoff.
She said Proposition 13
blindsided her when it surfaced
as a public issue.
“I’d just bought a $40,000
house in Berkeley, and I thought
‘oh boy, lower taxes.’ But then I
realized ‘this means me.’”
Now the repercussions of
Proposition 13’s passage have
her demoralized, and she ad
mitted: “I don’t think I’ve even
started dealing with the loss.
This job is a big part of my
identity.”
“It has made me quite angry.
It said my job is meaningless to
a lot of people. They were
saying they didn’t believe us
and that they didn’t care.”
As a park worker, Jenks, a
wiry, firm-handed five-footer
with penetrating blue eyes, does
everything from trail building
to arc welding.
It’s what would in years past
be thought of strictly as “man’s
work” but she’s fit enough for it.
“I want to make the job
meaningful, and to be told that
in some
way it’s
not
meaningful, a luxury not
amounting to anything, is
something that is very hard to
hear,” she said.
“This job has meant a great
deal to me. I was on welfare
'Cooperation’ can
mean many things
Cooperation, like beauty,
sometimes is in the eye of the
beholder. In the Highway
Division, until the problem was
corrected by OSEA Employe
Representative Peter De Luca,
all the “cooperating” was done
by the employes.
The Division’s “cooperative
work effort,” which appeared to
be a way for Highway to avoid
paying per diem to its em
ployes, has now been abolished,
but it took the cooperation of the
Personnel
Division
and
grievance coordinator George
Sanders
when
Highway
wouldn’t cooperate.
The “cooperative work ef
fort” came into play when
employes
from
separate
maintenance sections would
gather to do work at one spot,
such as a gravel pit, shared by
several sections. Under the
conditions of this policy, no per
diem was paid to the employes
even though they may have
traveled more than 25 miles to
get to the location of the
“cooperative work effort.”
This policy eventually was
expanded to include any time a
The OSEA News
dates listed
The OSEA News will be published nine more times
between nowand the end of the year. Basically, The OSEA
News is published every three weeks on Thursdays.
Here are the remaining publication dates:
July 20
August 10
August 31
September 21
before I took it. Now my friends
are proud of me and I’m proud
of myself.”
Jenks, a Pittsburgh, Pa.,
native and graduate of Kent
State University, earns $1,187 a
month as a park worker in the
district’s 2,000 Redwood Park in
the Oakland Hills.
She recalls that during the
1975 strike against the district,
the union’s image with the
public was generally favorable.
“We don’t fit into their image of
a union,” she said. “We are
such a small union people felt
sorry for us, but we work
together real well.”
Favorable image or not.
Local 2428 took the same kind of
election-day
beating
from
October 12
November 2
November 23
December 14.
person from one Highway crew
was assigned to do work with
someone from another crew.
Grievances,
arbitration
are topics
Grievance
administration
and arbitration will be the
majortopics of discussion at a
four-day workshop sponsored
by the Labor Education and
Research Center (LERC) July
30 through Aug. 2. The event is
planned as a residential
workshop and is being held at
the University of Oregon with
lodging and meals provided at
the dormitories.
Participants in the program
will come from the U.S.
Department
of
Labor,
Washington, D.C.; the Oregon
Employment Relations Board;
the Oregon Department of
Education;
the
Labor
v Education and Research Center
staff; and a number of the
public employe unions in the
state.
Registration fee for the
workshop will be $50 which
includes lodging and meals at
the U.O. dormitories and all
materials. Two hours of
graduate credit may be ob
tained through the Division of
Continuing
Education
if
desired. There is an additional
charge of $30 for this.
Representatives from most of
the faculty and classified staffs
of the 13 Oregon community
colleges are expected.
Registration should be sent in
by July 17, 1978 to the Labor
Education & Research Center,
154 Prince Lucien Campbell
Hall, University of Oregon,
Eugene, 97403, or phone 686-5054
to reserve a place.
The OSEA News is published every three weeks by the
Oregon State Employes Association, a public employe labor
organization. Editorial and advertising offices are located
at 1127 Twenty-fifth Street SE, Salem, Oregon 97301. Second
class postage paid at Salem.
If The OSEA News is being sent to the wrong address, the
address label on this paper along with the correct address
should be sent to OSEA Headquarters, 1127 Twenty-fifth
Street SE, Salem, Oregon 97301.
Subscriptions: $3 per year.
Postmaster: If undelivered, please send form 3579 to
OSEA, 1127 Twenty-fifth Street SE, Salem, Oregon 97301.
Proposition 13 that every other
property tax-dependent in
stitution did.
Jenks said wistfully: “I don’t
know who they were mad at, if
they’re mad at me or not. I
thought they’d be mad at people
with useless jobs, not ‘hands-on’
work. But mine is not a useless
job.”
She said she retained hope for
a miracle - or some creative,
practical solution - before July
15, and that she is looking to the
Union,
which
has
been
resourceful in tight spots
before, for help.
Job-sharing is a possibility,
she believes, and, like other
district employees, she wishes
the district could legally tap
into the earmarked fund raised
for land acquisition by property
taxation to pay salaries.
The sweep and finality of
Proposition 13 took the unionby
surprise, though. “No one
foresaw massive layoffs/’ she
said.
Peter Volin, 32, another park
worker, is farther from the
ejection seat than Jenks,
because of his nine year’s
seniority. He received a layoff
notice nevertheless.
Among his big worries is that
the district’s board of directors
will come down harder in
making layoffs on Local 2428
members than on public safety
workers and administrators,
because of the adversary, burr-
under-the-saddle blanket role
the union has played.
Given its track record, the
union is not going to take
disproportionate
layoffs
silently. It will go public, he
said, “and if the public isn’t
outraged, there’s not a lot more
we can do,” he said.
“I really dispute the notion
that we don’t do a good job,” he
said. “By and large we run an
efficient park district. It’s a
complicated task. Proposition
13 will simply decrease our
efficiency.”
Park district directors have
responded to the financial
uncertainties of the Proposition
13 crisis by making plans to
close 18 of their 39 parks and
reducing visitor hours in the
others.
They also have enacted an
ordinance defining a new crime,
one specifically attributable to
Proposition 13: trespassing in a
public park, a misdemeanor;
$10 fine upon convicion.
Resolution
'hotline’
operating
A Resolution Hotline now is in
operation so that General
Council resolution writers can
find out whether someone else
has written a resolution on a
similar subject or what current
OSEA policy, if any, is on the
subject.
To get the Hotline, simply call
the Salem headquarters and ask
for the “Resolution Hotline.”
Headquarters phone numbers
are 581-1505 (Sa lem),. 223-1569
(Portland) and 800-452-9118 for
the rest of the state.
Front Wheel Drive
At A Price
Front Wheel Drive
Rack and Pinion Steering
Michelin Steel Belted
Radials
Unbelievable Ride
25th & Mission,
Evenings and Saturday, 378-9011