A FILM FESTIVAL
A three-part labor film series,
featuring six movies, will begin
Friday, October 23 in Eugene.
The films will be shown every
other Friday at 7:30 p.m., in Harris
Hall, 8th and Oak Streets, Eugene.
Admission is free and child care will
be provided at no charge.
O CTO BER 23
U nion Maids—Through the
memories of three women, the birth
of the CIO and the labor movement
in the thirties is tracked. This
academy-award-nominated movie
clearly illustrates the contribution of
women and minorities in the labor
movement.
B read & Roses, Too—Through
the eyes of two nurses and one
nurse’s aide, this film looks at the
struggle workers engaged in to
organize their hospital.
NOVEMBER 6
Controlling In terest—This
thoroughly researched documentary
looks at the impact multinational
conglomerates have on international
economic and social development.
A natom y of a Lie—This film
was produced to set the record
straight on some of the information
being distributed by the anti-labor
National Right to Work Committee.
By using clips of a NRWC film on a
strike and following those dips with
interviews with the strikers, this film
provides an interesting study in
propaganda techniques.
Reagan Cuts Federal Pay
Increase to Less Than 5%
President Reagan has slashed a
scheduled 15.1 percent comparabil
ity pay raise for federal government
workers to 4.8 percent and has
asked Congress to permanently
hold federal pay below the private
sector.
Reagan’s substitute pay plan,
which took effect Oct. 1, is based
on the budget he drew up last
winter and ignores the government’s
own finding that the accumulated
lag in federal government salaries
justifies a catch-up raise of over 15
percent.
Kenneth Blaylock, president of
the American Federation of Govern
ment Employees, charged that
Reagan has shown himself “totally
insensitive to government workers,
who suffer from inflation like
everybody else.”
Other Presidents have trimmed
back the supposedly automatic
annual salary adjustments provided
by the 1970 pay comparability law,
but none so drastically as Reagan.
The last time Congress rebuffed a
president seeking to hold down
federal pay was during the Nixon
Administration.
Last year, when the government’s
pay comparability formula showed a
13.5 percent catch-up raise would
be needed to regain parity with
private sector jobs, President
Carter’s original budget had
projected a 6.2 percent raise. But
he raised this amount to 9.1
percent.
The 4.8 percent raise for the
federal government’s 1.4 million
salaried employes also will serve as
a ceiling for nearly 500,000 hourly
paid blue-collar workers, whose pay
scales are supposed to be adjusted
annually on the basis of local
prevailing wages.
Congress imposed the same limit
on their pay raises during the fiscal
year that started Oct. 1.
The administration has proposed
a permanent change in the com
parability formula that would hold
the federal salary level to 94 percent
of the rate for comparable private
sector jobs.
According to an Office of
Management and Budget “fact
sheet,” the subpar pay level is in
recognition óf “aspects of federal
employment that make it more
attractive than many non-federal
jobs.”
The original intent of the com
parability law was to provide a fair
and automatic adjustment of
government salary scales, without
the political battles that used to
occur regularly when salaries could
be increased only through legisla
tion.
Lincoln City Employes Settlement
Lincoln City Employes accepted a
contract which calls for a 7 percent
cost of living increase in the first
year of the contract and a 4
percent, plus one-half the per
centage increase in the Portland
Consumer Price Index in the
second year of the contract.
In addition, dispatchers will
receive a two-step pay raise and all
other employes, whose salaries do
not fall exactly on a pay step, will
be advanced to the next pay step.
In the September 1981 issue of
The Oregon Public Employe, this
settlement was inadvertantly listed
as negotiated for Lincoln County
Employes. OPEU does not rep
resent Lincoln County employes,
but does represent employes for
Lincoln City.
NOVEMBER 20
Willmar 8—This is an inspiring
story of eight bank workers from
the small town of Willmar, Minn. In
low paying jobs, denied promotion
opportunities and respect, these
eight workers took the most
unexpected step in their lives—they
formed a union and started the first
bank strike in the history of
Minnesota.
Nine to Five (a docum entary)—
Secretaries and clerical workers talk
about their desire for respect due
them as skilled workers. They
recognize that only through organi
zation will they achieve the wages,
dignity and working conditions they
deserve.
Union Dissidents
Have Rights Too
Members of a Steelworkers local
in Birmingham, Ala., who were
subjected to ridicule and harass
ment when they sought a secret
ballot vote on whether to end a
strike, have been awarded $45,000
in damages.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for
the Fifth Circuit cited the Landrum-
Griffin Act’s guarantee of the right
to participate in union “deliberations
and voting,” as including the right to
be recognized at union meetings
and to have those meetings
conducted in an orderly fashion.
The dissident members were not
permitted to speak at the meetings
and were threatened with bodily
harm if they crossed the picket line.
Union leaders publicly berated
dissidents and the union treasurer
struck one in the jaw during a strike
vote meeting.
Unions Unhappy
With Reagan’s
Labor Appointees
President Reagan has nominated
an anti-union management con
sultant and the Senate staff member
most responsible for the defeat of a
major package labor law reform
legislation to fill the two vacant
seats on the National Labor
Relations Board.
John R. Van de Water, who has
headed a Southern California con
sultant firm since 1949, was
nominated to chair the NLRB,
According to Business Week, he
“advises companies that want to
resist union organizing campaigns”
and prepares audiovisual aids to
that purpose.
Van de Water served as a
management representative for
North American Aviation and Ford
Motor Co., and has been a member
of the labor relations committee of
the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
The Chamber of Commerce had
earlier tried to rally support for
Robert P. Hunter as chairman—
Reagan's nomination to fill the other
vacant seat.
Hunter is currently chief of staff
of the Senate Labor and Human
Resources Committee, headed by
Utah Republican Orin Hatch. As
Hatch’s legislative director and labor
committee counsel in the late ’70s,
he played a major role in the
filibustered defeat of “Labor Law
Reform," AFL-CIO supported
amendments to the National Labor
Relations Act.
Hunter set forth his views on
labor relations in “Mandate for
Leadership: Policy Management in a
Conservative Administration.” In it
he criticizes the NLRB for an
“activist stance, manifested by a
pro-labor bias.”
With a third seat on the five
member board opening up in
December of 1982, Reagan is
looking forward to right wing
majority. Such a board, predicts
Business Week, “will make it harder
for unions to organize workers and
easier for companies to decertify
unions," especially in banks and
hospitals where the board “has
been permitting workers to vote for
narrower units than proposed by
management.”
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