Building A Strong Alliance for Workers
and Quality Services for All Oregonians
Our union builds partnerships with allies in the community in order to win
on issues that matter to our members. There are a lot of organizations with
whom we have worked closely, but this session there were a handful that
stretched themselves to help our members win and to advance their own
interests.
Nine organizations helped us form Keep Oregon Working, a loose-knit
coalition that united around three key ideas.
► To win on the budget, the legislature had to raise revenue.
^To win on revenue, the legislature had to act and we will have to back those
actions up at the ballot box.
Front-line, publicly funded workers had to receive fair treatment at the
bargaining table. It would have been impossible to win on the budget and
on revenue if the state budget had been solely balanced on the backs of
public employees.
Keep Oregon Working included community allies like AARP, Oregon PTA, and
Children First for Oregon. From the business community, the Oregon Health
Care Association—a trade association for nursing homes and assisted living
facilities—-joined. And our strong allies in labor—Oregon Education Association,
AFSCME, AFT/Oregon, and the AFL-CIO—also played leadership roles.
It was not second nature for some of these groups to stand up for workers'
rights. But members of each are sophisticated enough to understand that when
workers win, our communities win. We owe them a lot for their support. We
expect to be working with them shoulder to shoulder on the YES campaign to
preserve funding for quality public services come January.