A8 The BulleTin • Thursday, april 22, 2021
EDITORIALS & OPINIONS
AN INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER
Heidi Wright
Gerry O’Brien
Richard Coe
Publisher
Editor
Editorial Page Editor
Help the COVID-19
vaccine do its stuff
D
eschutes County has a COVID vaccination rate of
about 43%, as we write this. Jefferson County is at 34%
and Crook County is at 30%.
Not enough to make you stand
up and cheer, yet. It is progress — a
stab in the arm to hurt the pandemic
where it hunts.
The bad news is we seem to be
in a trend of growing cases. Mask,
gathering and spacing discipline
may have slipped. It wouldn’t be so
frustrating except it is life and death.
We got an email Wednesday from
Rep. Cliff Bentz, the Republican rep-
resenting this district. He and the
people he was meeting with in close
proximity were unmasked in some
of the photos.
OK, nobody’s been perfect. Well,
maybe some of you have been. Bentz
certainly believes in the importance
of wearing masks to prevent the
spread of COVID-19. His staff told
us that in almost those exact same
words. They added in their email:
“Each of the engagements pictured
involved a consideration of many
factors, including at least the appli-
cable government guidelines, set-
ting, proximity & duration of the
proximity, preferences of the group,
and vaccination status of those
involved.”
That’s fair. But the message from
health officials and recent uptick
in cases tell us: Keep wearing your
mask and keep your distance.
Should road taxes give
nudge to electric cars?
I
n 1919, Oregon was the first state
to charge a tax per gallon of gas.
And the state could be one of
the first to charge everyone by mile
driven.
Oregon’s gas tax is scheduled to
climb from 36 cents a gallon up to
40 cents in 2024. But the state’s gas
tax revenue is almost certainly head-
ing into a permanent swan dive.
It won’t be enough to keep up the
state’s roads and bridges. Vehicles
are getting more and more miles to
the gallon. And electric or other al-
ternatives are going to slowly replace
them.
The Oregon solution is pay as you
go, not pay per gallon. You can sign
up for it now. OReGO participants
pay 1.8 cents a mile. They get fuel
tax credits based on gas consump-
tion. Very few Oregonians are en-
rolled — about 700 — because the
immediate benefits are limited.
House Bill 2342 tries to hit the
accelerator for OReGO. It imposes
a mandatory per-mile road usage
charge for registered owners and les-
sees of passenger vehicles of model
year 2027 or later that have a rating
of 30 miles per gallon or greater. It
would begin on July 1, 2026.
That makes sense, in some ways.
The question is: Does it provide the
right incentives? What’s the goal?
One goal is to ensure there is
enough revenue to keep the state’s
roads and bridges repaired. This bill
could help with that.
Another goal, for some, is to en-
courage Oregonians to drive more
fuel efficient vehicles or more
electric vehicles. Better for the
environment.
The gas tax already does it. This
bill doesn’t really do much. There
would be an added elimination of
title registration fees under the bill.
But if the goal is to give Oregonians
a nudge, this bill adds a perverse in-
centive — new charges on more fuel
efficient vehicles.
The bill could be altered so the
pay as you go formula takes into ac-
count the fuel efficiency of the ve-
hicle. That might encourage more
Oregonians to go electric or pick a
more fuel-efficient choice.
The complication is how that
policy would impact lower-income
Oregonians.
Want to buy an electric car? The
long-term costs can have clear bene-
fits. The upfront cost is usually more
and that can be what people focus
on.
The gas tax was never progres-
sive. Should Oregon look to do more
with a nudge for electric cars? If the
Legislature simply opts to provide
incentives for electric cars, it could
be leaving some Oregonians behind.
Editorials reflect the views of The Bulletin’s editorial board, Publisher Heidi Wright, Editor
Gerry O’Brien and Editorial Page Editor Richard Coe. They are written by Richard Coe.
For my brother, this is what justice feels like
BY PHILONISE FLOYD
Special to The Washington Post
T
his is what justice feels like:
gut-wrenching relief, exhaus-
tion. It’s not sweet or satisfy-
ing. It’s necessary, important, maybe
even historic. But only with the
passage of time will we know if the
guilty verdict in the trial of Derek
Chauvin is the start of something
that will truly change America and
the experience of Black Americans.
For the past two weeks, I have
watched my brother George Floyd
die over and over, thousands of
times. The video testimony was hard
to see. Now it is seared into my wak-
ing thoughts and my nightly sleep —
what little sleep I get.
I watched as the strangers who
stood on that street and saw George
slowly, agonizingly die testified
about how they pleaded for his
life and felt guilty that they weren’t
able to save it, sometimes sobbing
through their words. They never
thought they’d have to stand there
and witness his soul leave its body.
That included a 9-year-old girl with
the word “love” on her shirt, who
saw something no child should
ever have to see. She will be forever
changed by it. Those good people
who were there with George at the
end, when we were not, are also now
part of our family.
I saw tears on the faces of jurors
who looked nothing like George or
me as they listened to that testimony,
and I felt bonds of humanity with
them. In contrast to the jury that 66
years ago refused to convict the men
who brutalized, maimed and killed
Emmett Till, this jury took a deci-
sive stand for justice. As much as this
verdict is a vindication for George, it
is for Emmett, too.
Over the past 11 months, my fam-
ily has forged relationships with the
families of so many other victims of
brutality and over-policing — Bre-
onna Taylor, Daunte Wright, Eric
Garner. We are members of a tragic
club that we never would have cho-
sen for ourselves. Many of these vic-
tims have not had their day in court.
This verdict is for them, too.
Our family has absorbed the love
of people from all over the world —
from Germany, Britain, Australia,
Ghana, France and so many other
places — who felt a connection to
George and were devastated by what
happened to him. They put their
lives on the line, marching amid a
pandemic, and told us they hoped
we would get justice. In death, as in
life, George brought people together,
leading to unlikely bonds.
So many Black people have shared
with us how traumatized they were
by George’s death, reminding them
that it could have been them or their
children. And so many White peo-
ple have shared that their eyes were
opened by his death, that they didn’t
realize until now just how often
people of color are brutalized, their
lives trivialized, their right to justice
denied. The video had a lot to do
with it. People were horrified to lit-
erally see someone tortured to death
for nine minutes, and they were
shocked that the officer displayed no
remorse. People around the world
had to explain that to their kids, and
they didn’t know how.
We saw law enforcement officers
such as Minneapolis Police Chief
Medaria Arradondo break ranks
and call out Chauvin’s behavior for
what it was, and Minnesota Attorney
General Keith Ellison press for a vig-
orous prosecution. A crumbling of
the blue wall and the start of a new
era of law enforcement accountabil-
ity? We hope and pray.
This verdict is historic, but it
shouldn’t be historic to punish peo-
ple who do bad things, even if they
wear a police uniform — especially if
they wear a police uniform.
My brother told us a long time ago
that his name would be all over the
world. We didn’t think it would be
like this. This week, our family re-
ceived a measure of justice because
regular citizens and those in author-
ity took the most basic human ac-
tion: They did the right thing.
It’s up to all of us to build on this
moment. We must end the qualified
immunity that too often shields law
enforcement officers from respon-
sibility, require police to maintain
body-camera and dash-cam videos,
and ban chokeholds and no-knock
warrants. Now, it’s time for the U.S.
Senate to do its part and pass the
George Floyd Justice in Policing Act,
and begin the work of transforming
policing in the United States.
What does justice feel like? It feels
like maybe we can finally take a
breath.
e e
Philonise Floyd is the brother of George Floyd.
How do you get corner-office status if you work from home? GM will find out
BY MICHELINE MAYNARD
Special to The Washington Post
G
enerations of Detroiters sat
through early-morning traffic
jams on their way to auto fac-
tories and soaring downtown office
buildings, only to repeat the time-con-
suming process in the afternoon and
early evening. Factory workers started
the day at 6 a.m. So did bosses whose
offices kept “plant hours” that called
for them to be on the job as soon as
cars started rolling down assembly
lines. For others, mornings often be-
gan at 7:30 and stretched a dozen
hours into early evening.
Nobody questioned the routine: It
was part of the rhythm of the Motor
City, whose economy depended on
those automotive employees who were
driving the cars and trucks their com-
panies built.
But on Tuesday, General Motors
CEO Mary Barra called time on that
tradition.
Writing on LinkedIn, Barra said
GM was instituting a practice called
“Work Appropriately.” It allows em-
ployees, when able, “to work from
wherever they can have the greatest
impact” on achieving GM’s goals.
GM trusts employees to “make
smart decisions without overly pre-
scriptive guidance,” she wrote, an idea
that might have made legendary GM
chiefs such as Alfred Sloan and Roger
Smith blink.
Ford, for its part, announced last
month that it was allowing 30,000 em-
ployees worldwide the option of work-
ing from home, although they can go
to the office for group tasks.
It’s as if a century of American busi-
ness culture just cracked and crum-
bled to the ground. Perhaps most
significantly, car company employees
— and indeed, others in the corporate
world — have long viewed their phys-
ical offices as company status sym-
bols, comparing them in size, decor
and proximity to power. In the Detroit
headquarters buildings, and else-
where, the goal was first an office with
a window, then digs on an executive
floor, then ultimately the coveted cor-
ner office that only a boss got.
At the old GM Building, just down
West Grand Boulevard from the origi-
nal home of Motown Records, Smith’s
office, which I visited in the early days
of my years covering the auto industry,
had a sprawling view of Detroit, all the
way across the city to Canada beyond,
a constant assurance of his company’s
reach.
Elsewhere, auto company manag-
ers stood in their entryways to survey
the worker bees around them. They
hosted guests in the executive din-
ing rooms, had their cars washed and
gassed up during the workday and
rode home in darkness to luxurious
suburban homes with spouses and
families that they only occasionally
saw.
Eventually, cubicles and open of-
fices came along, as did business ca-
sual (what GM calls “Dress Appropri-
ately”), helping loosen some of those
traditions, but offices themselves were
still essential. In California, tech com-
panies such as Google and Apple cre-
ated vast campuses where employees
were expected to congregate, bused in
from San Francisco, but those less tra-
ditional layouts weren’t all that popu-
lar or effective. Writing in the Harvard
Business Review in 2018, Ethan Bern-
stein and Ben Weber found employees
were figuring out workarounds that
gave them more privacy.
“They avoid eye contact, discover
an immediate need to use the bath-
room or take a walk, or become so en-
grossed in their tasks that they are se-
lectively deaf (perhaps with the help of
headphones),” the two wrote.
These types of open offices caused
face-to-face interaction to fall 70%,
Bernstein and Weber found. So it
might not be such a surprise that re-
mote work has been something com-
panies want to keep, post-pandemic.
Since stay-at-home orders took ef-
fect last year, millions of employees
have performed remote work, and at
least 1 in 4 employees is going to con-
tinue doing so throughout 2021, ac-
cording to an estimate by Upwork, a
platform for freelance work. Upwork
found 56% of hiring managers felt re-
mote work had gone better than ex-
pected, and only 10% thought things
were going worse for their companies.
Now, GM, long a leader in setting
standards for American business cul-
ture, is on board. CNBC reported that
GM held 52 workshops for 1,100 com-
pany managers to talk about the new
effort, which remains fuzzy and won’t
include all 155,000 workers. You can’t
build cars in someone’s den, after all,
but the workers could receive training
remotely in new manufacturing con-
cepts, and they already perform nu-
merous tasks via laptops right on the
factory floor.
For an industry steeped in hierar-
chical practices, the move raises cul-
tural questions; namely, how can prox-
imity be power if you never see your
boss? How can a sense of camaraderie
be encouraged over Zoom?
All that is being studied, too. Re-
searchers Pamela Hinds and Brian El-
liott, also writing in the Harvard Busi-
ness Review, interviewed executives
from around the world to see how
they were keeping company values in-
tact. They discovered that companies
have shifted some of their team-build-
ing exercises online. For example,
employees at Alibaba North America
held a quilt-crafting exercise, creating
one coverlet for each company loca-
tion. IBM employees organized an
effort to collect groceries for home-
bound parents and communicate over
Slack to check in with one another.
“Leaders have a stark choice to
make: do nothing, work to craft new
ways of reinforcing the existing cul-
ture, or capitalize on the shift to re-
mote work to profoundly reset the
culture,” Hinds and Elliott wrote in the
review. “This time can be used as an
opportunity to reset aspects of culture
as an organization evolves or as a new
way of working requires it.”
For years, GM didn’t change. It was
so paternalistic that it was known in
Detroit as Mother Motors, generously
compensating its employees from the
time they joined the company until
they received their gold Patek Phillipe
watches at retirement. In return, they
expected compliance with corporate
customs.
But in her note this week, Barra
wrote, “We are not yet ‘back to nor-
mal’ and in truth, we may never be.”
Anyone who was stuck in those traffic
jams on I-94 is probably fine with that.
e e
Micheline Maynard is an author and journalist who
was Detroit bureau chief for the New York Times.
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