The BulleTin • Thursday, OcTOBer 21, 2021 A13
Blue
Continued from A11
Paint-makers, which typically rely on hun-
dreds of additives and chemicals, have warned
for months of higher costs and logistical issues.
Akzo Nobel earlier Wednesday said the spi-
raling costs and materials shortages will last
through the middle of next year.
While demand is coming back to 2019 levels
Landlords
Continued from A11
lM Otero/aP photos
Balsam Hill Outlet sales associate Rickey Haynes, right, listens to manager Kelly Bratt during training just out-
side Dallas in Allen, Texas, on Sept. 20.
Workers
Continued from A11
Job openings are plentiful, so
workers can afford to be picky.
There were 10.4 million job
openings at the end of August
and 11.1 million openings the
month before, the highest on
record since at least December
2000, when the government
started recording that figure.
At the same time, the U.S. La-
bor Department said that the
number of people quitting
their jobs jumped to 4.3 mil-
lion in August from 4 million
in July.
A recent study from Man-
powerGroup revealed that
nearly 40% of job candidates
worldwide said schedule flex-
ibility is one of their top three
factors in career decisions.
The shifting mindset is
showing up in data from job
site platforms.
SnagAJob.com, an online
marketplace for hourly work-
ers, said the word “flexibility”
now accounts for roughly 11%
of the more than 7 million job
postings on its site compared
with 8% earlier in the year. But
overnight shifts at restaurants
have also increased signifi-
cantly since January.
Instawork, a staffing mar-
ketplace that connects lo-
cal businesses with skilled
hourly workers, said the rate
at which employers were able
to fill weekend shifts dropped
significantly from January
through August compared
with weekday shifts.
Sumir Meghani, co-founder
and CEO and founder of In-
stawork, said such perks don’t
solve the root of the problem.
“It’s about flexibility,” said
Meghani, noting that avail-
Vaccines
Continued from A11
Some have been supportive
of the rule, others vehemently
opposed, but all are eager to
learn more about the fine print
of the regulation.
The U.S. Chamber of Com-
merce and other groups that
represent large employers are
worried that the proposal’s
threshold — applying to com-
panies with 100 or more em-
ployees — could cause workers
to migrate to jobs at smaller
employers where they won’t
need to be vaccinated.
“We really stressed the con-
cern about employers los-
ing employees, and what that
would mean in the context
of current supply-chain chal-
lenges and the upcoming
holiday season,” said Marc
Freedman, vice president for
employment policy at the
Chamber of Commerce. “You
could start to see some very se-
rious disruptions.”
Freedman, who took part
in the chamber’s call with ad-
ministration officials, said the
100-worker threshold would
also hurt job creation by giv-
ing employers who have 90 or
95 employees a reason not to
expand.
The experience of United
Airlines and health care pro-
viders that acted early to re-
quire vaccination suggests that
very few employees will give up
their jobs because of a vaccine
mandate. United says about
200 of its 67,000 U.S. workers
face termination for refusing
to get vaccinated and another
2,000 are still seeking medical
or religious exemptions.
State government vaccination
mandate deadlines went into ef-
fect this week in Oregon, Wash-
Balsam Hill sells high-end artificial holiday trees out of its Dallas-area
store. It closed recently due to staff shortages, then reopened — by
paying its workers more by the hour and tailoring work schedules to
each employee’s availability.
able shifts on Instawork have
surged eightfold from right be-
fore the pandemic to August
2021. “It’s about workers saying
‘I don’t want to work weekends’
or ‘I can’t work Mondays, Tues-
day and Wednesdays because I
don’t have child care or schools
haven’t reopened’ or ‘I am wor-
ried about COVID.’”
Meghani says hourly work-
ers are asking how can they get
the same work-life balance as
their peers who can work re-
motely.
“The challenge is, if you are
a bartender you have to work
until 2 a.m.,” he said.
Employers of such jobs are
limited in what they can do
given the nature of how they
operate, especially with cus-
tomers having grown accus-
tomed to getting what they
want when they want it.
Radial, which fills online
orders for retailers like Dick’s
Sporting Goods and PetSmart,
said it’s working to align its
schedules with candidate ex-
pectations at each location. In-
creasingly, it’s accommodating
popular shifts such as Monday
through Friday only, or Satur-
day and Sunday only.
But Sabrina Wnorowski, Ra-
dial’s vice president of human
resources, said it’s difficult to
address everyone’s needs given
the unpredictable nature of
spending during the holidays.
On the flipside, the working
poor have long struggled with
erratic work schedules, particu-
larly in the food service and re-
tail sectors, says Daniel Schnei-
der, professor of public policy
at the Harvard Kennedy School
of Government whose Shift
Project focuses on inequality of
low-income workers.
“The problem isn’t new, and
we’ve shown that the conse-
quences for workers and their
families are dire,” said Schnei-
der, noting day-to-day instabil-
ity of work schedules is inextri-
cably linked to job instability.
That leads to high job turnover
for workers, which in turn im-
poses costs on individuals and
on firms.
ington state, Massachusetts and
New Jersey after a host of legal
challenges by state employees
and first responders’ unions.
In Washington, the state pa-
trol lost 127 employees, includ-
ing 67 troopers, who left due
to the COVID-19 vaccination
mandate for state employees,
about 6% of the agency’s staff,
officials said.
The Northwest state’s man-
date also led to the high-pro-
file firing of Washington State
football coach Nick Rolovich
and his four assistants, who
wouldn’t get vaccinated.
In Massachusetts, nearly
1,600 state employees had not
proved they were vaccinated or
had sought a vaccine exemp-
tion by a Sunday deadline. Re-
publican Gov. Charlie Baker
announced in August that
some 44,000 executive branch
workers and contractors would
be required to get vaccinated
or face suspension and ulti-
mately the loss of their jobs.
The National Association of
Manufacturers is arguing that
companies should get credit —
perhaps an exemption from the
rules — for taking early steps to
get a high percentage of work-
ers vaccinated. Manufacturers
have expressed worry that they
could see higher quit rates be-
cause many plants are located in
rural areas where opposition to
vaccination is stronger.
The manufacturers, the
Chamber of Commerce and
other business groups are also
pushing the administration to
let employers make unvacci-
nated workers pay for their own
weekly COVID-19 testing.
“A lot of our members feel
strongly that the vaccine is
widely available; it is free, and
so if a person opts not to be vac-
cinated potentially the onus of
the test can and should fall on
the employee who has made a
choice not to vaccinate,” said
Robyn Boerstling, a manufac-
turers association vice presi-
dent. She said employers should
pay for testing if an employee
has a medical condition or a
“proven and true” religious rea-
son for seeking an exemption.
Business groups, however, are
not optimistic on the test-cost
issue, saying that OSHA has a
history of making employers
bear the cost of new regulations.
Retailers are worried about
the timing of the new regulation
taking effect as they prepare for
the critical holiday season. They
want to push the rule’s effective
date into next year.
Several people who took
part in the discussions with
the Office of Information and
Regulatory Affairs, which is
doing the final review of the
proposal, said they got no
hints whether their arguments
would sway the administra-
tion. They described confer-
ence-call meetings — virtual
because of the pandemic — in
which White House staffers lis-
tened and did not respond to
their arguments.
It is not clear how the busi-
ness community will respond
once the final rule is published.
Business officials said le-
gal challenges are more likely
to come from Republican-led
states such as Texas. And Al-
fredo Ortiz, president and
CEO of the conservative Job
Creators Network, reiterated
his pledge Tuesday after meet-
ing with the White House of-
ficials to sue to block the rule’s
implementation. Two dozen
attorneys general in GOP states
vowed last month to use “every
available legal option” to kill
the mandate.
Director Margaret Salazar
said the state agency and oth-
ers will need that extra federal
money both for the backlog
and a continuing flow of 1,000
to 2,000 new applications each
week. She said more than a
quarter of Oregon renters are
considered “severely rent bur-
dened,” which under federal
definition means they pay
50% or more of their income
for rent.
“We continue to feel the
weight of the unprecedented
need for rental assistance,”
Salazar told members of the
Legislature’s housing commit-
tees. “Every single person who
has applied is counting on us
and community action agen-
cies to process applications so
they can remain safely and af-
fordably housed.”
She said no application
should be older than 60 days
— 90 days in Multnomah
County, which has a longer
grace period — by mid- to
late December.
Oregon ranked eighth na-
tionally for the share of rental
assistance money committed
by the deadline of Sept. 30,
which also is the end of the
federal budget year. Except for
Connecticut and Washington,
D.C., the other states ahead of
Oregon have far larger pop-
ulations, starting with New
York.
Landlords could proceed
with evictions, but they prob-
ably would forego any chance
of collecting any rental assis-
tance from agencies, which
pay landlords directly.
Longer grace period?
The committees’ Demo-
cratic leaders, Rep. Julie Fa-
hey of Eugene and Sen. Kayse
Jama of Portland, called on
Gov. Kate Brown to extend
those grace periods by execu-
tive order.
“While we have sufficient
resources, there shouldn’t be
anyone evicted for inability to
pay,” Fahey said near the close
of the informational meeting
Oct. 4.
Housing advocates told
lawmakers their best esti-
mates were that 7,700 applica-
tions for emergency rental as-
sistance were past the 60-day
grace period allowed under
2021 legislation, Senate Bill
278, and 4,210 more appli-
cations were past the 90-day
period set by Multnomah
County. That total could re-
sult in 12,000 potential evic-
as some countries appear to be getting past the
worst of the pandemic, the installed capacity
for making raw materials hasn’t changed, Van-
lancker said.
“There isn’t really a reason why this big panic
is happening,” the CEO said. “This should be
a transient situation that could take six to nine
months to get back to normal, but there is no
fundamental reason why there would be a last-
ing supply and demand imbalance.”
tions. Some estimates peg the
number even higher, given
the number of pending appli-
cations that are complete.
The figures do not take
into account recent actions
by Washington County com-
missioners and the Beaverton
City Council to extend grace
periods to 90 days, similar to
Multnomah County. Wash-
ington County’s extension ap-
plies only to unincorporated
areas outside cities. They also
exclude incomplete applica-
tions.
Becky Straus, a staff attor-
ney for the Oregon Law Cen-
ter, said 1,299 eviction cases
were filed between July 1 and
Sept. 30, after the end of a six-
month eviction moratorium
that lawmakers passed on
Dec. 21. That total compares
with around 200 between
April 1 and June 30.
Brown issued an executive
order for an evictions mora-
torium starting April 1, 2020.
The Legislature wrote that
into law in a June 2020 spe-
cial session, and extended it
for six more months in a Dec.
21 special session. During its
2021 session, in addition to
setting a 60-day grace period
for tenants who show proof
they have applied for emer-
gency rental assistance, law-
makers approved a separate
bill to bar evictions for past-
due rent until Feb. 28, 2022.
But that applies only to past-
due rents from April 2020
through June 30 of this year.
Neither bill forgives any
past-due rents.
“If we fail, all of our work
to protect housing stability
during the COVID pandemic
will have been for naught,”
Sybil Hebb, a staff attorney for
the Oregon Law Center, said.
“Eviction, with millions
of dollars available for emer-
gency rental assistance on
our watch, is preventable. A
moratorium would extend
stability. ... It would ensure
that tenants have a roof over
their heads while landlords
get paid.”
Unlike foreclosures, which
lawmakers gave Brown the
authority to extend a mor-
atorium through Dec. 31, it
is unclear whether she can
extend the grace period for
evictions by executive or-
der — although she did so at
the outset of the pandemic in
spring 2020. It is also unclear
whether lawmakers them-
selves would meet in another
special session to take action.
The most recent special
session ended Sept. 27 in
partisan acrimony over con-
gressional and legislative re-
districting plans. Lawmakers
will be in Salem for commit-
tee meetings Nov. 15-18 and
Jan. 11-13. Their 2022 session
starts Feb. 1 and is limited to
35 days.
Payments accelerate
The Housing and Commu-
nity Services Department has
added staff, hired an outside
contractor and relied on Or-
egon’s network of 18 commu-
nity action agencies to gear up
for payments they have not
had to make before.
On Sept. 16, they had
paid out just under $48 mil-
lion. By a federal deadline of
Sept. 30, however, the total
topped $133 million, which
Scott Cooper, president of
the Community Action Part-
nership of Oregon, said was
nothing short of a miracle.
“We have all heard the con-
cern about the possibility of
an eviction tsunami in the
wings,” said Cooper, who also
is executive director of Neigh-
borImpact, the community
action agency for Deschutes,
Crook and Jefferson coun-
ties. “Obviously, that is the
last thing a state plagued by
lack of affordable housing and
homeless crisis needs. That
being said, there is no current
surge happening; there is only
a fear for what might happen.”
Cooper said aside from the
Portland metro area, com-
munity action agencies have
been able to manage appli-
cations and even improve
on the initial flow of money
from state-funded rental as-
sistance that lawmakers ap-
proved Dec. 21. The Legisla-
ture created a separate state
fund of $150 million when
it was unclear whether there
would be federal assistance.
Congress then approved
some money after Christmas
2020 and more money in the
pandemic recovery plan that
President Joe Biden signed on
March 11.
“I’m unclear as to whether
a statewide solution is needed
to fix what is a local prob-
lem,” said Cooper, who also
spent eight years as the Crook
County judge, the county’s
chief elected official. “I also
realize that there are compet-
ing interests between landlord
groups and tenants’ rights
groups and there are politi-
cal considerations and geo-
graphic considerations. It’s not
my job to balance all those: It’s
yours.”
e
pwong@pamplinmedia.com
SCORES AND SCHEDULES
Check out our free texting service for the
latest, local high school sports schedules,
scores and results.
sign up today at bendbulletin.com/text