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Labor's
Day Labor Day! Barbecues, sunburns, volleyball games … and workers' rights? Hey, this is Oregon, the first state ever to recognize Labor Day, way back in February of 1887. But, well, unions? In the 1950s, around 35% of U.S. workers belonged to unions. Those jobs helped blue-collar workers bring home enough money for a home and education for their kids. But traditional union strongholds of manufacturing and production jobs have fled the country faster than you can say "NAFTA" or "neoliberal." And now, faced with attacks from the right and with a less unionized workforce, Oregon's labor movement is hurting but hanging tough. With plans to organize jobs largely held by women and people of color, some of Oregon's unions are fighting back while concentrating on keeping Oregon a place where people can enter, and remain in, the middle class. What It Is
The heck is a union, anyway? If you're not in one, and your parents weren't union members, you might think — like several people in an unscientific EW poll — "Teamsters" or "Oh no, they're coming to kill my small business!" Unions, says the dictionary, are "organizations of wage earners or salaried employees for mutual aid and protection and for dealing collectively with employers." Claire Syrett, organizer for the Eugene-Springfield Solidarity Network, an association of faith-based, environmental and labor groups, says wages aren't always the issue for those wanting to join a union. "Workers want respect, some kind of job security, and a process that resolves disputes about how work is done and who does the work that's not dependent on who happens to be the management on a particular day," she says. Some small business owners in Eugene feel that the word union is scary and threatening. On Mayor Piercy's Sustainable Business Task Force, small business representatives balked at including the word "union" in the task force report, meeting minutes from July 25 show. "When I hear unions, that can be polarizing," said Kartar Khalsa, a task force member representing Golden Temple, maker of Yogi Tea and Peace Cereal. Syrett says that unions in Eugene don't often organize small businesses. The national definition of a small business is one with fewer than 500 employees; Syrett says that in Eugene the definition is more like those with less than 50 employees, and unions like to organize where it's cost-efficient. Also, Oregon AFL-CIO President Tom Chamberlain explains, "I don't know anybody in the union movement who believes we do best when we break business — no! We'd be out of business too." What about On the Waterfront? True, East Coast unions have had real problems with the Mafia. But Syrett says union members on the West Coast are different: "Watch out for that scary librarian!" As a matter of fact, people in the Eugene-Springfield area run into several union members almost every day. Who Are the (Union) People in Your Neighborhood? Morning starts off with Sanipac. They come early to deal with stinky trash, co-mingled recycling and garden waste, and they belong to Teamsters Local 206. After the recent strike, Eugeneans are well aware that EWEB meter readers are members of IBEW Local 659; in Springfield, SUB workers are also members of Local 659. Taking your kid to school? Going to class? In the area, most teachers belong to locals of the Oregon Education Association. Lane Community College has the LCC Education Association and the LCC Employees Federation. At the UO, graduate teaching assistants are represented by the Graduate Teaching Fellow Federation, or GTFF, a local of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). Head for the library after school or between classes; Eugene Public Library workers are members of the American Federation of State, City, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Council 75, and UO library workers (& other UO staff) are members of the Service Employees Industrial Union (SEIU) Local 503. At the post office, a member of the American Postal Workers Union will mail your bills and packages or sell you cool stamps. U.S. mail is delivered by members of the National Association of Letter Carriers. Packages like Powells.com book deliveries (packed by members of ILWU, Local 5) come from UPS workers who are members of the Teamsters. Before dinner, you might run errands at Albertson's, Safeway or Fred Meyer. The produce could have been picked by members of the United Farm Workers (UFW) in Cali or by members of PCUN, Oregon's farm worker union. The butcher, the woman who shows you where you can find a compact fluorescent light bulb and the cashier — they're all members of the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW). Going to the Eugene Symphony after dinner? The woman you see walking behind the Hult with her cello case is a member of the American Federation of Musicians (AFM). Heading for the Willamette Rep? Some actors are Equity members, and at the Hult, stagehands are members of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE). The new federal courthouse is the workplace for members of a variety of building trades. And if you need to visit someone in the hospital, the nurses at Sacred Heart and at McKenzie Willamette are organized by the Oregon Nurses Association (ONA). Some child care workers, nursing home workers and home health care workers are members of SEIU or AFSCME. So my goodness, sounds like there's a lot of union membership out there; Oregon's 15% is higher than the national average, true, but that still means most of us don't work in a union shop. And there are definitely those at work to try and force unions out of existence. Attacks and Attrition If you read the Register-Guard or watch much prime-time television, you might have seen a scowling woman purporting to be a Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) employee who just luuuuuuuuvs exploiting taxpayers for big, greedy raises and not serving us well. After the ads appeared, the R-G reported that they are paid for by a D.C.-based group called The Center for Union Facts. The Oregon AFL-CIO says that this group is funded by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which is reportedly spending $8 million on the campaign this year. The Center is run by Richard Berman, a paid lobbyist who has also worked for big tobacco and against minimum wage increases and Mothers Against Drunk Driving.
Tom Chamberlain, the Oregon AFL-CIO president, says, "People who work for a living deserve better than to be mocked by corporate lobbyists like Berman, who rakes in $10 million a year" — more than any public-sector union member will bring home this year or this decade. Actual Oregon DMV employee Sonya Reichwein, who works in Lebanon, says she felt "insulted, slandered" when she saw the ad. "They're using it as a gimmick. We're proud of the work we do." She says that being part of the union "provides benefits every worker deserves — health care and a living wage." Lane County Administrator Bill Van Vactor wrote an email to county employees expressing his support for them and their work. In his letter, he said, "The Public Employee Collective Bargaining Act … is in fact a success story." Responding to the parts of the ad that attack "greedy union bosses," Van Vactor wrote, "Lane County unions have been part of the solution, not part of the problem." Many observers see political implications behind the ad. In a May 2003 New Yorker profile of Republican strategist Karl Rove, Nicholas Lemann wrote that Rove and the Republicans in general planned to take away one Democratic Party funding source by "shrinking the part of the labor force which belongs to … public-service unions." One way to shrink public sector unions is to make the state budget smaller. Measures 41 & 48, to be on the ballot this November, would do this by setting caps on government spending and decreasing the amount of money available to schools, the Oregon Health Care Plan and many other public services, according to the Oregon Center for Public Policy. Chamberlain says he's freaked out by Measure 48, but not only because of the impact on workers: "It's racheting down spending on essential services, and it's targeted at every citizen in this state. Every school child, every son or daughter in college, everyone who drives on the roads, that's who this is targeted at." On the private sector side, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has five sitting members, four of whom were appointed by the current president. In the cases known as Kentucky River (see EW 7/13), the NLRB may reclassify thousands of workers as supervisors. Oregon politicians, including U.S. Senators Gordon Smith and Ron Wyden, have spoken against the board's tactics. Chamberlain says, "Elected folks are starting to take notice that the middle class is in danger." The alarm has even sunk into popular culture. Steven Colbert of "The Cobert Report" produced a hilarious piece on the Kentucky River decisions, available on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arSyu4he-kU Organize or Die Average worker pay didn't keep up with inflation last year, while average CEO compensation rose 27%, to $11.3 million. And, partially because of factory shutdowns, union membership has fallen to 12.5 percent nationwide. Unionized workers, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, make 29 percent more than their colleagues who aren't in unions. Union income level differences are even stronger for women (31 percent more) and people of color (31 percent more for African Americans and 50 percent more for Latinos).
But national trends are discouraging for workers. "If you look at the U.S. when we had the highest union density, 1947 through 1973, and you look at income," Chamberlain says, "workers' incomes went up 86 percent." Meanwhile, those in the top one percent of income saw their income go up about one percent. But since 1980, Chamberlain says, things have been different. Steven Greenhouse and David Leonhardt reported in the New York Times on Aug. 28 that real wages have fallen 2 percent in the past three years alone and that corporate profits have climbed. "The elite one percent, the Hiltons of the world," Chamberlain says, "their income has gone up 135 percent." So what are unions doing? For one thing, they're starting to organize more Latino and other immigrants. "Latino immigrants aren't just farm workers," Claire Syrett says, and it's not only the UFW or PCUN that can represent those workers. Guadalupe Quinn, the regional coordinator for CAUSA, Oregon's statewide immigrant rights coalition, says that getting unions involved in immigrant organizing was a long time coming, but is vital. "We need to support the rights of all workers," she says. "It's important for [unions] to support the immigrant rights agenda, and it's important for immigrants to support labor rights." Among the building trades, there's been a recent push to work with day laborers and Latino immigrants in general. Chamberlain says that immigrant construction workers "are absolutely taken advantage of, no workers' comp, no health care, nothing." The national AFL-CIO has gotten involved with organizing day laborers, and so have the building trade unions. "Five years ago, we had very few Spanish speakers on staff," says Patrick Smith, the business rep for Painters Local 1277. Smith says that since the Painters began training their English-speaking workers in Spanish and recruiting organizers from the Latino workforce, communication has improved dramatically. With the federal courthouse and new PeaceHealth RiverBend hospital under construction, Smith says, there's a labor shortage, and that makes it easier to organize in the Latino community. Smith adds that when a newly organized construction worker "gets his health care, takes his baby to the doctor maybe for the first time … it's the most exciting thing." And unions are organizing in new workplaces and in new ways. In September of 2005, Governor Kulongoski recognized AFSCME Council 75 as the union for over 5,000 registered and licensed child care providers in the state. An additional 6,000 license-exempt child care providers, who can care in their homes for three children who aren't theirs along with two of their own, are represented by SEIU 503. A majority of these workers are women, often working in isolated situations — not exactly the traditional shop floor. Annette Lovejoy, a license-exempt child care provider from Hillsboro who cares for an infant with an open heart defect, says "I'm more than a babysitter." In home health care, SEIU represents workers employed by the state's Senior Disabled Services Division. Before the home health care workers organized, says Kimberly Schultz, the workplace was simply dangerous. "Now, with our contract, we have a training program with info on universal precautions, and we are provided gloves and masks," she says, along with information on how to lift and move clients who aren't mobile. Home health providers, she says, do everything from shopping to brushing the client's teeth to wound care and tube feeding. Ironically, the contract was the first opportunity for the health care workers to have their own health care or workers' compensation if they were injured on the job. Remember that traditional Labor Day barbecue? The Lane County Central Labor Council is sponsoring their 17th annual Labor Day Picnic on Sept. 4. Elected officials including State Senators Vicki Walker and Floyd Prozanski will be there to show their support. "Unions have lifted the working poor," Tom Chamberlain says. "When you take the parties out of it, what group consistently stands up for workers in this country? Unions."
Getting
to Know U(nions) When labor disputes dominate local headlines and you can't decipher the lingo because you don't know a Zipper Clause from a Unilateral Change (or either one from your elbow), don't despair! Allow EW to guide you through the jargon with our short Super Hip (TM) Labor Glossary! Benefits: AKA bennies. You know, the stuff we really want (besides a living wage): Health insurance, pensions, vacations and sick pay. Binding Arbitration: One way bosses and workers solve volatile issues. Under binding arbitration, a neutral third party hears arguments from both sides. The arbiter's decision is final, enforceable in courts and must be adhered to by both sides. Two types exist: interest arbitration during contract negotiations, common when the workers are part of protective services (fire, police, etc.) and don't have the right to strike, and rights arbitration, for struggles around grievances. Business Agent: Also known as "reps," these beings are not like Tom Cruise's handlers, but are in fact full-time, paid union officials. It's their job make sure the boss and the workers are holding to the contract and to deal with worker grievances when there's a problem. Collective Bargaining Agreement: AKA the contract. The result of negotiations which establish the conditions of employment (wages, hours, benefits and so on) and ways to settle disputes arising during time of contract. National Labor Relations Act (NLRA): Since 1935, this act guarantees workers the right to participate in unions free from management reprisal. National Labor Relations Board (NLRB): This is an agency created by NLRA to adminster the provisions of the NLRA. Appointed by the prez. National Labor Relations Community (NLRC): Just kidding! There is no NLRC. Negotiations: How workers and bosses decide on bennies, pay, working conditions, etc. Negotiations usually involve an exchange of proposals and discussion until compromises are reached or demands are dropped. Organizing: How workers pursue recognition of a union by their employer. Often means a campaign and a secret ballot election. Though most elections are provided for under law, employers can voluntarily recognize a union that speaks for a majority of their workers without an election. Pensions: Retirement pay. In addition to health care, pensions have recently become hot issues during negotiations. The Public Employees Collective Bargaining Act (PECBA): Passed in 1978, this act set up the Employment Relations Board to resolve disputes (unfair labor practice charges) and oversee the organizing and bargaining processes in Oregon's government sector. Public Sector: Government workers — city, county, state, federal, school district, etc. Our
expert Super Hip (TM) Labor Glossary sources!
What
Happened When 1853 First Oregon union founded: The Oregon and Washington Typographical Society. 1869 White Laborers' Association formed to oppose use of Chinese labor in Oregon City. 1886 U.S. workers fight for the eight-hour day. Bombing in Chicago's Haymarket Square leads to execution of four foreign-born workers and wave of repression against labor unions. 1886 The American Federation of Labor (AFL) founded, representing skilled, white craft workers, almost exclusively. 1887 Oregon first state to establish a Labor Day holiday. 1910 Astoria, with its population of radical Finns, is home to Oregon's largest local union, the Fishermen. 1919 Workers run Seattle for four days after a labor dispute in the shipyard turns into a general strike. 1925 A racist mob evicts Japanese millworkers from Toledo, Oregon. 1925 The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters organized, becoming the nation's first significant union composed of and led by African Americans. 1935 John L. Lewis and others secede from the AFL and found the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), pledged to organize skilled and unskilled, black and white workers. 1938 Congress passes the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), creating national standards for minimum wage, hours worked and overtime pay. 1953 Labor union membership hits an all time high with approximately 35% of all workers members of a trade union. 1959 Strike begins at the Portland Oregonian newspaper. Strikers establish their own weekly newspaper, the Portland Reporter. The strike continues until 1964, making it the longest strike in Oregon history. 1965 National boycott of grapes leads to founding of the United Farm Workers of America (UFW) with Cesar Chavez as President. 1968 Martin Luther King assassinated while in Memphis supporting striking sanitation workers who are members of the AFSCME. 1973 Oregon public employees granted organizing and bargaining rights when the Legislature passes the Public Employee Collective Bargaining Act. 1978 UO Graduate Teaching Fellows Federation (GTFF) obtains first contract, one of earliest agreements for grad students in the nation. 1980 Ronald Reagan fires 14,000 members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization after they engage in an illegal strike. 1986 A six-week strike in the Oregon wood products industry ends when Weyerhaeuser Company threatens to permanently replace strikers. 1987 The Oregon Public Employees Union (OPEU) strikes to establish pay equity for female-dominated jobs in state government. 1996 Oregon voters raise minimum wage to $5.50 per hour, second highest in the nation. In 2002 voters index future increases to changes in the cost of living. 2000 The AFL-CIO changes its position on immigration policy to support broader protection of foreign-born worker rights. 2003 Women represent over 40% of all union members, up from only 20% in the mid-1950's. 2005 Eugene bus drivers strike for six days in a dispute centered on health care benefits. 2005 Four major unions leave national AFL-CIO in a dispute over organizing strategies, forming a new labor coalition, Change to Win. Marcus Widenor is an associate professor at the UO's Labor Education and Research Center.
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