Legislature bangs gavel on banner year for Oregon labor

It was their best session in decades, though union leaders fault Senate Democratic leaders for some bills that didn’t make it

By DON McINTOSH, Associate Editor

They may not have agreed on every single bill over the last six months, but union leaders were of one mind when the Oregon Legislature ended its 2007 session June 28 — it was the best year for organized labor in at least two decades.

Democrats controlled the House, Senate and the governor’s office for the first time since 1989. And that enabled landmark legislative achievements for labor: a swifter, easier method of unionizing public employees; restoration of police and fire unions’ right to negotiate workplace safety; unemployment benefits for workers whose employers lock them out in multi-employer labor disputes like those in the grocery or shipping industries; and expansion of the state’s prevailing wage law.

The Legislature gave collective bargaining rights to whole new categories of workers, like child care providers and adult foster care workers, and it approved funding for wage and benefit increases for state workers and home care workers who care for Oregon’s disabled and frail seniors.

But labor didn’t get everything it wanted, as some press accounts early in the six-month session predicted. Only about one in three union-backed proposals passed, and some of those were scaled down.

Bills failed when unions were divided, or had powerful opponents, like the hospital association, or ran out of time in this Legislature’s tightly run schedule.

Many bills passed the Oregon House of Representatives only to die in the Oregon Senate, where “business Democrats” hold greater sway. Some of the most ambitious ideas were stopped in their tracks by a voter-approved provision in the state constitution that revenue increases get a three-fifths majority.

“On issues of tax fairness, the majority doesn’t rule now,” said Arthur Towers, political director of 44,000-member Service Employees (SEIU) Local 503. “The minority gets to decide, and that’s unfortunate.”

Disappointments for labor included the death in the Senate of bills to ban state contractors from using tax dollars to fight unionizing campaigns among their workers and outlawing captive audience meetings; the last minute defeat of a bill that would have provided a modest paid family-leave benefit; and failure to raise the corporate minimum tax — Oregon corporations that don’t show a profit on their books will continue to pay only $10 income tax per year, regardless of their size and revenue.

“Having a majority allows you to control the agenda,” said Rep. Mitch Greenlick (D-Portland), a member of American Federation of Teachers-Oregon. “It doesn’t mean you can pass things.”

Democrats had a majority in both chambers, but labor had a lower success rate in the Senate than the House.

“It is strange, isn’t it?” said Oregon AFL-CIO President Tom Chamberlain.” You have 31 Democrats in the House who by and large pushed through a pro-labor agenda, and then only a small bit got through the Senate, where the Democrats have 19 to 11.”

“I was shocked that some of the bills we went to the mat on and got through the House didn’t make it out of our Senate, which should have been easier,” said Rep. Paul Holvey (D-Eugene), who works as a Carpenters union organizer between legislative sessions.

Rep. Brad Witt (D-Clatskanie), former secretary-treasurer of the Oregon AFL-CIO and a business representative at United Food and Commercial Workers Local 555, chalked it up to different kinds of Democrats. “We’re all a reflection of our backgrounds, and there truly is a difference between a labor Democrat and other kinds of Democrats.”

The House had a strong labor caucus — union members and leaders who ran for office backed by labor; the Senate had no real equivalent to that. And labor lobbyists say privately there was a great deal of difference between the House and Senate leadership.

House Speaker Jeff Merkley (D-Portland), said SEIU’s Towers, “led people to take tough vote after tough vote on behalf of workers.”

Other House “heroes” included Witt, who fought to expand unemployment benefits and workforce training; Holvey, who helped lead the campaign to rein in predatory lending; Mike Schaufler (D-Happy Valley), a former member of the Laborers Union, who carried many labor rights bills; and Diane Rosenbaum (D-Portland), a member of Communications Workers of America, who won initiative system reforms.

In the Senate, Ben Westlund (D-Tumalo) came in for praise on health care; and Vicki Walker (D-Eugene), Floyd Prozanski (D-Cottage Grove) and Brad Avakian (D-Beaverton) were considered solid labor allies.

Labor lobbyists were reluctant to name names of lawmakers who earned their ire, but several in the Senate may find themselves at the bottom of the Democratic caucus when certain labor organizations issue their ratings later this year, including Ryan Deckert (D-Beaverton), Betsy Johnson (D-Scappoose), Rick Metsger (D-Mt. Hood), Kurt Schrader (D-Canby), Joanne Verger (D-Coos Bay), and Ginny Burdick (D-Portland). Deckert, Johnson, Metsger, Schrader and Verger joined Senate Republicans to kill the paid family leave bill, which would have given workers a modest $250 a week stipend when they take family leave to care for a newborn child or sick parent. Businesses fought it, presumably because it would make their workers more likely to take the leave that they are now entitled to, leave that is currently unpaid.

In the Senate, many labor bills seemed to lack priority for Senate President Peter Courtney (D-Salem) or Senate Majority Leader Kate Brown (D-Portland). And bills’ fates were harder to predict in the Senate, said one labor lobbyist. “Senators wouldn’t tell people how they’re going to vote, and leaders don’t like to take bills to the floor without a commitment. That allowed people to kill stuff just by refusing to say they’ll support it. It meant we often couldn’t tell what happened to a bill, and hold leaders accountable.”

And especially in the Senate, unions were up against a sense among lawmakers that labor was getting too much. As Chamberlain noted, from the very first days of the session, media speculation about labor getting whatever it wanted hurt labor because it made some Democrats wary of Republican attack ads that might later portray them as union stooges.

“Democrats are always concerned about the public perception that they are benefiting any special interest,” said Kristen Leonard, a former teachers union lobbyist who this year represented SEIU, UFCW and the Oregon Working Families Party.

And that’s ironic, say Rep. Holvey and others, because so often, labor acts in the broad public interest. This year, unions were a major force in passing legislation to limit interest rates and regulate payday loan stores and other high-interest lenders that prey on working people. They helped pass reforms to curb fraud and abuse in the initiative system. They backed a bill to provide health coverage for Oregon children, which ended up as a referral to voters on the November 2007 ballot.

Other bills passed with labor backing included mandating the sale of self-extinguishing cigarettes to cut down on house fires and needless deaths; restoring the right of Department of Transportation inspectors to pull over trucks that are overweight and unsafe; and expanding the Oregon Family Leave Act.

In many cases, the “special” interests of unions went arm-in-arm with the wider public interest, said Towers and others. Public employee unions were a potent lobby for better funding of public services, and helped win large increases in the budgets for K-12 education, state colleges and universities, and the Department of Environmental Quality.

SEIU, which represents about a sixth of the nursing home workers, was able to win higher minimum staffing requirements, which will mean more jobs for union members, but also fewer cases of neglect.

Building trades unions, whose members are often employed in public works construction projects, helped win big increases in funding for transportation infrastructure and capital improvements on state college campuses.

And unions were a major lobby force on health care, and worked to expand access, restrain costs and make hospitals and insurers more accountable to the public.

Whatever differences and grievances there were between business and labor-oriented Democrats, it was clear Republicans were no allies of labor in most cases. Many bills got strict party-line votes, including the ban on using tax dollars to fight union campaigns, and the ballot initiative reforms.

In the most dramatic instance, several hundred firefighters came to watch a House vote giving them the right to bargain over safety, and were made to wait hours when Republican leaders delayed a vote on a bill. Then, adding injury to insult, Republicans who had pledged to vote for the bill and been endorsed by the International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF) broke their word and voted against it. West Linn Rep. Scott Bruun was the only Republican to vote yes. [The bill passed on a second attempt.]

“That,” Holvey said, “might have opened up a few firefighters’ eyes about who in this building supports working people and who does not.”

Despite some setbacks, unionists long familiar with Salem were unanimous that 2007 was a banner year, and are optimistic about the next session.

“This was the first time in 16 years where I could start counting all the positive things that got passed instead of the bad things we were able to kill,” said Labor Commissioner Dan Gardner, a former state legislator and longtime member of Electrical Workers Local 48.

“Ideas take time,” said Leonard — “Very rarely does any piece of legislation get through the first session.”

Labor wins, labor losses

• Automatic union recognition for public employees when a majority of workers sign cards seeking union representation.
• Unemployment benefits for workers locked out by their employers in labor disputes in multiple-employer bargaining units.
• Restoring safety and staffing issues as mandatory subjects of bargaining for Oregon public safety employees.
• Comprehensive health care — a seven-member board will develop a plan to cover all Oregonians, combining funds from employers and individuals, and seeking a waiver from the federal government to redirect funds from Medicare and the tax deduction for employer-provided health coverage; they’ll report to the Legislature in February 2008, and bring the package to a vote in 2009.
• Requiring payment of the prevailing wage to workers on mixed public-private construction projects that use over $750,000 of tax dollars
• Collective bargaining rights for child care providers and adult foster care providers.
• Expanding access to the state’s prescription drug bulk purchasing program to any individual or group that wants to join — including union health trusts.
• $100 million in new investment in rail and port infrastructure and over $500 million in capital improvements to the state university system.
• Tax incentives for development of alternative energy generation, such as wind, solar, and biofuels.
• Requiring 25 percent of Oregon’s electricity to come from new renewable sources by 2025.
• One-time diversion of the 2007 corporate kicker to create a $290 million “Rainy Day” fund that will keep state services going when a bad economy leads to sudden downturn in tax revenues.
• Referring to voters a repeal of the double majority rule — the requirement that local property tax increases get both a majority of votes cast and a majority of voters.
• Requiring employers to let nursing mothers take unpaid breaks to pump milk.
• Early retirement option with reduced pension benefits for 9-1-1 dispatchers with 25 years of service.
• Replacing the right to strike with binding contract arbitration for public transit workers and workers at the Oregon Youth Authority.
• Pooling the health insurance buying power of the state’s 198 school districts (85,000 employees and their families) to bargain better rates on employee health coverage — a bill bottled up by Republican leaders in past sessions.
• Referring to voters of the governor’s “Healthy Kids” proposal — an 85-cent cigarette tax increase to pay for health insurance for Oregon children.
• Banning enforcement of employer “non-compete” agreements against non-management workers who have been laid off.
• Reforming the ballot initiative process — among other things, paid signature gatherers will have to register with the secretary of state, certify they haven’t been convicted for five years, and carry a photo ID with them when they circulate initiative petitions.
• Restoring pension entitlement to public employees who have a “break in service” of more than six months through no fault of their own, such as extended illness or illegal termination.
• Increasing minimum staffing requirements for nursing homes to a ratio of one staffperson for every seven residents, 2.46 hours per resident per day.
• Giving workers’ comp coverage to workers who provide care to the elderly and disabled in their homes.
• Allowing workers to use paid sick leave or vacation time for family leave, and expanded family leave to include caring for a grandparent or grandchild.

Union-backed bills that failed to pass:

• Symbolic resolution calling on Congress to pass the Employee Free Choice Act.
• Paid family leave of $250 a week for up to six weeks, funded by a penny per hour payroll tax paid by workers.
• Raising the corporate minimum tax from its current $10.
• Help getting state employees back to work after on-the-job injuries.
• Ban employers from requiring workers to attend anti-union meetings.
• Ban use of state funds to oppose union organizing.
• Pro-rated unemployment coverage for laid off part-time workers.
• Right to collect unemployment benefits for workers in certain kinds of training programs.
• Less severe penalties for grocery clerks who unwittingly sell alcohol to minors.
• Requirement that residential construction have at least one person from each craft on every job to ensure work on the outside (roofing, glazing, masonry, plaster, etc.) is done to code.
• Public disclosure about companies whose employees are receiving low-income state benefits, like Wal-Mart.
• Banning hospitals from charging uninsured patients more than they charge insurance companies, and limiting hospital profit margins to 5 percent.
• Expanding insurance rate regulation to help limit increases in health insurance premiums.
• Restoration of “fusion” voting, which allows candidates to run on the ballot line of more than one political party — seen as key to unlocking the potential of the Oregon Working Families Party, a union-backed minor party.