OPEU trying to organize 'temps'

SALEM - The Oregon Public Employees Union (OPEU) is trying to unionize one of the most difficult-to-organize groups of workers - high-turnover temporary workers employed by the State of Oregon.

Organizer Suzanne Wall said three union staffers and 65 member-organizers have been working since January to sign up 1,100 of the state's "direct hire" temp workers.

The union filed for an election with the Oregon Employment Relations Board April 28. The state uses many temp workers, from highly paid Y2K computer consultants to low-wage, low-skill workers. Some temps are hired through St. Vincent de Paul and Goodwill, which function like temp agencies, while others come from for-profit agencies like Kelly and Manpower, Inc. OPEU is organizing temps that the state hires directly.

Current law allows the state to hire temps to fill in for employees on leave, or to handle temporary workload crises. But Wall says the state is abusing this authority, using temps to cover ongoing staffing problems. Fully one-fifth of the workers at state hospitals are temps, for instance.

"We think the state is embarrassed to be caught violating its statutory right to employ temps," Wall said.

At the state hospital in Salem, temp workers mobilized by the OPEU organizing drive marched into a superintendent's office to ask why the hospital uses so many temps, and were told that the superintendent was herself a temp, Wall said.

Chief among the temps' demands are pay and benefits equal to permanent employees. They also want to make it easier to become permanent employees.

State Senator Tony Corcoran, a member of OPEU, has introduced Senate Bill 1222, which would require the state to seek funding for permanent positions when temps have been working longer than six months, and then, to consider the temp for the job. The bill has been referred to the General Government Committee.

Wall said the union also plans to "bargain to organize." OPEU's statewide contract expires June 30 and recognition of units of temporary workers is one of the items the union intends to bargain for in negotiations.

Ultimately, more is at stake on the issue of the state's temp workers than workers' rights alone.

As temporary worker Melora Wedum sees it, the public is poorly served when the state hires temps to fill spaces that ought to be permanent. Wedum works for Child Protective Services. Her clients, many of them children, may already have been traumatized, and need to know there is an adult looking out for their interests; switching case workers can add to their trauma.

"When you overuse temps, you're sending a message that this isn't very important," she said.