Cabinet chiefs dodge invite to meet Oregon's jobless at PCC

It was billed as a town hall meeting about jobs in Oregon, featuring three top Bush Administration Cabinet secretaries.

However, it took an invitation to get through the door, and none of the 100-plus Oregonians outside — jobless workers, religious leaders and union officials — could get a ticket.

The guest list included Westside Portland business leaders and politicians. And the guests — Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, Treasury Secretary John Snow and Commerce Secretary Donald Evans — snuck into the Feb. 18 event at Portland Community College’s Rock Creek Campus through a back door — and under heavy police escort.

As it turned out, the Cabinet secretaries were in Oregon (at taxpayers’ expense) to tout President Bush’s economic plans for the Pacific Northwest — a region struggling with high unemployment.

So, the unemployed workers, religious leaders and union officials held a town hall meeting of their own at PCC’s Rock Creek Campus. They invited the three Cabinet secretaries to hear from real workers what it’s like to to live in the Bush economy. But the secretaries said “meeting with unemployed workers was not part of their agenda.”

“It’s the fourth quarter of his Administration. He’s down 2.2 million jobs. The voters are restless. So President Bush sent his economic team to lead a few cheers for the long-promised but still undelivered jobs he predicted in his ‘Jobs and Growth’ plan last year,” said Oregon AFL-CIO President Tim Nesbitt.

The workers’ town hall meeting proceeded with empty chairs for the missing secretaries — but rows full of unemployed workers, under-employed workers and small business owners eager to tell their stories. 

Mitch Freifeld, a former systems analyst with Tektronix, was laid off more than two years ago — the first time in his 25-year career — and has been looking for work unsuccessfully ever since. He declared himself a victim of outsourcing, suspecting his old job is now being done in India for about one-tenth of what he used to earn in Oregon. 

“Outsourcing,” he said, “can help the big companies with a shot of adrenaline for a short time,” but it ultimately destroys jobs and our economy at home.

After being laid off from Reynolds Aluminum three years ago, Steelworker Bobby McNeely went through high-tech retraining. He earned a degree in computer applications, but found himself with a meaningless certificate because he was competing with laid-off high-tech workers.

Today, he works swing-shift at a job that has nothing to do with his retraining and pays less than he was making in his old manufacturing job. He pays for his family’s health insurance out-of-pocket and calculates that he takes home $6 per hour less than when he was working at Reynolds.

As a result of years of unemployment and now low wages, McNeely is deeply in debt and on the verge of filing for bankruptcy.

Scott Axness, a member of Electrical Workers Local 48, has been out of work for more than eight months. He is proud of his skills, but feels “powerless” in this economy. He has been fortunate to retain health coverage under his union contract. But he told of friends and neighbors, also unemployed, who aren’t so lucky. One such friend who lost his health insurance has been forced to share his asthma medication, delivered through an inhaler, with his son. He can’t afford to pay the $236 a month it costs to provide the medications for both of them.

Don Oman, owner of Casa Bruno, runs a wine import business. His sales are up 10 percent this year, but his profits have fallen 40 percent.  He blamed the Bush Administration’s economic policies, especially a devalued dollar, for the price pressures his business is facing.

He added, “When working people don’t have jobs, they can’t buy our products the way they used to.”

Another concern:Covering the rising cost of health insurance for his 11 employees.

“It’s clear that George Bush’s policies are not working in Oregon,” Nesbitt said. “Since Bush took office we have lost 11 percent of our manufacturing jobs and nearly 16 percent of our information sector jobs here in Oregon. We need real solutions instead of orchestrated tours by the three cheerleaders of the jobless recovery.”

Nesbitt also chastised the cabinet secretaries for timing the announcement of $1.2 million in new job training grants for Oregon on the day before their visit

That money is sorely needed, Nesbitt said, and many workers will appreciate getting the help.

“But seven weeks ago,” Nesbitt reminded the people at PCC, “Congress and the Bush Administration let unemployment benefits expire for long-term jobless workers. That cut off $7.5 million a week in benefits to jobless families here in Oregon alone, more than $1 million a day.  So we’ve lost more than $35 million in unemployment benefits that were sorely needed, and they’re here to wave a check for $1 million to make up for it.”

Another example: In his State of the Union address, President Bush proposed an increase in funds for job training and community colleges, without mentioning that he had proposed cuts in many of those programs in his two previous budgets. 

And the amount of new money he offered for next year — $500 million — adds up to only $250 for every worker in the U.S. who has been out of work for more than six months — less than half of what it costs to enroll for three months in a community college in Oregon.

In Eugene later that day, more than 50 workers met the cabinet secretaries when they tried to continue their cheerleading at Rexius Wood Products. The protesters carried signs criticizing the Administration’s attempts to roll back overtime pay and the outsourcing of jobs overseas.

Oregon AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Brad Witt told reporters following the bus tour that labor and its allies were out to counterbalance what he described as as a taxpayer-funded campaign swing by President Bush.

© Oregon Labor Press Publishing Co. Inc.