• Let public employees unionize by “card check.” Oregon law allows public employees to unionize but leaves one important decision to management: Managers can recognize a union when a majority of workers have signed union authorization cards, or they can call for the question to be decided in a union certification election. Union organizers favor the former, known as “card check,” because it makes unionizing easier and less chancy. Governor Ted Kulongoski ordered managers in state agencies to allow card check, but his order didn’t apply to quasi-independent agencies like the Oregon Lottery or agencies like the Judiciary which are independent of the governor. This year, unions want to settle the question for school districts and local governments as well as state agencies.
• Ban “captive audience” anti-union meetings. Anti-union meetings are extremely common in company fights against union campaigns — managers bring in a speaker to talk about the perils of unionism, and require employees to attend. Oregon unions will be backing a local version of a bill that passed last year in New Jersey which prohibits employers from requiring attendance at any meeting to communicate an opinion about religious or political matters.
• Ban the use of public funds to fight unionization. Any employer that gets grants, contracts or subsidies from the state government would be prohibited from spending money to oppose union campaigns among its employees.
• Extend union rights to farmworkers. Farmworker advocates want Oregon to adopt a variant of a California law that gives farmworkers a process for unionizing. It includes union recognition on the basis of “card check,” and binding arbitration to settle a first labor agreement.
• Get full collective bargaining rights for state-subsidized child care providers. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and the Service Employees International Union will try to expand the collective bargaining rights of a group of child care providers they represent under a pair of governor’s executive orders. Right now the orders direct only that the state agency overseeing the low-income child care subsidy “meet and confer” with the unions as representatives of the providers, and honor the terms of informal agreements they reach.

Promoting Growth of Decent Paying Jobs

• Invest in infrastructure. Building trades unions will back Governor Kulongoski’s proposals for new rounds of public investment, which will provide employment to thousands of construction workers. The proposals include up to $600 million in bonds to finance repair and upgrade of college buildings; lottery-backed bonds to build a new light-rail line connecting Portland and Milwaukie; and $100 million to upgrade port facilities, railroads, airports and transit systems. Unions will also support a plan backed by business interests to raise fuel tax and vehicle registration fees to deal with highway maintenance and congestion problems.
• Stimulate growth in the alternative energy industry. The Oregon AFL-CIO has been working with environmental groups in the Fair and Clean Energy Coalition, and contributed ideas to a governor’s task force on the subject. Unions will be backing the governor’s proposals, which include requiring utilities to generate 25 percent of their electricity from renewable resources by 2025; increasing the ethanol content of gasoline and the availability of biodiesel; raising the tax credit for investment in alternative energy projects; and developing the nation’s first commercial-scale wave energy park. Unions will want to add one thing to the governor’s package that’s not in there now — some assurance that the jobs created will be family wage jobs and will be in Oregon.
• Assure that mixed public-private construction projects pay the prevailing wage. Building trades unions expect to go to Salem hand-in-hand with their longtime adversary, the Portland Development Commission (PDC), to pass a compromise law resolving a long-contested issue — whether projects that mix public and private money must pay state-mandated “prevailing wages” to construction workers. Both parties have agreed to back a bill that says any project with more than $1 million of taxpayer money would have to pay prevailing wage, regardless of how much private money went into project.

Giving Government The Resources To Get The Job Done

Right-wing Republicans want the poor, sick and elderly to turn to the private sector, not government, for aid, and they don’t like government regulatory restraints on corporations. So they’ve worked over the years to deprive state and local governments of resources. Now, a return to Democratic control is raising hopes of “tax fairness” and greater stability of funding for schools, law enforcement and other priorities. Here are some ideas the governor is proposing, with union backing.

• Raise the corporate minimum tax. Two-thirds of corporations doing business in Oregon pay just $10 a year in income tax because they are able to show no profit on the books. Kulongoski proposes to increase that minimum to a sliding scale of $250 to several thousand, depending on the size of the company.
• End the corporate kicker. Oregon has a unique law whereby if income tax revenue exceeds what the state economist predicts, the difference is refunded to taxpayers, including many out-of-state corporations. Kulongoski is proposing to keep the corporate income tax “kicker” and use it to create a rainy day fund for when revenues are lower than predicted.
• Raise the cigarette tax. Kulongoski proposes to raise the cigarette tax to the level paid in neighboring Washington, dedicating the proceeds to fund health care for Oregon children.
• Roll back wasteful tax loopholes. SEIU wants lawmakers to re-examine tax breaks passed by past legislatures. If the breaks didn’t accomplish the purposes their backers claimed, like creating new jobs, then the breaks would be eliminated, returning millions of dollars to public coffers.
• Offer amnesty to corporate tax cheats, and increase penalties on those who don’t come forward. For companies that have used off-shore tax havens and other legally murky loopholes, SEIU wants Oregon to offer them a chance to come clean and pay up, or else face stiffer penalties if found in violation of the law.

Fixing Health Care

• Tighten the screws on insurers. A labor-backed proposal would make health insurers justify premium increases before a public commission.
• Bulk up bulk buying. Kulongoski is proposing to open the state’s prescription drug purchasing pool to small businesses.
• Rein in hospital overbuilding. To avoid costly and duplicative overbuilding, labor wants to see a strengthened requirement that hospitals demonstrate a community need before building new facilities.
• Shine a light on hospital pricing. Unions will be looking to support some method for patients to compare prices and outcomes between hospitals.

Other Ideas

• Roll back privatization. Are Oregon taxpayers getting ripped off by local versions of Halliburton? SEIU wants the Joint Ways and Means Committee to scrutinize contracts to make sure the work couldn’t be done cheaper and better in-house.
• Open up the political system to third parties. To eliminate the “spoiler” dilemma, the union-backed Working Families Party of Oregon will be pushing for a “fusion” bill, which would allow third parties to use their ballot line to endorse major party candidates.
• OLCC bill. United Food and Commercial Workers Local 555 will lobby for an Oregon Liquor Control Commission bill that would de-criminalize the unintentional sale of alcohol to minors by grocery clerks.
• Expand the scope of public employee union contracts. To do something about the problem of mandatory overtime, SEIU wants to add safety and staffing levels to the list of “mandatory subjects of bargaining.”
• Prohibit transit workers from striking. Amalgamated Transit Union will be pushing to get transit workers added to the list of public workers prohibited from striking. At first glance, that seems odd: Why would a union seek to give up the right to strike? The answer: For public workers who can't strike, the law requires binding arbitration to settle contract disagreements between labor and management. In theory, arbitrators impose the most reasonable of the two positions.