A grassroots ballot initiative effort to give all Oregon workers “just cause” rights won’t make it to the ballot this November.
In every state but Montana, employees are considered “at will,” meaning they can be disciplined and terminated by their employer for any legal reason or no reason at all. There’s an exception to that though, and it’s most union members. A standard union contract provision requires an employer to have “just cause” in order to discipline or terminate an employee, meaning they have to have a documented and fair reason.
In June 2023, Oregon School Employees Union succeeded in getting state legislation passed to make just cause automatic for K-12 school employees. That same month a handful of labor rights activists formed an Oregon nonprofit organization called Organizers Union for Just Cause and hatched an effort to expand just-cause rights to all workers in Oregon.
On Oct. 12, 2023, they filed an initiative petition, listing former union rep Matthew Fennell and Oregon Nurses Association rep Tizoc Arenas as chief petitioners. Then they approached unions asking them to support what was titled Initiative Petition 49. Over the next six months, the campaign announced endorsements of the campaign from Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, Graduate Teaching Fellows and Research Assistants at the University of Oregon, the Portland chapter of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), Laborers Local 483, AFT-Oregon, Musicians Local 99, AFSCME Local 88, and New Seasons Labor Union.
But the campaign opted not to use paid signature gatherers, and it struggled to gather even 1,000 valid signatures, the amount needed before state officials would issue a ballot title and approve it for further signature gathering. It was late February before enough signatures were submitted, and March 1 before they were verified. Seeing that they wouldn’t be able to gather the required 117,173 signatures by the July 5 deadline, the chief petitioners withdrew the initiative.
It’s not the first time the issue has been raised in Oregon. Back in 2015, the Democratic Party of Oregon passed a resolution declaring that it supported passage of a just-cause statute in Oregon. But it’s not clear anything ever came of that.
Fennell, the chief petitioner for Initiative Petition 49, told the Labor Press the group intends to try again for 2026.
