Having worked to elect pro-labor state legislators last November, Oregon unions are now gearing up to promote a pro-labor agenda in the 2025 session of the Oregon Legislature. State lawmakers are scheduled to convene on Jan. 25 and will consider hundreds of bills before adjourning on or before June 29.
Here are some of the priority bills that unions will be promoting:
- Full funding for BOLI Oregon has fairly strong labor laws, by and large, but the Bureau of Labor and Industries (BOLI) has been starved for funding for so long that it’s no longer able to properly enforce them. This year, Labor Commissioner Christina Stephenson is making a forceful case to legislators that it’s time to fund BOLI properly. Governor Tina Kotek agrees. Getting lawmakers to approve BOLI’s proposed 30% budget bump is by far the top priority for organized labor in Oregon this year.
- Unemployment insurance for strikers Striking involves risk and sacrifice for workers, and it’s usually a last resort when employers are being unreasonable. Under current Oregon law, workers are entitled to unemployment benefits if they’re locked out by their employer in a labor dispute but not if they go on strike. Even though unemployment benefits replace only a fraction of working wages, making strikers eligible for them might restrain employers who try to reap concessions by starving out their workers. Employers will almost certainly oppose this proposal, so the bill will be a chance for working people to see who their real friends are in the legislature. It will be a top priority for organized labor in Oregon this year.
- Sectoral bargaining What if instead of bargaining employer by employer, pay and benefits could be determined industry by industry? Known as sectoral bargaining, that idea is common in European countries: Representatives of labor, employers, and the government negotiate wages and benefits and set a standard that applies to all employers in an industry. That could never happen in the United States, though, right? Actually, it did, in the early 1930s under a New Deal program. And in recent years Minnesota and several other states have set up sectoral bargaining for certain industries. This year, SEIU Local 503 will be promoting a bill to do that for the long-term nursing care industry in Oregon, and the farmworker advocacy organization Pineros Y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste (PCUN) will promote something similar for agricultural laborers.
- Transportation funding For the first time since 2017, Oregon lawmakers will consider investments in maintaining and improving bridges, roads, and highways. But the legislature will have to tackle how to fund those investments, because gas tax revenues are shrinking thanks to increased fuel efficiency and the accelerating growth of electric vehicles. Not only that, but the gas tax isn’t indexed to inflation, so it pays for less and less as the costs of road projects go up. Unions may support a new transportation funding package, but they’ll also push for higher labor standards for the workers who build and maintain the state’s transportation infrastructure.
- Give highway workers a brake! Few jobs are more terrifying than road maintenance work when impatient motorists roar by at unsafe speeds, and the risk of fatal accidents makes it hard to recruit and retain the highway repair workforce. This year Ironworkers Local 29 will team up with the employer group Associated General Contractors to promote a bill that would establish a mobile speed camera system to send automated tickets when drivers exceed posted speed limits in highway work zones.
- Prevailing wage in off-site fabrication Oregon’s state-level prevailing wage law sets the union wage as the standard for wages and benefits on state and local public construction projects. But contractors often look for ways around that. Building trades union leaders say one loophole that’s increasingly being used is to construct pre-fabricated components off-site. Sheet Metal Local 16 and other building trades unions want the law to expand so that if something is built off-site that could be built on-site, then workers are still paid the prevailing wage.
- Responsibility for wage theft United Brotherhood of Carpenters will be promoting a bill to make general contractors jointly liable when their subcontractors cheat workers out of pay.
- Labor standards on K-12 construction projects Public construction work in Oregon requires that construction workers be paid the area prevailing wage, to make sure that the government doesn’t drive down wages in construction. In recent years, lawmakers have added additional requirements when state agencies and public universities do construction, like mandating that projects provide opportunities for apprentices and setting aspirational goals for hiring women, minorities, and veterans. This year unions will push to extend those mandates to construction projects at K-12 school districts.
- Right to strike for transit workers Amalgamated Transit Union Local 757 will once again try to win the right to strike for public mass transit workers. They used to have that right in Oregon, but in 2007, the union — thinking members would get fairer contracts with less disruption if contracts were decided by binding arbitration — persuaded the legislature to place transit workers in the same category as police and firefighters. In Oregon, union contracts for “non-strikeable” public employees are decided by binding arbitration if labor and management can’t come to an agreement. That proved disastrous for Local 757 members in 2012 when an arbitrator agreed with TriMet that workers should give up their pension and fully-paid health benefits.
- Stopping transit worker assaults Local 757 will also ask lawmakers to do something to protect bus operators and other transit workers in light of an alarming increase in assaults by members of the public.
- Better conditions for mental health workers After a psychiatric patient murdered a Gresham mental health aide in 2023, her union, Oregon AFSCME, will be supporting a bill mandating that behavioral health employers have safety plans, panic buttons, and policies to ensure that no one works alone. The union will also ask for legislative action to reduce mandatory overtime for workers at Oregon’s Stabilization and Crisis Unit (SACU).
- School safety reporting for paraeducators Assaults on special education instructors are also on the rise, or at least that’s what members are telling the Oregon School Employees Association (OSEA). OSEA will try again for legislation to get school districts to log and document assaults by children against paraeducators and teaching assistants.
- Millionaires tax for higher education Students can get a good education at schools like University of Oregon and Portland State University, but the public contribution to the public higher education system has shrunk so much that students themselves can end up footing almost all of the bill and graduate deeply in debt. Now American Federation of Teachers-Oregon is looking at a revenue rescue similar to Oregon’s Student Success Act, a 2019 tax on big corporations to boost K-12 funding. The idea, similar to a law in Massachusetts, is to make Oregon’s graduated income tax more progressive by adding a new top tax bracket on personal income above $1 million a year for joint tax filers, and $500,000 a year for individuals.
