“We are living through a moment of egregious inequality.” That’s how Oregon state rep Ben Bowman (D-Tigard) kicked off a Feb. 6 hearing on a bill that could give workers a little more power when they bargain collectively with employers.
Oregon’s Senate Bill 916 would make striking workers eligible for unemployment benefits. Under current state law, strikers aren’t eligible.
Introduced by State Senator Kathleen Taylor (D-Milwaukie) at the request of the Oregon AFL-CIO, the bill is the number one priority for organized labor in this year’s legislative session. Similar legislation has been introduced in Washington state.
“Most employers in this state are good actors who want to do right by their workers,” said Bowman, testifying before the Senate Committee on Labor and Business. “But too often, I have seen a fundamental power imbalance play out as a strategy in contract negotiations where employers take advantage of the financial distress that their workers are facing and stall in negotiations, because they know their workers can’t survive.”
Knowing that workers will be able to last longer might restrain employers when they go into bargaining.
“SB 916 simply and modestly levels the playing field a notch,” Oregon AFL-CIO president Graham Trainor told the Senate committee, “by helping make sure that workers are not starved into a contract that perpetuates the ills of our society at large.”
Starving out strikers may be the strategy Providence Health System is employing right now. The hospital chain has been paying a premium to about 2,000 replacement nurses while up to 5,000 of its own nurses have been on strike since Jan. 10 at eight hospitals. Dozens of Providence nurses submitted written testimony and turned out to speak at SB 916’s Feb. 6 hearing and at a second hearing Feb. 11.
“It’s a multibillion dollar corporation waging a financial war of attrition against its own workers,” said Robert Schwartz Feb. 11. Schwartz, a nurse on strike at Providence Milwaukie hospital, said passing the bill would send a clear message to giant corporations: “that they can no longer inflict relentless financial pressure to break the backs of their own workers and financially oppress them into submission.”
Unemployment benefits don’t replace all of a worker’s earnings, so strikers would still be taking a risk and making a sacrifice. The benefits don’t kick in until one week out of work. They replace a little under half on average of a worker’s wages, and they don’t replace health or other benefits a striker may lose.
At the Feb. 6 hearing, Unemployment Insurance director Lindsi Leahy told committee members that she doesn’t expect the bill to have a meaningful impact on the unemployment insurance trust fund or the projected tax rates that employers pay. That’s because strikes are relatively rare and short-lived. Based on recent years of strike activity in Oregon, the Oregon Employment Department estimated that adding unemployment benefits for striking workers would amount to about a third of a percent of total unemployment benefits. Leahy also said the Oregon Employment Department could use existing resources to implement the bill, and wouldn’t need to hire additional employees.
Business groups, small and large, oppose the bill, arguing that it will financially burden employers and destabilize the unemployment insurance system.
“Allowing UI (Unemploy-ment Insurance) benefits for workers who voluntarily leave their jobs to go on strike would not only add cost to the system, but it would also tip the balance in favor of unions during contract negotiations,” testified Anthony Smith, Oregon state director of the National Federation of Independent Business, at the Feb. 11 hearing.
Unemployment Insurance is meant to help individuals who become unemployed “through no fault of their own” Paloma Sparks, executive vice president of Oregon Business & Industry, told committee members Feb. 11. A strike, by contrast, is intentional, Sparks said.
“Providing UI benefits would create an incentive for longer and more frequent strikes,” Sparks said.
The bill would apply to both private and public sector workers. The two Republicans on the Senate Labor and Business Committee — Cedric Hayden (Fall Creek) and Daniel Bonham (The Dalles) — expressed concern that school districts and other public employers would take a budget hit because public employers reimburse the Employment Department dollar for dollar for unemployment benefits.
Advocates of the bill say those fears aren’t borne out because the benefits don’t start for a week and replace only about half the wages, and because public employers budgeted to pay the workers anyway.
Two other states — New York and New Jersey — allow strikers to receive unemployment benefits. (And nine other states allow it if the labor dispute resulted from an employer breaking labor law or a union contract.) A 2023 bill in Congress to allow it nationwide had 59 cosponsors, S Val Hoyle (D-Oregon). Meanwhile, 32 states, including Oregon, allow workers to get unemployment benefits if their employer locks them out in a labor dispute.
While opponents have argued that unemployment eligibility will lead to more strikes, a Feb. 3 white paper by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a union-backed think tank, argued the opposite. EPI said it may lead to fewer strikes because it could discourage employers from engaging in bad faith negotiation tactics.
In their own words
What union members told lawmakers about SB 916
“Nurses are taking out loans and finding other per diem work in the community to get through the strike, because they know what they’re fighting for is worth it. But the laws have long been slanted in the employer’s favor. This bill needs to be passed because we need to be able to put full focus in to this effort for ourselves and our community without the nurses going into financial ruin.”
— Jacqueline Naganuma, nurse on strike at Providence Milwaukie Hospital
“Members are forced out many times. I would point to the Weyerhaeuser strike that our members went through down in Springfield and Coos Bay. They were on strike for over 40 days because the company wanted them to have uncapped increases to their health care costs, which would have ate up any wage increases we were we able to negotiate. They had no choice but to say, ‘Yes, we have to go on strike.’” —Brandon Bryant, directing business representative, Machinists Lodge W24
“Management in all sectors can afford to force unions into the choice of striking, knowing that they can just wait unions out. Striking workers who are exercising their ultimate right of collective action to get a fair contract are often sacrificing their basic needs just to stand up for what is right. Workers should not have to suffer for exercising their right to strike as we work to better our communities.” — Lindsay Ray, president, Beaverton Education Association
Unemployment benefits at a glance
WHO’S ELIGIBLE? Employees in Oregon are eligible for unemployment insurance benefits if they worked at least 500 hours or earned at least $1,000 in wages in the “base period,” which is roughly the first 12 of the 15 months before they filed an initial claim. For their initial claim, individuals generally must be unemployed through no fault of their own. Being out of work through no fault of their own generally means the individual:
- Was laid off due to a lack of work;
- Quit with good cause; or
- Was fired but not for misconduct.
HOW MUCH are benefits? Weekly benefit amounts are usually 1.25% of what they earned in their base period, but there’s a minimum weekly benefit of $196, and a maximum weekly benefit of $836. On average, Oregon unemployment benefits replace a little over 48% of working income.
HOW LONG DO BENEFITS LAST? Claimants can generally get up to 26 weeks of benefits. Benefits are sometimes extended during periods of high unemployment.
