Not one but two local unions are seeking to represent an influential group of 41 city workers — aides and operations staff who work for Portland City Council. Thirty-three members of the proposed bargaining unit work for individual city council members, four for council committees and the council as a whole, and four for the council’s four districts, each of which has three city councilors.
The effort began last summer when staff at several city councilors’ offices began “union shopping” — talking with several local unions about the possibility of representation. They talked with AFSCME Local 189, the largest union of city employees; with City of Portland Professional Workers Union, the newest; and with Communications Workers of America Local 7901, which doesn’t represent any city or public employees.
By December, staff members who were spearheading the campaign chose Local 7901, and on Dec. 17 the union notified the Oregon Employment Relations Board (ERB) that a majority of the union had signed union authorization cards. Under Oregon’s public sector collective bargaining law, that’s normally a slam dunk that leads to automatic union recognition, but there’s an exception: When at least 10% of the unit prefer another union, they can request a secret ballot election to sort it out.
In this case, at least 10% preferred AFSCME Local 189. Local 189 filed an election request on Jan. 12. Under state rules, ERB is expected to hold an election within 45 days.
The case for Local 7901 is in part that it doesn’t represent any other city employees, so there’d be no complication when city council staff interact with other city unions. The case for Local 189 is in part the opposite: It does represent city employees, and has a strong track record of winning contracts that outpace inflation and protect employee rights.
Whichever union they choose, bargaining priorities would likely be the same. Workers in the unit are salaried, but they’d like some limit on the number of hours they’re expected to work. They’d also like to have representation when they face discipline and some protection in the event they face mistreatment. They may also want greater predictability with their schedules, which sometimes change without notice, like when committee meetings go overtime.
Compensation would also likely be on the bargaining agenda, though that could be tricky to unwind: City councilors were each given discretion over how to spend their office budgets and ended up spending the funds they were allocated in different ways. Some paid a premium to hire more experienced staffers, while others opted to deploy larger staffs by paying lower salaries. Some didn’t use all of their office budgets and redirected some funds to other priorities.
In some ways it’s an unusual group to try to unionize. Most members of the unit are hired as political appointees by individual city councilors and don’t have any expectation of continuing in their jobs after their councilor leaves office.
Politics could be another complication. Councilors hire aides for their political and policy acumen and may have a right to expect personal loyalty: What happens if their aides’ union opposes their re-election? To allay that concern, Local 7901 president Meg Ward told the Labor Press that her union will no longer make City Council endorsements if it represents the unit.
[CORRECTION: This article has been corrected; the legal threshold for a second union to intervene in an election is 10% support, not 30% as initially reported.]
