Activism Drove Victories in Capitol

Tax reform, health care and saved jobs top the list

View photos of SEIU 503 members taking action at the Capitol and in the streets.

“Thanks in large part to an avalanche of member activism, we have had some great victories in the last couple of weeks in the Capitol,” SEIU 503 political director Arthur Towers reports.
Towers calls tax reform, health care expansion, contractor accountability and the preservation of thousands of jobs three examples of the success achieved by front-line workers.

RevenueThe legislature has voted to enact an increase in the corporate income tax and in the personal income tax on families making more than $250,000. The bills now go the governor, who has pledged to sign them. Combined, these two measures raise about $770M per biennium.

The corporate tax is tilted towards larger corporations. The personal income tax raises taxes on individuals earning more than $125,000 and couples earning more than $250,000. There is also an additional, temporary, tax increase on those who earn more than $500,000.The corporate income tax increase is permanent. The legislature is planning to pass an additional bill that would, starting in 2013, earmark a portion of the corporate tax increase to the rainy day fund.

Jobs“The revenue victories are huge steps forward,” Towers says, adding that the infusion of cash from those who are prospering ad have the ability (if not the obligation) to pay their fair share have allowed for
    • preserving jobs for homecare providers and, for one year, child care workers;
    • preserving health care for homecare workers;
    • creating new jobs at the Department of Revenue;
    • preserving jobs at Blue Mountain Recovery Center
    • adding staff to help with increased workload at the Department of Human Services;
    • adding jobs at the Oregon State Hospital; and
    • delaying implementation of parts of Measure 57 to save jobs at the Oregon Youth Authority

A proposed 38% cut in homecare hours was reversed, saving 3,868 jobs and protecting thousands of vulnerable Oregonians, and we also preserved health insurance for homecare workers. Health care had been up for a 90% cut -- $16.7 million -- and that was completely restored. In nursing homes, we have fought off $18 million of a proposed $25 million cut.

Legislators voted to retain current eligibility standards for Employment Related Day Care through June 30, 2010. This means that 3,592 families (about 6,100 children) will not lose their child care subsidies. Further, no family will see its co-pay rise. In turn, this means that all SEIU 503 child care providers will keep their jobs. We had estimated that 1,800 child care providers would have lost their job if the cuts had gone through. These workers -- many sub-minimum wage -- were also slated for a 10-14% pay cut, which has been averted.

In the final days of the session, both houses mustered the two-thirds vote required to restore funding for the Burns and Hillcrest Youth Authority facilities and preserve jobs across the public-safety spectrum by delaying implementation of parts of Measure 57.

One key was the decision of Representative Cliff Bentz from Burns to move from opposing the bill to actively recruiting yes votes after hearing from voters in his district. “Our union is widely credited for helping to find the path towards passing the entire public safety budget,” Towers said. “The work that our member-leaders did from all sectors of the union was critical. The ability of OYA members to effectively tell their story in the capitol and in the media was crucial.”

“In 2009-2010,” Towers said, “we will have to figure out how to move forward on public safety issues. As long as Kevin Mannix is promoting mandatory sentencing ballot measures (and he has another one on the drawing board for 2010), the state budget will be eaten up by public safety expenditures. This diverts funds from the Youth Authority, from drug and alcohol treatment programs, from community corrections like Rosemont Home for Girls, and from all the other services our members provide.”

Health CareThe legislature expanded the Oregon Health Plan to cover 80,000 more children and 30,000 more adults.  This is paid for by a tax on hospitals and health insurance companies. These funds are matched $2.64 to $1 by federal funds provided by Congress and the Obama administration. The money is then repaid to the hospitals and other health care providers and to insurers to cover and treat 110,000 Oregonians who are currently uninsured.

Workers’ RightsThe legislature passed Senate Bill 519, the Worker Freedom Act. This will ban employers from requiring workers to attend mandatory meetings urging workers not to form a union.

Another bill, SB 702, would have protected the Constitutional rights of 6,400 homecare workers who currently are denied the right to bargain collectively. The bill died because of large administrative costs that the state claims will be created by the legislation. Their rights are being denied because the state has established homecare programs out of compliance with Measure 99, which voters approved in 2000.

“Instead, we plan to use an addendum to the state budget to direct the Department of Human Services to seek legal guidance on this matter,” Towers said. “Lawyers should make the determination that these programs will need to be brought into compliance. At that juncture, these workers will immediately get workers compensation insurance (which they do not now have), access to training, and the right to form a union. All of these changes should reduce turnover in the field and improve the quality of care. We have also passed legislation to allow homecare providers to have union representation at administrative hearings at which they might lose their right to provide homecare.”

Quality Public ServicesIn response to problems at the Oregon Youth Authority, the legislature passed a bill to sunshine the findings of internal auditors at all state agencies. At OYA, internal auditors were blocked from investigating serious problems because corrupt managers prevented them from doing the audits. This problem is now fixed.

We also secured passage of legislation to require child care providers to attend orientations and thus improve the quality of child care.

Contractor Accountability and Quality ServicesPassage of House Bill 2867 was “a great victory spawned from front-line workers at ODOT speaking out against irresponsible contracting in their agency,” Towers said. “We took their ideas and worked with members and local and national allies to draft top-notch legislation. To get it passed, we had to compromise in certain places, but the bill that passed has produced of the best contractor accountability standards in the country
 
He outlined its key provisions:

• Much tougher standards for feasibility studies and cost analysis. This will reduce the ability of contracting out solely on the basis of lower wages and benefits.
• More stringent standards for bidders (including past performance, delays, and cost overruns)
• Separation of oversight, inspections, and monitoring from the contractor. In other words, contractors cannot inspect their own work.
 
“Many thanks to all the members and staff who came down to the capitol to lobby on this bill, Towers said. “Special thanks to Melissa Unger who built the coalition of labor and community allies, protected the key elements of the bill from attacks by local governments and "assistance" from some psuedo-friendly legislators, and effectively communicated our members' concerns about contractors out of control.
 
“We are excited about exploring the next steps to actually implement the new standards, enforce the law, and protect workers and taxpayers. Quality actually is part of the bargain!”

Budgets and the State Worker ContractHB 5504, the omnibus budget bill, restored of a number of cuts to the Bureau of Labor and Industry, created 178 limited duration jobs at the Employment Department (on top of a gain of about the same amount of jobs in the agency budget passed earlier in June), and added $3.2M for Oregon Project Independence, a homecare program that employs a number of our members. This restores OPI to level funding from 2007-09.
 
HB 5504 also included $32 million set aside for increased health care costs for state workers, which should cover a great deal of the premium increases.
 
HB 5504 included an ccross-the-board, but unspecified, cut of $130 million from the  General Fund evenly distributed by agency. There are a variety of sources of savings that agencies can draw on. These include reduced charges for legal services from the Attorney General and for other services from DAS. Agencies "purchase" services from the AG and DAS. The lower fees were built into the Dept of Justice and DAS budgets earlier. Other sources include vacancies and lower-than-budgeted inflation. The big source, however, is concessions in bargaining from state workers.
 
The legislature went on record saying that the budget can be balanced by only taking half the funds ($65 million) from contract concessions. This means that the legislature, the union, and the legislature's budget technicians all agree that if the Governor implements more draconian concessions on our members, he is not doing it to balance the budget, but only out of mean-spiritedness.
 
How much power does that budget note carry? A budget note does not have the force of law, but normally agencies act like they do. Agencies try to carry out the provisions of budget notes because the agency has to come back to the legislature for funding in the next session and if the budget note is ignored, then the legislature starts asking a ton of questions. In this case, the budget note puts the legislature on record, but has less authority because the Governor (a lame duck) has the power to impose contract terms on our members if a settlement is not reached.
 
Some Disappointments
Towers noted that the session was not without its share of disappointments. Efforts to prevent significant job losses for DAS night shift janitors, the Portland and Eugene motor pools, the Oregon School for the Blind and the Forestry fell short.
“Despite stopping some of the worst proposals for cutbacks, several hundred of our members will be losing their jobs,” he predicts. “State workers will still make concessions at the bargaining table. Oregonians who rely on the quality public services our members provide will see a variety of service reductions.

House Bill 2831, an effort to improve the Public Employee Collective Bargaining Act, passed the House but fell short in the Senate. It would have allowed temporary workers to join a bargaining unit after 90 days on the job, protected public employees from permanent replacement if they go on strike, and clarified the definition of supervisory employees. All Republicans voted no as did Democrats Betsy Johnson (north coast), Rick Metsger (Sandy/Hood River), Jo Anne Verger (Coos and Lincoln Counties), and Martha Schrader (Oregon City/Canby).

The legislature failed to change rules governing ballot wording to bring referenda in line with initiatives so that if you agree with the petitioner you vote yes, and if you disagree with the petitioner you vote no. The legislature did reserve the right to write the ballot title for a referendum, which could prove important. If big business and out-of-state anti-government interests refer tax increases to the ballot, then the election will be Tuesday, January 26 and we will be fighting to get voters to vote YES.
 
“On the policy front, in addition to failing to expand bargaining rights for homecare providers, we also failed to improve working conditions for motor carrier enforcement officers and campus public safety officers,” Towers said, but in the face of the economic crisis and extremely heavy lobbying by big corporations and public sector management, we have made some unbelievable gains.”


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