The Oregon Labor Dispatch is a weekly email and blog series designed to keep Oregon’s workers informed of the latest news about unions, worker power, and much more. Each week, we bring you a curated selection of news stories, graphics, and information about upcoming events and actions. When Oregon’s Labor Movement is connected, updated and informed we are able to be stronger advocates for all working Oregonians.
If you have a news story, event or action you’d like to see featured in the Oregon Labor Dispatch please email us at communications@oraflcio.org.
Upcoming Events
🎵 AUGUST FAIR TRADE MUSIC MEETING
Tuesday, August 29, 7:00 - 8:00pm, Workers Tap (basement) 101 SE 12th Ave in Portland
Musicians Union (AFM) Local 99 is building solidarity between freelance musicians, clubs, and concert-goers to raise standards in the sector. Share your experience as a freelance musician at the monthly fair trade music meeting 5:30-7 p.m. on the last Tuesday of each month. Contact info@fairtrademusicpdx.org to sign up or for more information!
🏞️ LABOR DAY 2023
Monday, September 4: Picnics in Canby, Salem, Springfield, Bend and Phoenix
Join union members, local elected officials, and working families in communities across Oregon to celebrate Labor Day!
PORTLAND AREA
Hosted by the Northwest Oregon Labor Council
Clackamas County Fairgrounds: 694 NE 4th Ave in Canby
10:00am - 5:00pm
SALEM
Hosted by the Marion Polk Yamhill Central Labor Chapter
Ken Allen AFSCME Labor Center: 1400 Tandem Ave NE in Salem
11:30am
LANE COUNTY
Hosted by the Lane County Central Labor Chapter
Splash Pad Picnic Shelter: 6100 Thurston Road in Springfield
12:00pm - 3:00pm
CENTRAL OREGON
Hosted by the Central Oregon Labor Chapter
Alpenglow Park: 61049 SE 15th St on Bend
12:00 - 3:00pm
SOUTHERN OREGON
Hosted by the Southern Oregon Central Labor Chapter
Clyde's Corner: 4495 S Pacific Hwy in Phoenix
4:00pm
Find more upcoming events on the Oregon AFL-CIO Solidarity Calendar. Do you have an event you’d like us to share? Send an email to communications@oraflcio.org and we’ll make it happen!
Take Action
🎥 PHOTOJOURNALISTS & EDITORS AT KGW DESERVE A FAIR CONTRACT
The Portland public deserves skilled and experienced journalists to deliver the news to the community. Currently, IATSE Local 600 is fighting for a fair contract - expired since March - with fair wages for photojournalists & editors at KGW-TV. KGW's parent corporation, Tegna, wants to remove protections on maintaining staff positions and won't agree to fair wage increases or adding new protected classes in the contract in the non-discrimination section. Click here to take action.
✏️ CENTRAL OREGON LABOR CHAPTER’S SCHOOL SUPPLY DRIVE
Now through August 23, bring donations to Bend Senior High School between 8:00am and 3:00pm
Donated items will be distributed to the Family Access Network. Supplies needed are refillable water bottles, college ruled spiral notebooks, mechanical pencils and lead, backpacks of all sizes, pencil sharpeners, colored pencils, highlighters, and 3” binders.
Oregon Labor
July 27, 2023 | AFSCME
“The shocking death of Haley Rogers underscores just how dangerous it can be to work in public service, especially in the behavioral health sector,” AFSCME President Lee Saunders said. “This tragedy will strengthen our resolve to fight for safer working conditions. By partnering with employers to fill vacant public service positions, our union’s Staff the Front Lines initiative is focused on increasing staffing levels to ensure workers have the protections they need.”
August 4, 2023 | Northwest Labor Press
“State workers in Oregon’s Stabilization and Crisis Unit (SACU) on July 12 asked Governor Tina Kotek to remove Director Sierra Rawson because she’s created an unsafe, unsupportive work environment, they say. Two weeks later, their union reached a tentative agreement on a new contract after months of difficult bargaining. SACU serves more than 95 people in 20 group homes along Interstate 5 from Portland to Eugene. The residents have intellectual and developmental disabilities, usually with mental health diagnoses that require close supervision and may contribute to sometimes violent outbursts.”
Oregon Politics
August 8, 2023 | FOX 12
“ In a decision Tuesday, Oregon Secretary of State LaVonne Griffin-Valade stated senators disqualified under Measure 113 will not be allowed to file to run in 2024.The disqualifications to run for reelection follow the longest walkout in Oregon legislative history, which ended after six weeks on June 15.”
August 4, 2023 | Northwest Labor Press
“Despite a six-week walkout by nine Senate Republicans, Oregon labor organizations tallied a respectable number of wins in the 2023 legislative session. Several labor priority bills passed early in the session, and others passed in a whirlwind final days once Democratic leaders reached a compromise with the absent senators, who had left to deprive the chamber of the quorum needed to pass any bill in order to stop a bill bolstering access to abortion and transgender medicine.”
Strikes
August 9, 2023 | The Hollywood Reporter
“The picket line outside the Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery offices near Union Square was one of the largest seen in New York since the start of the Writers Guild of America strike on May 2. The WGA received more than 700 RSVPs just from its own members, but SAG-AFTRA members were also on the lines as were IATSE members, Local 802 musicians and more. The 100-day milestone is significant not only for the timespan, but because the strike now surpasses the length of the 2007-2008 writers strike, which ended on its 100th day.”
August 9, 2023 | CNN Business
“Striking hotel workers in Southern California filed a complaint on Monday with the National Labor Relations Board alleging that the hotels were “committing and/or condoning violence” after a fight on the picket line, their union announced. Video shared by Unite Here 11 – a union representing dishwashers, room attendants, bellhops and others – shows a disturbance on a picket line outside a Santa Monica hotel on Saturday.”
August 7, 2023 | People’s World
“Bakery Workers Local 399G members in Memphis, Tenn., forced to strike at the start of June for respect and against their profitable employer’s demand for no overtime pay and health care benefit cuts, are going public with their struggle with the firm, International Flavors and Fragrances. “I’m striking because of unfair negotiations and the right to an honest living for an honest day of work,” lead production operator Cornelius Moore, an 11-year veteran, told BCTGM.”
August 7, 2023 | Independent
“Controversial chef John Tesar was reportedly removed from a hotel that houses one of his restaurants after an alleged altercation with striking workers. The Michelin-starred chef, who was championed by the late TV chef and author Anthony Bourdain, has been described as the “most controversial chef in Dallas” due to his notorious outbursts.”
August 6, 2023 | Morning Star
"Performers are being asked to sign away the rights to their own likeness as a condition of employment so that the studios can add to their profits by digitally creating new content without them," said AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Fred Redmond at the news conference. "Writers not writing. Actors not acting. And their fight is our fight."
August 3, 2023 | The Washington Post
“July was one of the busiest months for strikes in three decades, reflecting growing public support for unions and increased worker leverage in an era of low unemployment, as tens of thousands of workers have pushed employers for higher wages to keep up with high inflation. The labor unrest erupting in Hollywood, where 170,000 actors have joined 11,500 screenwriters on picket lines, is far from the only example of workers banding together to demand more from their employers this summer. Baristas, national park bus drivers, hotel housekeepers, lawyers, book sellers, locomotive plant workers, sour cream producers and brewery workers also went on strike in July.”
Building & Construction Trades
August 8, 2023 | AFL-CIO
“The Biden–Harris administration once again delivered for working people by ensuring that construction workers on federal and federally assisted projects receive the pay they deserve. Today’s final rule on Davis–Bacon and Related Acts will not only strengthen prevailing wage laws, but it also will improve legal protections from wage theft for more than 1 million workers on federal construction projects. Thanks to the Biden administration’s historic federal investments and commitment to “ensuring the future is Made in America,” massive job growth in construction and manufacturing is already underway.”
The Postal Service
August 4, 2023 | Northwest Labor Press
“The United States Postal Service (USPS) is considering moving mail processing for nearly all of Oregon to its new processing center near the Portland International Airport. The move would change how mail and packages are handled, and some postal union members say it would lead to job losses and slower delivery. Workers in Eugene and Medford would be most affected, they say.”
Executive Pay Watch
August 4, 2023 | KULR8
“Experts say the wage gap between workers and their company’s CEOs is the worst it’s been since the gilded age and apparently it’s not turning around. According to a new report by The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations or the AFL-CIO, in the U.S. CEOs made on average 272 times what their employees did in 2022.”
August 3, 2023 | CNN Business
“The gulf between a CEO’s paycheck and their typical employee’s has always been vast. But the advent of AI is already threatening to exacerbate that gap, enriching the C-suite at the expense of their employees, according to a new report from the AFL-CIO. “The AI revolution has potential to unleash broad-based prosperity that improves working conditions and lifts us all up,” said AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Fred Redmond. “But if it’s left unchecked, AI can increase economic inequality and undermined job security … It doesn’t have to be this way, and working people are starting to fight back,” he said, noting how AI has become a central sticking point in the Hollywood strike.”
August 3, 2023 | Pensions & Investments
“The labor organization is highlighting the role of artificial intelligence in this year's Executive Paywatch report, said AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Fred Redmond during the news briefing. While it presents opportunities and potential productivity gains, "if left unchecked, it could increase economic disparity and job insecurity," Mr. Redmond said”
Collective Bargaining
August 8, 2023 | Government Executive
“The Veterans Affairs Department and the nation’s largest federal employee union on Tuesday sought to turn over a new leaf after years of disputes and litigation, formally signing a new collective bargaining agreement. The agreement, tentatively reached in April, allows VA to implement a plan to streamline hiring of Title 5 employees across the department, but otherwise preserves in full the provisions of their previous contract, reached in 2011.”
August 8, 2023 | The New York Times
“The Guggenheim Museum announced Tuesday that it had reached an agreement with its workers’ union after more than two years of bargaining and that nearly 150 curators, conservators and other employees connected with Local 2110 of the United Auto Workers had ratified their first contract.”
August 3, 2023 | The Guardian
“Unions representing more than 85,000 healthcare workers have held pickets at 50 facilities across California, Washington, Oregon and Colorado amid new contract negotiations as their current union contracts are set to expire on 30 September.”
Organizing
August 4, 2023 The Philadelphia Inquirer
“Bakers, drivers, cleaners, and other non-management employees at a Dunkin’ manufacturing facility in Frankford are trying to form a union. The 46 workers filed paperwork with the National Labor Relations Board Wednesday, seeking to join United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 152.”
Reproductive Rights are Workers’ Rights
August 8, 2023 | The Washington Post
“Ohio voters rejected a measure Tuesday that would have made it more difficult to amend the state constitution ahead of a November vote to ensure access to abortion. For more than a century, Ohioans have been able to amend the state constitution with a simple majority. The failed measure would have changed that threshold to 60 percent. With about 88 percent of votes counted Tuesday night, 56.5 percent voted against the proposal, while 43.5 percent supported it. The Associated Press projected the measure would fail.”
Building a Fair & Just Economy
August 3, 2023 | AM NY
“As we enter the second half of 2023, there is still much to do in New York State, and the nation, to improve the lives of hard-working people, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds and communities. One of these tasks includes taking the appropriate measures to close racial wealth gaps between white workers and Black and Latino workers and improve opportunities for family-sustaining career development and access to the middle class.”
Graphics to Share
