(Portland, Oregon) State Senator Chip Shields chaired a public hearing on February 21st, on the problems besetting the U.S. Postal Service in the Portland area. Over one hundred people crowded into the Augustana Lutheran Church in Northeast Portland to hear testimony from customers, mailers, and postal employees. Speakers revealed a postal service in crisis: deteriorating customer service, substandard working conditions, threatened post office closures, and financial debt. Notwithstanding the doom and gloom, many of those at the microphone brought forward ideas for positive change.
Portland Area Workers Rights Board
“The issues facing the public postal service are of deep concern to all community members,” said Senator Shields. “I found particularly troubling certain management practices, especially with regard to under-staffing and “transitional” employees, but I also came away with a sense of hope because of some great ideas for the future.”
Jim Cook, president of the local National Association of Letter Carriers, a 33-year year postal employee, declared that “National postal management has refused to allow local hiring of career letter carriers for more than three years resulting in chronic mandatory overtime, late, irregular
First, Governor Walker rejected millions of dollars in stimulus funds that could have put unemployed Wisconsinites back to work and generated much-needed investments in the local and state economy.
Second, this Governor introduced legislation to eliminate the rights of hundreds of thousands of working people to bargain collectively, which will lead to crowded classrooms and increased nurse-to-patient ratios in hospitals and nursing homes.
Next, the Governor introduced a budget that makes minimum wage and poor people pay for the tax cuts that he gave to wealthy donors and corporations. Walker’s budget slashes hundreds of millions from early childhood education programs, including cuts to the program designed to combat fraud and improve child care in Wisconsin.
Scott Walker and the Republicans’ ideological war on the middle class and working families is now indisputable, and their willingness to shred 50 years of labor peace, bipartisanship, and Wisconsin’s democratic process to
Portland Area Worker Rights Board hear testimony from Securitas worker and community members
Portland Jobs with Justice has been working hard to support Securitas workers who are organizing with Service Employees local 49. Since July we have helped organize for and participate in three delegations to management and organized a Workers’ Rights Board hearing and follow up from it.
Securitas,a multi-national corporation headquartered in Sweden, has signed a global agreement with UNI, the international union federation. This agreement commits them to remain neutral when workers organize and to recognize unions when workers organize. When presented with copies of the global agreement, local management didn’t know anything about it. Requests to discuss the situation were met with encouragement to call a phone number in Chicago.
In September, the 600+ workers in Portland reached majority support for their union and went back to local management asking that they recognize the union. Local management has thus far not recognized the union.
On December 9th, workers testified before a Workers’ Rights Board panel about their wages and working conditions and why they need a union. They also presented testimony about the
Gee … if everybody just gives up looking, we could cut the unemployment rate to zero.
The official unemployment rate dropped to 9.4% — primarily because 260,000 workers gave up looking and are no longer counted. Many pundits are spinning the jobs report as positive signs of recovery. Conservatives, of course, will argue against government action to create jobs, reminding us more than a little of Herbert Hoover promising that “prosperity is just around the corner.”
Back in the real world, community, faith-based, student and labor groups continue to push for Full and Fair Employment, recognizing that there is no such thing as a “jobless recovery,” no matter how happy CEOs are about corporate reserve cash, or that bank bonuses are bigger than ever.
In Illinois (here, here), Portland, and elsewhere, coalitions took action in response to the new jobless report to point out that the growth of 103,000 jobs was not even enough to tread water, much less create the 11 million jobs needed to return to pre-recession unemployment.
The workers at the Portland Convention Center, members of UNITE HERE Local 9 employed by Aramark as servers, concession stand workers, and kitchen workers, finally won their year-long battle for a new contract in early September. Portland Jobs with Justice was proud to stand with the workers as they stood up for health care benefits, living wages, and to keep management from taking their gratuities.
Workers built a strong committee and active participation from all parts of the bargaining unit. The whole union fought for increased wages for the lowest paid kitchen staff, and other key issues were health care and gratuities. Even though a number of workers were entitled to health care, they had not been getting it. A delegation presenting petitions from the workers and community early in the contract campaign won coverage for several additional workers. When the contract was settled, health benefits were expanded and improved. Under the old contract, management kept 25% of workers’ gratuities. The workers, for the first time ever, put a cap on the amount of gratuities management could keep, and got transparency about where the gratuity money goes. In the past management used the gratuity money to comp event tickets for
Last night, just a few miles away from Nike’s global headquarters, two Honduran workers spoke out strongly about how Nike’s destructive labor practices have hurt them, their families and their co-workers. Gina Cano and Lowlee Urquía testified in front of members of the Portland Area Workers’ Rights Board and a crowd of more than 100 community members.
Both women had worked in Nike-contracted factories for many years in Honduras before being laid off without notice, and without legally mandated severance pay in January 2009. “We’re here in Oregon, the home of Nike, because we want to put a face to the consequences of Nike’s behavior”, said Lowlee Urquía. “We’re saying to Nike that it is responsible every step of the way.”
The two women represented over 1,700 workers who are owed $2.2 million in severance pay. The workers are also owed health care premiums, which were deducted from their wages but never paid to the health care system. This meant that workers could not access health care in the four months before the closure. At least one worker, who had been receiving cancer treatment, died because of this denial of care,
Ten years after the Battle in Seattle, two thousand came together on a cold windy Saturday in Portland to once again say No to the WTO.
Spearheaded by the Oregon Fair Trade Campaign and Jobs with Justice and backed up by 75 labor, environmental, immigrant rights and social justice organizations, the D5 mobilization against the WTO was a great success. People came from throughout Oregon and the Northwest. JwJ Chapters in Eugene, Bend, Southern Oregon and Salem as well as Portland were well represented.
The March and rally were loud and spirited. Teamsters and turtles were back together again as the Teamster truck led the march with protesters dressed in turtle outfits close behind. Union locals and other organizations marched behind their colorful banners while radical cheerleaders and a rousing drum corps led us in chants and cheers. As there were in 1999, large puppets were sprinkled throughout the crowd. A contingent of unemployed workers marched behind an “Organize the Unemployed” banner.
The action highlighted the role “free trade” has played in the loss of jobs, environmental destruction, “forced” migration and
CHASE is a major contributor to the effort to defeat the Employee Free Choice Act who recently received billions of dollars from taxpayers. Instead of using the public’s money to renegotiate home mortgage loans and prevent small and medium size businesses from closing, they’ve prioritized obscene bonuses to overpaid executives!
Oregon activists are committed to continuing their fight to rebuild the economy so that it works for everyone (not just Wall Street) and are pledging to “CHASE the thieves!” out of town.
As the compas from ENLACE said, “Chale con CHASE!”
The insurance companies are spending millions to confuse and scare the public in order to keep their grip on our health and our money. The insurance industry trade lobby, America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) released a report that claims the Senate Finance Committee’s version of health care reform legislation would raise average family premiums to $21,300. They want us to fear any change so they can continue paying millions of dollars to their CEOs while they routinely deny care and raise premiums.
Meanwhile, each year more than 45,000 people die because they can’t get the care they need. That’s more than 120 deaths every day.
Yesterday, in nine cities across the country, people staged sit-ins at health insurance offices to call for real reform that addresses the real cause of the health care crisis. The actions were a part of a national day of action coordinated by the group Mobilization for Health Care for All.
In Oregon, dozens of JwJ activists participated in joint actions Wednesday Oct. 29th in solidarity with 400 other JwJ activists who 
