City supports right to organize

(3/9/2005) -- Jerry Morton, an expert heavy equipment mechanic and long time employee at Western Power and Equipment in Northeast Portland, learned from his boss that he was no longer qualified for his job.

A supervisor told Julio Arturo Sepulzeda of Portland he will be fired if he eats lunch, drinks water or even talks with his fellow co-workers at Three Mile Canyon Farms in Boardman.

Maribel Paniagua and other ServiceMaster Swan Island janitors who clean the Rose Garden Arena and other buildings, including some in which the City of Portland leases office space, are regularly not called into work.

Morton, Sepulzeda and Paniagua are among the thousands of workers every year who are discriminated against for wanting to form a union. They told their stories to the Portland City Commission March 9 during testimony in favor of a resolution supporting the federal Employee Free Choice Act, EFCA.

The EFCA and similar changes in state laws would allow workers to form unions if a majority of workers sign cards authorizing a union. “Card check” and other changes in labor law would replace the current process which allows employers to break the law with few penalties and to delay union elections and contract negotiations.

Commissioners Randy Leonard and Sam Adams introduced the resolution, which passed unanimously after testimony from 12 supporters, including workers, clergy, and community leaders. Nearly 100 union and Jobs with Justice supporters filled the city hall chamber. No one spoke in opposition, including Three Mile Canyon Farms spokesperson Len Bergstein, who was in council chambers.

Speakers told the commission that current law doesn’t work the way it was intended when the National Labor Relations Act was passed in 1938.

“One-in-four companies illegally fire workers during an organizing campaign,” said Matt Swanson of the Oregon AFL-CIO. “75 percent bring in outside third parties to run anti-union campaigns. Nine-in-10 force workers to attend mandatory anti-union meetings.”

The EFCA would not only help level the playing field when workers want to from a union, commissioners learned. The act would support collective bargaining when after a union is recognized. The EFCA would provide that first contracts would go to binding arbitrations if employers create delays.

Early Head Start workers in Portland voted 2-1 last June to form a union after the not-for-profit agency spent public dollars to mount an anti-union campaign. The workers are still working without a contract.

McCall Oil workers voted unanimously March 8 to join a union. McCall Oil worker C.A. Finger spoke in favor of the resolution and asked commissioners to call on McCall Oil and other employers in the Portland to bargain in good faith to reach a collective bargaining agreements.

Sepulzeda and four other workers at Three Mile Canyon Farms joined Rev. Steve Witte of Oregon Farmworker Ministry in testifying that pro-union workers are harassed and are expected to work with serious injuries from the dangerous work.

“Why don’t we just don’t give up and work someplace else?” NAME said. “We have the responsibility to fight for our rights for ourselves and our families.”

“Every faith tradition stands with workers,” Rev. John Schwiebert of Metanoia Peace Community said. “My church, the United Methodist Church, supports the right of public and private employees and employers to organize for collective bargaining into unions and groups of their own choosing. The National Conference of Catholic Bishops says no one may deny the right to organize without attacking human dignity itself. The Episcopal Church says it decries the growing wave of anti-unionism mounting in the nation.”

“Church people and trade unionists are renewing a shared vision for the common good,” Schwiebert said.