CITY EMPLOYEES from six labor unions filled City Council chambers last week to warn that a strike might be on the horizon.
Rattling off a list of concerns, members of the city’s largest union group, the District Council of Trade Unions (DCTU), formally declared an impasse in ongoing bargaining over a new three-year contract. If the city and DCTU can’t reach a deal by early November, Portland could see its first labor strike in 16 years, with more than 1,000 employees as varied as parking enforcers, building code inspectors, and water bureau workers walking off the job.
“What we’ve seen in bargaining so far is a lack of movement on the city’s part,” Rich Thallmeier, a Portland parking enforcer and member of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees Local 189 (AFSCME), told the city council. “I feel that the city has engaged in bad-faith bargaining again.”
Among the DCTU’s demands: an across-the-board pay bump, a guarantee that member health records won’t be made public as part of new “preventative health evaluations,” and the continuation of a policy that sees union members given priority for promotions.
The city, on the other hand, is offering selective pay raises, and pushing new promotion and health policies it argues will increase diversity and save on medical costs.
Those are the differences, but the contract negotiations also include a notable new item the DCTU and the city might agree on: For the first time, Portland managers could get the power to drug-test all union members.