NASHTU Trip Recounted

Last week, John Drago, Troy Barnard and myself went to Washington DC representing SEIU 503 and ODOT 730 at the annual NASHTU conference. NASHTU stands for National Association of State Highway Transportation Unions. Glen Thommen from AEE was also in attendance. The four of us spent three days learning about the dire straights the Transportation Infrastructure is currently experiencing. The fund is almost insolvent due to wasteful spending and construction fiascos throughout the country. The federal gas tax is 18.4 cents and 24.4 cents for diesel tax and has been since 1993. At that time, the gas and diesel tax had a buying power of 80%. Today, the buying power has been reduced to less than 20%. No one is advocating increasing the gas tax, especially during the current economic crisis. However, taking a gas tax holiday will not benefit anyone other than the oil companies. The expected savings will be replace by higher prices by the oil companies and then the taxes come back after labor day. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that a reduction or moritorium on gas taxes means less money to go to states to complete federally maintained roads throughout the country. Yet there are some politicians who actually think this is a good idea.
We lobbied our state senators and representatives to support two House Recommendations to the Transportation Authorization package scheduled to expire in 2009. The first HR, 2485, is to ensure that public safety is protected, transportation funds are not wasted and projects are delivered in a timely manner, would require public employees to perform the inspection on all state and local transportation projects. When the construction inspection function is outsourced to a private company, there is no longer a representative of the public on the job site. This has led to problems that threaten public safety, increase costs and delay projects.
The second HR, 3621, will ensure taxpayers receive safe, high-quality transportation services at the best possible price by requiring state and local transportation agencies to prepare a cost-benefit analysis and assess the past performance histories of contractors, prior to outsourcing transportation services to private contractors.
Private and Public Partnerships was another issue. Two examples were brought up and discussed a few times. Both Illinois and Indiana have sold off part of their infrastructure to foreign countries to get money now. However, the deals are for 75 and 99 years and will be toll roads. The purchasers can raise the tolls to whatever they want for the period of time they own the roads. Thereby making a significant profit on the roads and it is unsure or unknown as to whether they will maintain the roads.
The other big issue brought up and discussed at length was Design Build. For those who don't know, Design-build lumps design, construction and inspection of a highway project into a single contract that is awarded not through competitive bidding, but through a process that allows unspecified factors to be considered "significantly more important than cost." Design-build also allows the private contractor to inspect and sign off on his or her own work. I don't know about you, but this send up a huge red flag and I don't mean the US flag. To say the least, state inspectors are no where involved in these projects.
For myself, I was thrilled to go and represent our union and agency employees on these important issues facing ODOT now and in the future. Thanks goes to our Local 730 leadership for selecting us to attend and to SEIU 503 help in covering the costs for this trip.

Mike Johnson

Political Conference

There are three ways we build power in Unions. We build power through union density; the more workers in an industry that are organized the higher the standards can be raised. We build power in the workplace and at the bargaining table. We talk about this a lot; enforcing our contracts and being united during bargaining to get a fair agreement. The last way we build power is Politics. The political landscape has a huge impact on the climate and the circumstances in which we bargain. This is especially true in the public sector where the legislature literally decides how much money is allocated for the wage and benefit reserve fund. That is the primary source for our raises and the increased costs of health care (the other one I can think of being the agency budgets). It is crucial we have legislators that understand the concerns of ODOT employees and make your issues a priority. In SEIU, we have a CAPE Board made up of members (3 ODOT members) who interview, and evaluate prior performance of law-makers in four categories: Health Care, Public Service, Workers Rights, and Consumer Protection. Based on these criteria endorsements have been made recently, and many of our endorsed candidates are in tough primary battles for the May 20th election (find full endorsement list to the left). We are having our political conference April 5th in Clackamas to get to know our endorsed candidates better and talk about our plan for achieving electoral success in the primary and the general election. Please contact me (barnardt@opeuseiu.org) if you can make the conference. I will post the conference sign up form soon. The address is 12566 SE 93rd Ave, Clackamas. Space is limited so fill out the form soon and return it to the Portland office fax (503-408-4099).

Voice Election Edition

There is a new Voice where you can learn about the candidates for the Board of Directors for the union. You can get it under the new content on the left.

Oregon ODOT Map

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Announcement of Public Services Contest

I was asked to let you all know about this. If you're interested I will send you the entry form. -Troy Barnard

The SEIU Public Services Division is looking for bright ideas for improving public services all across America. To gather fresh ideas and highlight the important work of our public service members, the Division is sponsoring a contest for the best innovative idea for improving public services. The Division is counting on your help to share information and contest materials with your members. This is a great opportunity for SEIU public service members to share their great ideas.

Attached please find a complete set of contest materials, including an Official Contest Entry Form (which runs 5 pages including the guidelines and rules) and a flyer about the contest. Here are a few details about the contest:

1. The Division hopes you will share the complete set of contest materials with your public service members - agency fee payers cannot participate in the contest. Only those who were full members by 12-31-2007 can participate. Joining the union will not enable a new member to participate.

2. The contest launch date is at 11:59:59 EDT February 21, 2008 and all proposals must be in by 11:59:59 p.m. EDT on April 4, 2008.

3. In addition to the written materials, full contest information and entry forms are available at www.PublicDivisionVision.org/Everybody_Wins. Members can submit their entries on-line or send submissions to "Everybody Wins", 1800 Massachusetts Ave. N.W., Washington, D.C., 20036. Submissions must be sent in by individual members; group submissions and/or any submissions sent by locals on behalf of a member will not be accepted.

4. The submissions will be screened for compliance with the official rules and then reviewed by a panel of local union judges who will select 20 submissions to be reviewed by expert judges in the 2nd and final round of judging. Complete details about the contest appear in the official contest rules.

5. There will be one winner and two runners up who will be sent to Puerto Rico - the contest winner will be announced on Division Day, May 31, 2008. The local union of the winning submission will be awarded a $20,000 prize that can be used to implement the bright idea.