In the Community
- Calendar of Events
- Oregon Working Families Party
- Community Health and Best Value Resolution and Ordinance
- Metropolitan Alliance for Common Good
- OSHA - Occupational Safety & Health Administration
- CAWS
Calendar of Events
Community Health and Best Value Resolution
Portland City Council Hearing
date TBD
MACG Leadership Training for Public Life
Watch for the next basic leadership training coming in June 2008.
Oregon Working Families Party
Are you fed up with politicians and political parties that fight over divisive issues at election time and ignore what working families care about most? Do you want a political party that fights—first and foremost—for affordable healthcare, good jobs and good schools? Well, there’s good news—here’s your opportunity to help build a new political party that will fight for Oregon’s working families.
Oregonians from all walks of life and all areas of the state—working people, parents of school age children, small business owners, family farmers, representatives of community groups, and labor unions like ours—collecting signatures during the spring and summer of 2006 for a petition to establish a Working Families Party in Oregon. In July of 2006, the party was officially certified by the Secretary of State as a minor political party in Oregon.
We are determined to get our government focused again on the things that can make our jobs better, our families more secure and our communities more prosperous. That means:
- Making health care affordable and available to all Oregonians;
- Improving our public schools, from pre-school through high school;
- Opening doors to higher education and job training for more working Oregonians;
- Defending our jobs against outsourcing, pay cuts and Enron-style corporate raiders;
- Protecting the promise of a decent retirement after a lifetime of work;
- Promoting smart strategies to support good jobs, such as developing Oregon’s untapped wealth of new energy sources that are clean, secure and sustainable and will be attractive to new industries in the 21st century.
It’s important to note, we’re not trying to create a minor party that will run “spoiler” candidates with no chance of winning. We want to win for working families, and we have a plan to do that…by staying focused on the issues that matter most to working families, by organizing in our communities and by restoring fusion voting at the Oregon State Legislature. HB 3040 is working its way through the 2007 Legislature, so stay tuned for updates on its progress.
What is Fusion Voting?
Fusion voting worked well in Oregon—so well that it became a threat to big-money special interests, who forced its repeal in the early 1900s. Once legal and common in all states, fusion voting is now legal only in New York, Connecticut, Delaware, South Carolina, Mississippi, South Dakota and Vermont. John F. Kennedy carried the state of New York in his 1960 Presidential campaign, thanks to fusion voting. More recently, both Republican and Democratic leaders of the New York legislature supported an increase in the state’s minimum wage because of the power and appeal of the Working Families Party and fusion voting.
Legalization of fusion voting in Oregon would free candidates from the straightjacket of the two-party system. It gives voters more meaningful choices on the ballot and it gives political parties, like the Working Families Party, more ways to compete for votes based on their commitment to clear and well-defined issues.
Fusion Voting works like this… candidates can be endorsed by more than one party, but be listed separately on the ballot of each party’s ballot line, and then votes are combined or “fused” in the final tally. See the following sample ballot:
In this example, Mary Smith’s votes are added together from the two ballot lines. Mary Smith wins with 51% of the vote, but she also knows that without the support of the Working Families Party, she would have lost.
The Working Families Party can use fusion voting to encourage more candidates to seek our support, reward candidates who commit to the issues that matter most to working families, and hold those candidates accountable when they win elections with our votes. Now that’s an edge!Visit the site.
Community Health and Best Value Resolution and Ordinance
Local 701, along with our labor and community partners through the Metropolitan Alliance for Common Good (MACG) have been working in conjunction with City Commissioner Sam Adams to develop the Community Health and Best Value Resolution and Ordinance. This ordinance will require construction contractors to either provide family healthcare benefits for their employees when performing work on publicly-funded jobs with the City of Portland or the Portland Development Commission, or pay a family healthcare equivalent amount into a City fund for every hour worked on the project.
This fund will increase access for the uninsured in our community through the Multnomah County Public Health system, and help defray the public burden some contractors create by not providing those benefits. We estimate this ordinance could produce up to an additional $9,000,000 in safety net funding—that translates into roughly 35,000 additional healthcare visits per year for the approximately 300,000 uninsured Oregonians in the Portland metro area.
Metropolitan Alliance for Common Good
Metropolitan Alliance for Common
Good is a broad-based organization of 33 religious congregations, labor
union locals, and community-based organizations. It is driven by the
belief that these Mediating Institutions must be strong because they are
the cornerstones of a vibrant democratic society and hold the key to
mending and reweaving the social fabric essential for strong families,
healthy communities, and a just world.
Go to the Metropolitan Alliance for Common Good site.
OSHA - Occupational Safety & Health Administration
OSHA's mission is to assure the safety and health of America's workers by setting and enforcing standards; providing training, outreach, and education; establishing partnerships; and encouraging continual improvement in workplace safety and health.
Visit the website.
CAWS
A membership organization created by the construction industry and its peers, CAWS represents a unique blend of businesses, trade unions, workforce organizations, educators and community organizations. All of which are coming together to address a common purpose create a skilled and diverse labor force in the local construction trades.