Portland school workers take labor message to school board

Custodians, nutrition workers push pay and benefit issues

By Jennifer Anderson

LocalNewsDaily.com, Jan 28, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (57 Reader comments)

Boosted by the appearance of national labor organizer and activist Andy Stern, hundreds of Portland Public School custodians and nutrition workers rallied Monday night outside of the Portland School Board meeting.

Stern, president of the 1.9 million-member Service Employees International Union, is also in town for two other speaking engagements.

About 500 custodians and nutrition workers who are members of the SEIU Local 503 are in active negotiations with the district, trying to resolve the salary and health benefit issues in their contract, which expired last June and then were extended.

The custodians are protesting the adjustments to their pay after they were laid off in 2002 in the district’s effort to save costs by using contract janitors.

In 2006, the Oregon Supreme Court ruled the firings illegal and ordered them to be reinstated. A hundred twenty-six of the 300 custodians returned.

According to union leaders, the district is now proposing cutting the wages of returning and newly hired custodians by more than a third. The union thinks those cuts are unfair, and has also asked for cost-of-living increases of 3.5 to 5 percent.

They’re also asking for prorated healthcare contributions for the 200 or so nutrition workers, whom they say are among the lowest paid in the state.

“Aside from the unfairness of trying to extract double-digit pay cuts from people, you’d certainly want to pay at a level that would encourage people to stay,” said Ed Hershey, the SEIU’s communications director.

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