Portland’s first municipal strike in more than 20 years began Thursday as hundreds of public employees who provide essential city services walked off the job.
The action comes as members of Laborers’ Local 483 and city leaders remain unable to agree on a new union contract despite months of negotiations.
The stalemate stems largely over cost-of-living increases amid rising inflation as well as workplace safety concerns.
With about 615 members spread mostly across the city’s parks, transportation and environmental services bureaus, Local 483 represents just under 10% of Portland’s workforce.
They include people who repair streets and maintain public trash cans, remove garbage and syringes from city parks and oversee wastewater treatment plants, among other jobs.
“We’re not work from home people. We don’t have the ability to relocate,” said Scott Morris, 58, a carpenter with the parks bureau for the last four years.
He and about 100 other people gathered Thursday to picket outside the Mt. Tabor Maintenance Yard, a parks bureau facility on Southeast Division Street near 64th Avenue.
“We love this city. We want to be here,” Morris added as passing cars honked their horns in support of the picketers. “But we also have to make a living.”
How much the strike impacts city operations remains to be seen. As the the threat of a walkout loomed last week, Mayor Ted Wheeler signed an emergency order that directs bureau leaders to hire contractors and vendors to perform work normally done by Local 483 members.
Dan Douthit, a city spokesperson, said Thursday that he did not know whether outside contractors and vendors had been hired at this time. He and other city officials declined further comment, citing ongoing labor negotiations.
Portland officials published a list of more than a dozen municipal services that may be delayed or have been suspended. Those include trash and biohazard collection in city parks, landscaping, street and sidewalk cleaning and graffiti removal on some public properties.
Local 483′s contract expired last summer and bargaining has been underway since March.
Portland officials said the city proposed a new four-year, $39 million contract that would include a 12% wage increase for all union members by July. Half of that wage increase — or 6% — would come from a 5% retroactive cost-of-living increase, the maximum increase allowed under the union’s most recent contract, and a 1% retroactive pay raise.
According to Portland officials, the city’s latest contract proposal would raise the average union member’s annual salary to $76,288 by July from $65,389, a nearly $11,000 increase.
Local 483, however, says it wants the city to remove the existing 5% cost-of-living cap from its next contract and instead tie cost-of-living adjustments directly to inflation. The union has also proposed a 3.5% across-the-board raise for its members, whose most recent cost-of-living raise was 1.6%.
“The city’s offer amounts to a pay cut for folks because of inflation,” said James O’Laughlen, a field representative and organizer for the union. “At the end of the day, it’s an erosion of wages and benefits.”
Annual U.S. inflation surpassed 7% in 2021 and averaged about 6.5% last year.
Bargaining teams for the city and Local 483 are scheduled to resume negotiations Saturday.
The last time city employees walked off their jobs in Portland was in 2001 when members of the District Council of Trade Unions, which represent more than 1,000 maintenance and clerical workers, went on strike. That strike lasted for 45 minutes before the city and the union reached an agreement.
The city and District Council of Trade Unions narrowly avoided another walkout last year, reaching and eleventh-hour agreement after a new contract had eluded city and union bargaining teams for more than a year.
Oregonian/OregonLive staff photographer Beth Nakamura contributed to this report.
-- Shane Dixon Kavanaugh; 503-294-7632
Email at skavanaugh@oregonian.com
Follow on Twitter @shanedkavanaugh
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