By JOSH BOAK and MATT BROWN
Associated Press

ANN ARBOR, Mich. (AP) — President Joe Biden on Friday signed an executive order for federal grants that will prioritize projects with labor agreements, wage standards, and benefits such as access to child care and apprenticeship programs.

Biden said the ideas in his order “are common sense.”

“Economists have long believed that these good job standards produce more opportunities, better outcomes for workers and more predictable outcomes for businesses as well,” he said from an Ann Arbor, Michigan, union training center where he made the announcement. “A good union job is building a future worthy of your dreams.”

The Biden administration is trying to make the case that economic growth should flow out of better conditions for workers. His administration has stressed the vital role that organized labor will likely play for Democrats in November’s election. In her matchup against Republican Donald Trump, Vice President Kamala Harris is depending on backing from the AFL-CIO and other unions to help turn out voters in key states.

Biden has prided himself on his support of labor unions, joining striking Michigan union workers on the picket line last year. On Friday, he came on stage to chants of “Thank you, Joe!”

Trump has tried to make inroads with organized labor as well by having Teamsters President Sean O’Brien speak at the Republican National Convention. The Teamsters have yet to formally endorse any candidate, though Harris is expected to meet with them.

Some in the construction industry criticized the order for possibly increasing construction costs and excluding non-unionized workers from projects.

“These policies steer taxpayer-funded infrastructure contracts to unionized businesses and create jobs exclusively for union members at the expense of everyone else and the rule of law,” said Ben Brubeck, an executive with Associated Builders and Contractors, a construction industry trade group.

The order will establish a task force to coordinate policy development with the goal of ensuring more benefits for workers. The administration’s funding for infrastructure, computer chip manufacturing and the development of renewable energy sources has led to a wave of projects.

By the administration’s count, its incentives have prompted $900 billion worth of private-sector investments in renewable energy and manufacturing. Those commitments have yet to resonate much with voters who are more focused on the lingering damage caused by inflation spiking in 2022, but many projects will take several years to come to fruition.

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By MAE ANDERSON
Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — For decades, a giant, inflatable rat with beady eyes, sharp teeth and a pustule-covered belly has loomed over union protests, drawing attention to various labor disputes.

As New York City deals with an influx of actual rats, Scabby the Rat has become that rare thing, like Pizza Rat or Buddy the Rat — a rodent New Yorkers can rally behind.

But in the era of TikTok and influencer culture, middle-aged Scabby faces a new challenge: staying relevant.

“It’s kind of unfortunate, changing times, older members of the public know exactly what the rat is for,” said James Smith, union activity administrator for the NYC District Council of Carpenters. “The newer generation sometimes doesn’t — one person thought that we were protesting a building that needed an exterminator.”

Nevertheless, Scabby’s not collecting hard-won retirement benefits just yet. Most recently, Scabby has been making the rounds at various picket lines in New York for the Hollywood writers strike organized by the Writers Guild of America East and other unions. Scabby is the “true rat czar of New York City,” said WGA East communications director Jason Gordon, referencing the more fun title for the city’s new director of rodent mitigation.

At the picket line near HBO and Amazon’s New York offices on Wednesday, screenwriter Lisa Kron, 61, said she was “thrilled to see that we were being chaperoned by Scabby the Rat.”

She’s seen Scabby out and about during her four decades living in New York, but this was her first time picketing with the rat.

“It’s one of those great enduring symbols, it’s a great piece of visual protest,” she said. “It’s got humor and it’s got a shaming kind of message. And it’s very New York.”

“It’s an attention grabber,” said Benjamin Serby, a professor at Adelphi University who has written about the history of Scabby. “It’s something that just is very effective, for whatever reason, at making people walking by or driving by, stop and ask: ‘What’s going on here?'”

Although having a rat as a mascot seems quintessentially New York, Scabby the Rat was actually invented by a union in Chicago around the late 1980s (several claim credit), and other unions around the country quickly adopted the practice of using inflatables to draw attention to actions (pigs, roaches and cats are other popular inflatables to use as well, although they lack a catchy nickname).

There are many Scabbys. At another union action in March at a Petco, Marty Flash sat in the cab of his truck used to ferry one of the NYC District Council of Carpenters’ eight rats around (most unions have several, or borrow from unions that do). Most of the District Council’s rats, along with a generator and gas can, stay in a locker at union headquarters or in organizers’ trucks so they can be quickly deployed.

Flash, a carpenter for 35 years, has seen many reactions to the 10-foot-tall rat, which, at the moment, was towering over Union Square in the truck’s bed.

“In midtown Manhattan, it’s a tourist attraction. Little children get a real kick out of it. They come over, they want to touch it. Dogs are petrified of it,” he said. Flash said Scabby can inflate in about a minute and a half with a generator and deflate in about 30 seconds. Bigger rats — the rats range from 8 to 20-plus feet — can take 15 minutes to fill up.

Scabby’s name is a play on “scabs,” the derogatory term dating back to the 1800s for strikebreakers who cross picket lines to work. The oozing sores on his belly are a visual reference to the term. But Flash said workers at the sites visited by Scabby shouldn’t take offense, since the rat is protesting against contractors and companies, not the workers themselves.

“Some workers think that we are against them. We’re actually fighting to get them more money, better pay and better benefits,” he said. “But it’s perceived as the rat is calling them a rat or implying that they’re ‘less than.’ Which is not our intention. … It’s to imply that a rat contractor is not paying their workers the fair pay.”

Rats are made of PVC vinyl and cost between $8,000 to $20,000, according to Flash. One company, Blue Sky Balloons outside of Chicago, is responsible for most of the rats found in NYC.

But they seem to be distancing themselves from the inflatables, The Guardian reported earlier this year. Blue Sky Balloons responded to an Associated Press query by saying they were new owners who weren’t associated with the rat, and didn’t respond to follow-up queries.

But Flash says his union still sends their rats to Big Sky for repairs, which can cost up to $2,000. Repairs are needed often since most are years or decades old — so the unions try to take good care of their rats.

“I baby this one with my life,” Flash said. “We have a pool of rats and generators that you take when you need. I just always keep mine with me because I’m familiar with this operation.”

Not everyone likes Scabby. Sometimes the inflatable rat gets slashed or attacked by anyone from random passersby to disgruntled workers at sites. The rat has often been the subject of legal challenges by the companies Scabby targets. If he blocks the sidewalk or street, police can boot him. But Scabby is a survivor, winning its most recent legal challenge in 2021, when the National Labor Relations Board ruled that it was a protected form of expression.

These days, Scabby also has to contend with new technology and social media. Its Facebook page, run by a retired union organizer, lets various unions post photos of Scabby at protests around the country, and some rats feature QR codes that give people information about campaigns. But Mike Piccirillo, president of Local 20 Carpenters Union, said a more recent addition to the union’s arsenal might overshadow Scabby.

“Our LED sign truck is a lot more effective than the rat,” he said. “I’ve been in construction for 25 years, and most New Yorkers are numb to the rat. They just walk by it. Now the LED sign with its flashing lights actually gets their attention.”

Yet — much like the currently surging rat population in New York — Scabby is unlikely to completely disappear anytime soon, as long as the rat keeps conveying his message of fair pay for workers.

“People are drawn to it in part because it’s like an ironic symbol of defiance,” Serby said. “Something about this giant, ugly, toothy kind of scary-looking rat makes people feel permitted to express anger and defiance and outrage at employers.”

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SALEM, Ore. (AP) — Seeking the return of millions of dollars of forced union fees, 12 Oregon public employees filed a federal class-action lawsuit against the state’s three largest public sector unions, a smaller union, and affiliates.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June that government workers can’t be required to contribute to labor groups.

The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, which was involved in the Supreme Court case, is handling the Oregon case and 200 others across the country.

The group said the suit, filed Thursday in federal court in Oregon, seeks fees collected in recent years from thousands of public sector employees who left their unions or never joined.

Defendants include the Service Employees International Union; American Federation of State, Local, and Municipal Employees; and the Oregon Education Association.

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While public-sector unions may have taken a hit from a recent ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court, legal experts say ramifications of the court’s decision in Janus v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees are not likely to extend to private-sector trade unions.

The court ruled 5-4 on June 27 that compulsory public-sector “fair share” or “agency” labor union dues for non-members violate the First Amendment and are unconstitutional. With the decision, the court upheld a challenge to the legality of such dues brought by Illinois state child support specialist Mark Janus.

Private-sector unions, by contrast, don’t normally face this issue. As such, legal professionals say Janus should not have much impact on the numerous trade unions that work with local contractors.

“Legally, I don’t see a whole lot in the opinion that suggests immediately we’re going to have some private-sector employers say that Janus should be extended to the private sector,” said Dan Rowan, a Bullard Law attorney who specializes in labor law. “There are some arguments to be made, but those arguments have been made before in the private sector, so that’s how we have the current state-by-state system.”

Many states, including Oregon and Washington, have public-sector collective bargaining statutes allowing agreements that require all employees within a bargaining unit to pay fair share fees toward the union’s costs related to collective bargaining. In the 1977 case, Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court held that such agreements are constitutional.

Janus, however, undoes that earlier precedent.

Portland attorney Todd Lyon, a partner at Fisher & Phillips, said the court’s decision could have lasting effects on public-sector unions.

“It’s, frankly, huge,” he said. “A union is, in many ways, a business. They depend on accounts receivable in the same way other businesses do. And their accounts receivable is in the form of due money or fair share fee money coming from employees.”

Not being able to compel non-members to pay those fees, Lyon said, will inevitably erode the services that unions currently provide their members.

When it comes to trade unions, however, Lyon agreed with Rowan’s analysis.

“I would say that the chances of this having any impact on the private sector are practically zero,” Lyon said. “The only way that this would have any traction, it seems to me, is if in light of this decision members of Congress would decide to make a right-to-work law nationwide.”

In Oregon, the effect on public-sector unions remains uncertain. ORS 292.055 allows employees to authorize wage deductions for union fees and others. In the wake of Janus, however, the legality of this statute is now under review.

“We’re still evaluating whether Janus is going to pre-empt those authorization forms by saying even those authorization forms are now illegal in light of this decision,” Lyon said. “We’re still kicking that around and trying to determine the impact.”

Oregon public-sector unions remain relatively strong compared to those in many other states, Rowan said. He expects that to continue, particularly among public-safety unions that traditionally have the highest memberships.

“I think the consensus is it will vary from union to union and employer to employer,” he said. “The public-sector unions are well supported and involved in politics as compared to some states where the labor movement is not as strong. In Oregon, I think the public-sector unions will continue to have a strong presence and play an important role.”

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The new Multnomah County Courthouse project is steadily climbing, floor by floor, as general contractor Hoffman Construction works on the planned $315 million, 17-story replacement for the existing courthouse on Southwest Fourth Avenue.

Hoffman recently hosted a tour of the construction site as part of the workforce development event Industry for a Day, which has been held the past three years by nonprofit group All Hands Raised. Below, a short video will give you a quick look inside the project.

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Although a recent landmark decision by the National Labor Relations Board stemmed from a complaint involving workers at a recycling plant, construction officials say it could easily throw a wrench into relations between general contractors and subs.

The federal board, commonly called the NLRB, voted 3-2 last week in a ruling that could greatly add to the types of businesses that can be held liable for violations of labor laws. Before the decision, a company generally could not be found responsible for a violation of that sort unless it exercised “direct and immediate” control over employees involved in a labor complaint.

Thursday’s ruling is instead likely to let federal officials impose liability on a company that does no more than control the terms and conditions of employment “indirectly or through an intermediary, or … has reserved the right to do so.” Reached Friday, various construction-industry representatives predicted profound consequences for general contractors, especially in their relationships with subs.

Brian Turmail, executive director of public affairs at the Associated General Contractors of America trades group, said federal officials are essentially asking general contractors to police the labor and employment practices of their subs. It’s a responsibility, he said, that few construction companies are ready or willing to take on.

Turmail also noted recent Department of Labor rules that make general contractors and subs who work with the federal government more responsible for ensuring a certain percentage of their workforce is made up of veterans and the disabled.

“Now, in addition to your day job of building structures, you get to be an auditor for the federal government,” Turmail said.

Geoff Burr, vice president of government affairs for the Associated Builders & Contractors of America, a mostly non-union trade group, predicted a fundamental change in general contractors’ dealings with subs. Company officials who had once seen themselves as having arms-length relationships with subcontractors’ employees will now have to worry about labor violations that they might have little authority to prevent.

“I feel like this challenges the entire existing business model in the industry,” Burr said. “If it’s applied on a regular basis to construction companies, we will have to consider altering that model and reworking agreements between generals and subs.”

Rufino Gaytan, a labor and employment lawyer at Godfrey & Kahn’s Milwaukee office, said it’s not entirely clear what the NLRB’s ruling will mean for industries outside those involved directly in the case, although it is certain to have wider consequences. For one, he predicted that some general contractors will find themselves reconsidering how much direct and indirect control they want to exercise over subcontractors.

The NLRB’s decision seems to suggest that the greater a company’s authority, the greater its exposure to labor-law liability. General contractors might respond, Gaytan said, by negotiating contracts that abdicate control over all subcontractor matters aside from insisting that a particular part of a project be completed on time and on budget.

“Obviously, that’s the extreme,” he said. “But general contractors who take that sort of a stance will be taking the safest or most conservative approach to avoid that joint-employer designation.”

Although many observers were quick to predict widespread consequences from Thursday’s NLRB decision, defenders noted that the underlying case arose from a very specific set of circumstances. Namely, members of the NLRB had been asked to rule on the Teamsters union’s right to represent workers at a Browning-Ferris Industries’ recycling plant in Milipitas, Calif.

The workers were not direct employees of Browning-Ferris but rather of Leadpoint Business Services, a staffing agency. The Teamsters, in its attempt to represent the workers, asked the NLRB to decide if Browning-Ferris and Leadpoint could be considered “joint employers.”

In voting against the majority in Thursday’s decision, the two Republican appointees on the NLRB complained in writing that the decision does little to tell employers when they can now expect to be held responsible for possible labor violations affecting an employee of a partner company.

“There can be no certainty or predictability regarding the identity of the employer,” wrote the two dissenters, Philip Miscimarra and Harry Johnson.

The Democratic appointees who hold the majority of the board’s seats countered by contending that the NLRB “cannot attempt today to articulate every fact and circumstance that would define the contours of a joint employment relationship.”

Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel stepped into the debate earlier this month, joining his counterparts in five other states in sending a letter to NLRB chairman Mark Pearce. The letter, dated Aug. 11, argues that the pending change “will expose companies to liability for workers they don’t actually employ” and “make it more difficult to structure relationships with other businesses.”

In a statement released the day after the NLRB’s ruling, Schimel contended that “even routine business decisions, like whether to fire a contractor or how to structure

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Organizing a union in the workplace? There may not be app for that right now, but employment lawyers think it’s just a matter of time before one pops up.

The call for an app or platform to help workers organize with just the swipe of a smartphone or tablet screen was issued recently by a pro-labor think-tank called The Century Foundation.

In their 19-page paper, think-tank president Mark Zuckerman, senior Fellow Richard Kahlenberg, and Fellow Moshe Z. Marvit outline the benefits that unions would reap by moving their recruiting efforts out of the past and into the modern-day world of technology. The most obvious benefit, according to the three authors, would be a boost in union membership numbers that have been sagging for decades.

In 2014, the number of union members increased from 2013, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. But the percent of American workers in unions dropped slightly from the previous year, representing a loss of market share for organized labor. The situation is a far cry from decades ago, when unions were at the height of their power.

“The (decline) has pretty much been ongoing since the 1970s, from a high point in the 1950s, when about 40 percent of the private-sector workforce was unionized,” said Jose Klein, an employment lawyer in the Portland office of Fisher & Phillips. “Now, it’s about six percent.

“It’s been a long, steady decline, and there are a lot of reasons why. Some of it has to do with jobs being shipped away to other countries. Some of it has to do with just changes in attitudes of the American worker.”

In their paper, Zuckerman, Kahlenberg and Marvit also attribute the decline in the popularity of unions among workers to a general reluctance by organized labor to embrace technology, which has hampered the ability to connect with new generations entering the workforce.

Doug Tathwell, the IT administrator for the International Brother Hood of Electrical Workers Local 48, admits his group was slow to tap into technology. But the union now is working to make up for lost time.

In addition to using social media such as Twitter and Facebook, the group uses text messaging to communicate. Its members can jump on the Local 48 website for dispatch services and to pay dues.

Ben Basom, communications director for the Pacific Northwest Regional Council of Carpenters, said his group also was slow to adopt technology, but the situation now is changing quickly.

The carpenters’ group has an active social media presence, taps into text messaging mobilization and has even held remote town halls, according to Basom. The group’s website is undergoing a major update.

While the northwest regional council sees a big benefit in using technology to connect with existing members, it would be less likely to tap into an app – or any other high-tech approach — to recruit new members, according to Basom.

“I think apps and Facebook and Twitter feeds and websites are great tools to use as resources for information,” Basom said, “but when you’re trying to recruit new members, our best tool is what our union was founded on 134 years ago – person to person.

Tathwell agrees.

“If an iPhone app would bring in electricians, we would have it already,” Tathwell said. “(In recruiting), you’ve got to earn trust, and you don’t earn trust through an app.”

Despite the union stance that an app for workplace organizing isn’t needed, Fisher & Phillips employment lawyer Klein believes the question isn’t if an app for organizing in the workplace will be created, but when.

Within the past 12 months, changes in national labor laws have created a landscape that’s ripe for unions to make a push to regain strength. New administrative rules published this year, for example, have shortened the timeline for instituting an election to unionize a workplace, leaving employers with less time than before to present a counter-argument to employees.

An app supporting worker efforts to organize would leave employers at an even larger disadvantage.

“This app would make organizational activities a lot less visible to employers,” Klein said. “It’s possible there could be elaborate conversations going on that the employer would have no way of knowing about.”

That’s why Klein says it’s critical for employers to gauge – and address — employee satisfaction related to work conditions.

“It’s really important that (owners) understand and keep an eye on employee sentiment, and the key piece there is your front line supervisors, who operate as liaisons between owners and employees,” he said.

Sometimes the solution can be as simple as creating a workplace committee to provide a way to address issues and concerns before they have a change to fester and spread, according to Klein.

“One of the things that leads employees to organize is when employees feel the employer does not hear them or their concerns,” he said. “It’s a world in which employers need to figure out ways to remain connected to employees’ feelings, to understand what employees are feeling and try to address employee concerns before they mushroom into clandestine organizing.”

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Workers with one of the state’s largest labor unions on Sunday voted to approve terms of a new contract, averting a potential strike that could have halted work at sites from Portland to Eugene.

Plumbers & Steamfitters Local 290, which has more than 4,000 members throughout Oregon, Southwest Washington and Northern California, to approve a two-year contract with the Plumbing and Mechanical Contractors Association. It represents more than 250 plumbing and mechanical contractors in the region.

The prevailing wage rate for most Oregon counties will increase by $2.75 per hour for each of the next two years.

“I think both sides probably aren’t satisfied,” said Frank Wall, PMCA’s executive director. “When both sides aren’t satisfied, it’s probably a good contract.”

Labor and management representatives disagreed over prospects, including the expected drawdown at Intel‘s D1X expansion in Hillsboro. Contractors believed that with work slowing, increasing wages would make landing work significantly more difficult, Wall said.

Labor reps believed the opposite. Local 290’s business manager, Al Shropshire, disputed PMCA’s contention that a slowdown of work at Intel would lead to fewer profits and man-hours in 2015.

“We believe you are making record profits,” Shropshire said, according to March 25 meeting minutes. He declined to comment on the results of the vote.

Other projects, such as the state capitol renovation and Oregon Health & Science University and Portland Community College construction, would contribute to “lots of work coming up,” Shropshire said in the minutes.

The two sides, who have met 17 times since mid-January, were far apart last month. The PMCA’s proposal at the time – raising wages by $1.40 an hour for two years and $1.50 an hour over the third year – was rejected nearly unanimously by union members at a March 30 meeting. They then authorized a strike in the event of a breakdown in negotiations.

Labor reps had sought a $3.50 an hour raise over that same time period, down from an initial request of $4.25 an hour, according to the minutes.

Both sides agreed April 4 to a cooling-off period that ultimately generated an agreement last week.

Many contractors had prepared for a potential work stoppage.

“We notified our contractors to get dual gates that would have been set up so that they could continue working,” said Robin Edgar, labor relations manager for Associated General Contractors‘ Oregon-Columbia chapter.

AGC, which negotiates with five major trades, including teamsters and carpenters‘ unions, had a no-strike, no-lockout clause in its contracts; sympathy strikes would be in violation, Edgar said.

“We notified them – this was not our fight and to report to work,” she said.

Wall acknowledged that the relationship between labor and management interests has been marked by distrust over the past several years.

As part of the negotiations, the PMCA and Local 290 will go through a two-year process of relationship building before the new contract expires March 31, 2016. Both sides agreed to hire a facilitator, Richard Barnes, who will lead a healing process for future negotiations, Wall said.

Barnes, principal of Lawrenceville, Ga.-based C. Richard Barnes and Associates LLC, has settled labor and management disputes across the country.

“What’s happened in the negotiations is both sides go to the table with skepticism and lack of trust,” Wall said. “Richard Barnes teaches you how to listen to each other.”

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The rain didn’t keep away hundreds of protesters who gathered on Tuesday to protest injustices against workers. Among the groups were the Pacific Northwest Council of Carpenters and the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades Local 10. Watch below to hear what motivated them to come to the event.

Protesters walked through downtown Portland during a permitted “family friendly” march commemorating May Day, also known as International Worker’s Day. The march followed a rally in the South Park Blocks in which various speakers demanded, among other things, more jobs and expanded rights for immigrants.

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Labor groups gathered in the South Park Blocks in Portland to celebrate May Day.

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