Union supporters showed up at a Multnomah County Board of Commissioners meeting Thursday morning to speak out and demand union recognition for on-call and temporary county employees.
At Thursday's meeting, county commissioners listened to union advocates but did not respond, as is common practice when groups present public testimony.
Multnomah County has argued against recognizing union status for its on-call and temporary employees in the past.
Eben Pullman, lead council representative with Oregon AFSCME Council 75, said the county’s main argument has been that those workers don’t have enough in common with regular status employees who are already represented by the union.
“Their objection is they don’t believe that temporary and on-call workers share a community of interest with regular status employees, but they have failed to articulate a clear rationale about that,” Pullman said.
The county’s on-call and temporary employees petitioned for union recognition back in 2017.
Multnomah County’s refusal to recognize them led to a hearing before an administrative law judge.
Pullman said the judge ruled against the union, but the state Employment Relations Board ended up reversing and vacating that ruling — requiring a new hearing, which is set for Oct. 10 and 11.
“From our perspective, temporary and on-call workers have a community of interest and a reasonable expectation of continued employment,” Pullman said. “I imagine from the county’s perspective, they’ll be arguing the opposite.”
Pullman also said, in past discussions, the county has offered to add some temporary and on-call positions to the bargaining unit, but not others, without offering an explanation as to why.
“They agree to recognize certain workers within certain work units and classifications, such as certain library employees as well as certain employees in the health department,” he said. “We think that that falls far short of equity and justice, because if you’re left out and you have no explanation about why you’re left out, that’s a terrible feeling and that’s not something we support as a labor union.”
Pullman estimates there are between 400 and 700 temporary and on-call county employees at any given time.