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In early March, the executive board of the Northwest Oregon Labor Council voted to admit the Portland Police Association into the organization, which already includes 104 affiliate unions. But the police union’s admittance is now in question after labor critics took issue with it.
After backlash to the board’s vote, spurred by the Portland chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, the labor council’s leadership says it will now take the admittance of the PPA to a full vote of NOLC’s affiliate members.
Laurie Wimmer, executive secretary-treasurer of NOLC, tells WW that the constitution of NOLC does not clearly lay out how a union gains admittance. Wimmer says the issue has never come up because when unions have joined in the recent past, existing union affiliates took no issue with the process.
“Nineteen months ago, we admitted the other three unions. No one ever said anything about a process. No one ever said a word. Everyone said, ‘Yea, you,‘” Wimmer says. “So it wasn’t until police, whom they’ve decided to, as a class, dislike, that they then started making it about process. The process argument is a canard.“
(A copy of the council’s constitution, shared with WW, does state that the application of an affiliate “shall be referred to the Executive Board which shall investigate the application and make a recommendation to the Council, as soon as practicable.” Wimmer said this passage does not call for a vote “as other passages in the document clearly do.”)
Still, Wimmer says, NOLC is taking the decision to a full vote of the union affiliates later this month.
“We wanted to err on the side of union democracy and give every voice the opportunity to be expressed,” Wimmer says. “We’ll let union democracy prevail and ask everyone to respect that outcome.”
The executive board of NOLC includes 21 members. Though Wimmer declined to disclose the exact vote count to admit PPA, she says there was “no opposition.”
It’s not entirely clear why PPA opted to join NOLC now, but Wimmer says she’s been talking to PPA’s president for years about it. She says it was probably her who most recently asked PPA to join as part of her recruiting efforts.
“It was probably me who finally said, I’m trying to recruit people, want to join now?” Wimmer says.
Critics of NOLC say the police union is joining only because it believes it will have a better chance of averting cuts to the Portland Police Bureau as the City Council mulls how to trim around $65 million from the general fund budget this coming fiscal year. (The Police Bureau, alongside the fire bureau, homeless services and the parks bureau, draw the vast majority of dollars from the city’s general fund.)
The Portland DSA started a petition this week asking that union members signal their opposition to including the police union in NOLC.
“We, the undersigned labor union rank-and-file and union officers of NW Oregon, stand shoulder-to-shoulder with delegates opposing the Portland Police Association’s (PPA) entrance into the NW Oregon Labor Council,” the petition reads. “The effort to bring the PPA into the Labor Council represents a total repudiation of core labor values, which are grounded in solidarity, racial & social justice, and collective action.”
Aaron Schmautz, president of the PPA, says he welcomes a full vote of the union affiliates. He also says the union, despite what critics allege, is not seeking to join NOLC in hopes it will buffer the Police Bureau from budget cuts.
“It’s incorrect to suggest that this budget cycle weighed heavily in the calculus as to why our relationship is growing, because it predates it,” Schmautz tells WW. “None of these conversations have been transactional. Our desire to engage predates this budget cycle. This budget cycle is not the originating factor in our desire to deepen our relationship with labor.”
Wimmer and Schmautz argue that all labor unions—law enforcement or not—need to present a united front against the new federal administration under President Trump.
“We think especially in these times, with the nightmare at the federal level,” Wimmer says, “we need to be as united and powerful and as diverse as possible to be able to stand together and fight the threats to unions and democracy.”
There may also be reasons for the unions to unite as the city approaches likely budget cuts, however. City administrator Mike Jordan recommended last month that the city cut 275 positions, not all of which are currently filled, to help ease the city’s budget woes.
A group of union representatives—including Wimmer and Schmautz—met in February at the base of City Hall and walked together to Mayor Keith Wilson’s office to speak to his chief of staff. They carried a one-page letter, which urged city leaders to avoid layoffs of union-represented employees.
Tensions in recent weeks between the police union and several of the more progressive members of the City Council have increased. After uniformed police officers showed up at separate town halls hosted by Councilors Angelita Morillo and Sameer Kanal, Council President Elana Pirtle-Guiney asked Police Chief Bob Day to ask permission from councilors before sending officers to town halls. Day agreed to do so.
Kanal has twice inflamed the police union since he took office Jan. 1, first by asking that the city explore including the Police Bureau in across-the-board budget cuts and then by proposing tweaks to a police accountability board.
And, more recently, Councilor Morillo questioned the Police Bureau’s strong presence at two recent mutual aid events in the Old Town neighborhood in March. She called the response “heavy-handed.”
Last week, two people were arrested and charged after allegedly trying to break into The Society Hotel in Old Town during a protest against its owner, Jessie Burke, for her opposition to the mutual aid events not obtaining city permits to operate.
Kanal declined to comment on the ongoing NOLC spat.