Pictured, from left, are members of the executive boards of Oregon City Chapter 14 (President Kathleen O’Brien, Treasurer Vicki Poyser and Secretary Deanne Chaves) and Clackamas County Children’s Commission Chapter 601 (President Teressa Crawford and Treasurer Alison Celsi). They were among the 200-plus chapter officers from throughout the state who attended the Leadership Summit.

In an unprecedented response to an extraordinary crisis, some 200 executive officers from more than 90 OSEA chapters met last month in Eugene to grapple with an existential threat to our union.

What brought these leaders together for the two-day, emergency Leadership Summit was Janus v. AFSCME, a pending U.S. Supreme Court case that could drastically harm OSEA’s ability to serve and represent its members by making “fair share” agreements illegal.

The summit served as a wake-up call as speakers laid out the severity of the threat to attendees in stark terms. But despite the somber picture painted on the first day, the summit’s program of speakers, workshops and planning sessions helped galvanize and inspire attendees to take back what they learned to their chapters.

“It was an eye-opener,” said Marnie Meuret, vice president of Oregon City Chapter 14. “We need to stand together and help each other — not just ourselves. We need to get off our behinds — now!”

Betty Vinsonhaler, secretary of Astoria Chapter 72, said the summit “puts everything into perspective on where our union could go and where it should go.”

Attendees were heartened to hear OSEA President Tim Stoelb announce, “Like every challenge we have encountered as a union in the past 80 years, we will face this one head on.” He went on to declare that OSEA’s “No. 1 priority” for the foreseeable future “must be maintaining and increasing membership in every OSEA chapter.”

By the last day of the summit, more than 70 chapters heeded the president’s call and were able to commit to dates for a membership campaign, while the rest were in the process of devising their own plans for one in the next year.

But before all that could happen, attendees needed a clear understanding of what OSEA is facing.

The nature of the threat

The first day of the emergency Leadership Summit focused on giving participants a legal overview of Janus and an idea how the potential loss of fair share could specifically affect our union.

OSEA General Counsel Mike Tedesco, who has represented the interests of OSEA members for almost 30 years, started this effort by explaining that 40 years ago, in a case called Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, the Supreme Court set up the fair share system we have today.

The court said the law compels unions to represent all employees covered under a collective bargaining contract — both union and non-union members. The court also said unions had the right to negotiate agreements giving employees the choice to either join the union or pay a fee covering their share of the costs of representation; however, these “fair share” fees cannot include the cost of political activities or external organizing.

“The court understood that spending money on staff and the other things the union must do to fairly represent (everyone) … should be distributed among all members of the bargaining unit equally,” Tedesco said. “They said if we (unions) didn’t do that, we would be encouraging nonmembers to be — and this is their words — free riders, which would hurt the union in fulfilling its obligations.”

Tedesco said the anti-worker organizations behind the Janus case want to overturn Abood by arguing public sector unions are inherently political and that asking employees to pay a fee for union representation infringes upon their freedom of speech.

Tedesco demonstrated to summit attendees just how silly this argument is by listing the number of things that would be considered political under this line of logic:

“When we’re dealing with your grievances to whether you got an adequate rest break — that’s political; whether you should have gotten that promotion based on your seniority — that’s political; when you bargain your cost-of-living increase next year — that’s political. … I guess you all didn’t realize what exciting political players you all were,” Tedesco summed up sarcastically.

Unfortunately the Supreme Court seems likely to buy this argument.

“According to AFT’s Supreme Court experts … it’s almost a certainty this is going to happen,” Tedesco said, adding that the court was poised to overturn Abood in a similar case in 2016, but was stopped from doing so with the death of Justice Antonin Scalia.

The potential effects to OSEA

With the balance of power restored to the court’s anti-worker wing and a decision expected by the end of June, the only question is how severe will be its effects. OSEA Executive Director Rick Shidaker, in his role as the union’s treasurer and chief financial officer, tried to answer this question for attendees.

Before launching into his presentation, he told the audience it’s hard to gauge Janus’ full effects because it depends on how the membership reacts to the court decision.

“I’ll go through some numbers with you, but I want you to take it with a grain of salt,” Shidaker said.

“(That’s) because what we do with this summit — what we do going forward — will change a lot of what I’m telling you.”

According to Shidaker, of the 21,000-plus employees OSEA represented as of Oct. 15, 73.7 percent were dues-paying members. If OSEA were to maintain this membership rate upon losing fair share, Shidaker said the union would see its projected revenue drop by 22.5 percent — from $8,664,251 to $6,714,943.

Shidaker called this the “best-case scenario” and said it would force OSEA members to make extremely hard budgetary choices.

“We would have no choice but to make decisions around staffing”  — eliminating positions that our members rely upon, Shidaker said.

In the 2017-18 budget, OSEA staff salaries and benefits account for 58.8 percent of expenditures, while the costs related to affiliation with the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) make up 22.2 percent. In a best-case scenario, these items are expected to cost $6,660,428 and leave the union with only $54,515 to cover a $1.9 million shortfall.

Shidaker then described an even worse scenario, where Janus leads to a huge drop in membership. No one knows how far it could drop, but Shidaker used the average membership rate of OSEA’s 14 chapters without fair-share agreements to make an educated guess. At that rate — 31.2 percent — OSEA would be facing a $5.9 million shortfall.

Before ending his presentation, Shidaker gave the audience hope by sharing a few insights from OSEA’s 2013 member survey. At that time, a statewide ballot measure threatened to do the same thing Janus will do. The survey’s findings suggest nonmembers may be open to joining OSEA if they are given all the facts about the union; however, it also found that 59 percent of nonmembers said they had never even been asked to become a member.

“We know — if we make those contacts — we can give them an opportunity to understand what it means to join,” Shidaker said. “And most of the time, they’ll become members. It’s your job as leaders and our job as staff to help you get the resources necessary to make those contacts and do those membership drives.”

Summit participants go ‘ALL IN’

Shidaker’s remarks set the stage for President Stoelb to ask that all OSEA chapters plan, schedule and conduct a membership drive this year. Chapters were also asked to commit to establishing an effective Worksite Organizer Program and make chapter membership drives an annual occurrence.

“This may sound like an overwhelming task, but honestly it isn’t,” Stoelb said. “It’s all about getting back to basics. We just need to do what we have done for 80 years and that is to sign up our coworkers and new hires to be members.”

The rest of the summit’s speakers helped show how that’s done by sharing their own inspiring stories. Pat Gest, OSEA’s first female president, told attendees that, when she joined the union almost 50 years ago, there was no Public Employees Collective Bargaining Act (PECBA) or fair share, but she and her fellow OSEA members built the union into what it is today through hard work and persistence.

Guest speaker Danny Homan, president of AFSCME Council 61, also demonstrated how unions can effectively fight back against anti-worker foes by being organized and winning over hearts and minds through one-on-one conversations.

The second day of the summit also included workshops, but much of the final day was devoted to a large afternoon planning session designed to give the 200-plus attendees the time to plan their membership drives. Chapter leaders, OSEA field representatives and organizers all met in one large conference room to identify when and how they should go about conducting their drives.

The planning session culminated in dozens of attendees crowding around large wall calendars, waiting to mark when they were going to hold their drive. The mood in the room was festive and many of the attendees stopped to pose for pictures and take selfies before the wall calendars.

“As I went around the room, I saw a lot of good work getting done,” Stoelb told attendees at the end of the day. “What you have done during this summit is an example of “A Member’s Union” in action. I know all of you here — and the thousands of our members throughout the State of Oregon — will stand our ground and we won’t back down (in the face of Janus).”

This cued a video set to Tom Petty’s “Won’t Back Down” featuring inspiring images of OSEA members in action that have been captured through the years. As the video played, many people in the audience started to spontaneously sing along and hoist up ALL IN signs in a show of solidarity.

After the video finished, Stoelb asked the audience: “In the next seven months, we are going to be successful, because we are … what?”

To which, everyone in the room responded: “ALL IN!”