The Editor’s   Corner

"History is a great teacher. Now everyone knows that the labor movement did not diminish the strength of the nation but enlarged it. By raising the living standards of millions, labor miraculously created a market for industry and lifted the whole nation to undreamed of levels of production. Those who attack labor forget these simple truths, but history remembers them."   Martin Luther King Jr.

Letters to the Editor:
Cannot print this one, but we got a note from Shannon Marie Estabrook

Tim Flanagan

PCCFF Publicist & JWJ Liaison

editor@writingresource.org

Letters to the editor can be mailed
to the union Post Office Box 19389   /   Portland, Oregon 97280-0389...

or they can be sent in via e-mail. 
Let us know what you want to find in the Gathering.  If you have a concern in your workplace or an idea to share... jot it down, send it in, and we will be happy to share it with our members and respond.

We welcome
Eddie Lincoln
and several new faces at PCCFFAP  See page 8 for more details and contact information!
News brief

Here’s what we learned

from the 2008 Ask a

Working Woman survey.

Working women said...

...a raise would make life
easier — even more so than
better health care.

...paid sick days aren’t available when it’s time to care for sick children.

...more free time would best
be used by getting another
job; second-best use would
be spending more time with
family.

Follow this link to read the
full report on the 2008 survey.

http://www.unionvoice.org/

ct/47NKWZ1DcPG/

Summertime is supposed to be when "the livin' is easy," but too many employees at PCC find it more and more of a struggle to make ends meet...

Gas prices are putting the squeeze on everyone and
these higher costs are showing up in the supermarket.

When you put together
these increasing costs for food and gas with higher costs across the board, our dollars just don’t seem to go as far.

 

 

 More and more teachers, academic professionals, and classified employees... are taking vacations closer to home to avoid the costs of travel. While this may help our local businesses in the in the short term, the elephant in the room (the recession) blunders along, crushing hopes and dreams for working people and our families. 

At a certain point, working families are going to have take a stand, speak up,
and say enough is enough. The time is ripe to get involved and get active.

 The summer is rushing past and before we know it classes will begin. Shortly afterwards we will have an election where the fate of working people and the destiny of our nation may hang in the balance.

We need to learn about the candidates we will be  offered and find out what the ballot measures mean. Then we must share this information with family, friends, and neighbors.

Together we can make a difference. 

In Solidarity, Tim Flanagan

Shannon is a member of PCCFFAP executive council and is in  Denver, running the Arapahoe County Obama Office.  (An important swing county.)  The   Convention starts next week.  They are passing out tickets, and staying busy.   Shannon has taken a leave of absence until November to work on the  Convention Activities and more.  She will check back in with us to keep us
up to date..
 

Table of Contents
    The Gathering

1. Masthead       
2. Letter from President
3. Letter From Editor      
4. Union News
5. Calendar of Events
6. AFT Convention   
7. Oregon Working Families  
8. PCCFFAP Officers

 
Here is just one part of the picture when it comes to outrageous ballot measures this November.
The property rights, anti-union, fanatic Bill Sizemore's Measure 59 is a perfect example of the "What's Wrong with Kansas" syndrome. That's the analysis by Robert Frank that asks why working class voters too often succumb to rightwing propaganda and vote against their interests...
 
Measure 59, which will be on the November ballot, offers an attractive but completely phony bait: it removes the current $5600 limit on federal income tax deductions from Oregon's rather regressive income tax.

This will mean that Sizemore's real constituency--the top 4% of Oregonians with incomes averaging $111,000, would pocket over $2,000. And Sizemore proposes to reward millionaires (the top 1%) with almost $16,000 more.

Obviously, measure 59 won't pass by relying on the the less than 5% of Oregonians who would receive 97% of its benefits. So its passage depends on bamboozling the middle class ( the 35% between $50- $80,000) who would only get between $46 and $450 and the remaining 60% of us who get nothing at all or at most $2. And many in those groups will suffer from the cutbacks in public services required to make up the loss of between $1 billion and $2 billion in state revenue.

Sizemore has already fooled enough Oregonians to put his scheme on the ballot. In November, any proportion of voters over 5% who support Measure 59 qualifies for the "What's Wrong with Oregon" constituency.

Go the OCPP website for details: http://www.ocpp.org/cgi-bin/display.cgi?page=es080818NoGain59
And here is info on the rest of the ballot measures:   Oregon Ballot Measures 2008
Oregon unions oppose slew of ballot measures
Oregon voters will see 12 measures on their mail-in ballots this fall: eight citizen initiatives and four legislative referrals. The four referrals are likely to get labor support, but all but one of the initiatives are opposed by organized labor.