By Ben Velderman
EAGnews.org

PORTLAND, Ore. – The labor dispute between the Oregon Education Association and its staff union seems to be getting nastier.

As Mike Antonucci has reported, the teachers union and its “Mini Me” union have been sparring over actions the OEA is taking to close its $2.6 million budget deficit. Earlier this year, the OEA cut its contributions to the staff pension fund, closed a UniServ office, and laid off about 20 staffers.

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While the cuts were unpopular, it was how the OEA issued the layoffs that drew the most outrage. The teachers union violated the cherished “last in, first out” principle, and instead laid off employees based on the newness of their current position.

Here’s how Antonucci explained it in a May report:

“Instead of laying off in reverse order of hiring, the union is laying off in reverse order of positions being created. This has resulted in two employees with more than 30 years of experience receiving pink slips.

“That’s a hell of a maneuver, and one easily replicated by school districts if any had the sand to try it. Can’t lay off your most senior employees? Merely appoint them to head the new Teacher Evaluation Center, or some such dodge. Pitch it as a promotion. Then lay them off because they hold the most recently created position. It’s either devilishly clever or delusional. In what reality will the staff union stand for it?”

Turns out the OEA’s trick was delusional.

Last week, the union staffers demonstrated inside OEA headquarters to show “solidarity” with Bruce Scherer, the union’s communications officer who lost his job through the OEA’s trickery, Antonucci reports.

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The demonstrators covered Scherer’s “now-empty office with signs of support to make up for the two union support signs he put up that management took down,” according to a description of the YouTube video.

While plastering the office door with signs that read “B.S.” and “Honor Seniority,” the demonstrators sang a re-worked version of “We Shall Not Be Moved,” a folk song that may have originated during the slave era:

“We’re fighting for our brother,
We shall not be moved.
Like a tree that’s planted by the water,
We shall not be moved.”

Of course, the song loses some of its power when it is sung by well-fed members of the middle class, who probably climb into their SUVs and motor back to suburbia once the display is over.

But the staffers’ point is well-taken: The OEA is trying to solve its budget problems with the very tactics that would trigger a teachers strike, should a school board ever use them against a local union.

The contract dispute between the OEA and its “Mini Me” union shows no signs of ending any time soon. The OEA wants to settle the matter through binding arbitration, but the staffers won’t agree, saying it would strip them of their right to strike.

This union-on-union squabble must be difficult for Big Labor supporters to watch.

Maybe this is what it sounds like when doves cry.