AFSCME Council 75 is the Oregon division of the left-of-center American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) union. The group represents over 25,000 government workers in Oregon and has been one of the leaders on left-of-center labor advocacy in the state. ¹

History

AFSCME Council 75 is a state-level chapter of AFSCME, which began in 1932 to unionize government workers and non-profit employees. ² AFSCME 75 began in 1967 to bring all AFSCME Oregon chapters together under one bureaucratic umbrella. ³

Since its founding, AFSCME 75 has partnered with a number of left-of-center organizations unrelated to labor issues. ⁴ AFSCME 75 is allied with LGBT advocacy group Basic Rights Oregon and the left-wing environmentalist Oregon League of Conservation Voters. ⁵ AFSCME 75 has also allied with the pro-abortion League of Women Voters of Oregon and immigration group CAUSA. ⁶

Political Activity

AFSCME 75 is one of the most politically involved unions in Oregon, exercising influence in several areas that are not related directly to labor. AFSCME has been actively involved in legislation on left-of-center voting reform, housing policy, and healthcare, in addition to union issues.

The National Institute on Money in Politics database shows AFSCME Council 75 has spent over $8.7 million on elections and ballot measures at the federal, state, and local levels. ⁷

PERS Activism

AFSCME 75 has focused extensively on resisting changes to the Public Employees Retirement System (PERS), advocating for increased corporate taxation to pay for benefits to public employees. ⁸ In 2019, AFSCME 75 fought changes which sought to more accurately estimate retirement benefits, cap final average salaries to limit benefits, and reduce pension multipliers. ⁹

AFSCME 75 challenged the reductions of benefits, arguing for tax increases. ¹⁰ The “vast majority” of AFSCME 75 members are PERS members, and AFSCME started the PERS Coalition to lobby for increased PERS support in the mid-1980s. ¹¹

AFSCME 75’s PERS activism is notoriously aggressive. In October 2019, the Oregon Senate voted to pass Senate Bill 1049 to protect revenue from a new school tax from being utilized by the PERS program by slightly reducing retirement savings for PERS members. ¹² Following the vote, AFSCME 75 announced that the union will not support any Democratic candidates who backed the bill in the primary and general elections in 2020. ¹³

Legislative Initiatives

AFSCME 75 has routinely worked on left-of-center issues that are not related to labor, including increasing government regulation of the pharmaceutical industry with artificial price controls, limiting the ability of landlords to evict tenants, and establishing a universal paid family leave program. ¹⁴ AFSCME 75 has further pursued left-wing election administration policy, including lobbying for same-day voter registration and public funding of elections to match small dollar donations at a 6-1 multiplier. ¹⁵ AFSCME 75 has also lobbied for HB 2020, an environmentalist bill which would set up a greenhouse gas cap in Oregon and establish a Carbon Policy office. ¹⁶

In 2019 alone, AFSCME 75 has led left-of-center economic initiatives, including a push to impose a $2 billion tax increase on corporations. ¹⁷ AFSCME 75 has also endorsed bills which would increase the state cigarette tax and require hospitals to continue to fund state medical programs. ¹⁸

Labor Policy

For the past two years, AFSCME 75 has devoted resources to keeping its dues collections up in the wake of the Janus v. AFSCME Supreme Court decision which ruled that it is unconstitutional to mandate that public workers who are not union members pay agency fees. ¹⁹ The group has pushed extensively for HB 2016, an Oregon bill designed to stand in the way of Janus by preventing outside organizations from informing union members of their rights to opt-out. ²⁰

Legal Battles

AFSCME 75 has often clashed with the Freedom Foundation, a libertarian think tank which has opposed efforts to implement left-wing labor policies in Oregon. In November 2017, the Freedom Foundation requested the names of union members in order to organize campaigns to inform them of their rights to opt-out of unions. ²¹ AFSCME 75 convinced the Portland City Council to file a complaint against the Freedom Foundation in the state circuit court in order to avoid releasing the names. ²² The Freedom Foundation replied with a lawsuit of its own, asking a judge to compel the city to release the records, given that they are public records that the city had disclosed in the past. ²³

In 2018, the Freedom Foundation, in conjunction with the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, filed suit on behalf of twelve Oregon government workers seeking to get their dues refunded. ²⁴ The suit named AFSCME 75 and another Oregon government worker union, SEIU 503, as defendants, alleging that AFSCME 75 continued to collect dues from members even after they had terminated their union membership. ²⁵

People and Funding

In 2017, AFSCME 75 generated most of its revenue from membership dues totaling $9,921,006, in addition to $228,000 in grants from AFSCME International. ²⁶ AFSCME 75 spent $357,676 on political campaigns in 2017. ²⁷ AFSCME 75 remitted $153,939 to Political Fund ORAFSCME, AFSCME 75’s political action committee. ²⁸

AFSCME 75 is governed by a five-person executive committee, elected by general members at the Oregon AFSCME Convention every two years. ²⁹ Jeff Klatke serves as the president of AFSCME 75 and is a senior treasury accountant at Home Forward, in addition to serving as a long-time union member. ³⁰

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24. Vaughan, Anamika. “Freedom Foundation Lawyers File Another Lawsuit Seeking Dues for Defecting Oregon Union Members.” Willamette Week, November 24, 2018. https://www.wweek.com/news/2018/11/24/freedom-foundation-lawyers-file-another-lawsuit-seeking-dues-for-defecting-oregon-union-members/.
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