Published: November 28, 2018

SEIU members on the Board of Directors announced a plan today to join a coalition of labor and business groups who will work together to raise corporate taxes during the 2019 session.

This coalition will not require new revenue to be tied to cost cutting, as many business groups have done in the past. This puts us in a fundamentally different – and better – position to fight for revenue and defend our members’ benefits.

We have entered into this specific coalition for 3 reasons:

  1. Winning good contracts that deliver real change for members requires additional revenue. This is a fight we must win.
  2. Past experience has taught us that we cannot win on revenue alone. Particularly when we are up against a united business community.
  3. Every member of this coalition has agreed to disconnect our work on revenue from cost cutting. There will be no tit for tat. This enables us to fight for revenue and fight to defend our members’ benefits, which will still be under attack like they have been in previous legislative sessions.

With this coalition, we are in a fundamentally different situation then past legislative sessions. With business support that’s not tied to cost cutting, we are hopeful that we can deliver a historic win. This is all possible because members and staff have done years of hard organizing work that put us in a position to deliver a game-changing win for Oregon.