Less than two weeks after its workers voted to unionize, Portland homeless services provider All Good Northwest fired a worker for talking to the Northwest Labor Press and Willamette Week about the union campaign.
Workers at All Good Northwest voted 15-3 to affiliate with Oregon AFSCME in ballots counted June 2. On June 15, All Good Northwest fired Michael Rainey, a leader of the union effort.
“I wish I could say it was surprising.” Rainey said by phone after he was fired.
Rainey told the Labor Press in April that workers wanted a union in part because of inadequate training and unsafe conditions at a village in Portland’s Old Town. Records requested from Oregon’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) backed that up: Nearly 500 pages of documents detailed safety and health violations at the site, including unhygienic bathrooms, empty fire extinguishers, and sharps containers overflowing.
All Good Northwest executives appear to have been deeply offended that Rainey spoke to the Labor Press.
On June 8, Andrew Brown, All Good Northwest’s “director of systems operations,” summoned Rainey by email to meet with management. Brown said he didn’t believe Weingarten rights applied to the June 15 meeting, but that Rainey could bring a union rep if he wanted. (Weingarten rights are the right of union-represented employees to have a union rep present at any meeting that could lead to discipline.) Rainey asked what the meeting was about, but never heard back.
“Firing...
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