2 council resolutions dive into societal issues
Wednesday, August 29, 2007 The Oregonian
ANDY DWORKIN
The Oregonian Staff
Voting today - Sam Adams' initiatives address contractor health care and city sweatshop purchases
Portland eases into two huge social and political debates today as the City Council votes on resolutions requiring city contractors to provide for worker health care and opposing clothing purchases from sweatshops.
Both positions are political no-brainers in left-leaning Portland. But the issues involved are complicated: coping with America's pricey health care bureaucracy and influencing work in foreign factories. So the city is moving ahead with liberal caution, considering resolutions that support the goals but giving committees months to draft plans that turn the ideals into laws.
"Both of these are about city government leading by example," said Commissioner Sam Adams, who is sponsoring both resolutions.
The resolutions are also about leverage, specifically Portland using its weight to try to change how private companies do business. Only time will tell how much influence a mid-sized city can have on complex national and international issues, especially one like funding health care that has stymied state and federal legislators.
"It's a really reasonable question to ask: 'Little Portland, what can you do?' " Adams said. "I think the answer is we have to look at every reasonable and prudent thing we can do."
Many companies that win city contracts do offer health insurance. But at least 1,000 people a year -- many in the construction industry -- work on city contracts but don't get health coverage, according to estimates by the Metropolitan Alliance for Common Good, a coalition of unions, churches and nonprofits backing the health resolution.
The resolution aims to increase cov erage for those people but is vague about how to do that. It asks a new committee of city, union and insurance officials and health care providers to gather data on how many city contract workers are uninsured and figure out ways to increase their health coverage by March. The resolution calls for Adams to seek money in the city's fall budget adjustment to hire a health care consultant to advise the committee.
The committee's charge is a little vague because the city doesn't really know the scope of contract workers' insurance woes and because there are no easy ways to control skyrocketing health costs without burdening small and minority contractors.
A few other big cities have required contractors to offer insurance or pay fees to public health agencies. Since 2001, San Francisco has made city contractors offer no-premium health insurance to employees working at least 15 hours a week or pay the city and county a fee, now $2 an hour worked. In April, Houston's mayor said companies with $100,000-plus city contracts must offer health insurance to full-time workers, covering at least half the monthly cost, or pay a health fund $1 for each hour employees work.
Portland could consider similar programs, as well as perhaps pooling money from small contractors to offer group coverage, Cherry Harris, a metropolitan alliance leader, said.
The Sweatshop-Free Procurement policy aims to ensure that Portland's $2 million in annual purchases of police and fire uniforms and other clothing goes to companies that follow their local labor laws.
The resolution creates a committee of labor advocates, apparel company representatives, city employees and an economist to recommend a code of conduct for clothing purchases by September 2008.
The city's Bureau of Purchases would ask existing clothing suppliers to disclose the name and locations of their factories. Portland also would pledge to support the State and Local Government Sweatfree Consortium, a group based in Maine that attempts to unite governments with a combined $100 million in buying power to influence garment-factory conditions. Adams would seek $20,000 funding in the city's fall budget adjustment to back that consortium.
So far, states and cities with about $65 million in buying power have signed on to the consortium, executive director Bjorn Claeson said.
A larger number of U.S. public bodies -- more than 180 -- have passed some form of anti-sweatshop rule, he said. Portland's $20,000 would be used to attract other cities, including those in Oregon, to join the group as well, he said. Claeson estimates that U.S. cities spend $12 billion a year on apparel.
The consortium hopes to help governments track that spending by auditing far-flung factories, which local governments can't do practically. It also aims to concentrate government spending in a smaller number of factories that identify and admit where they fall short of local and international labor rules and that create enforceable plans to improve working conditions.
