News

More important elections are on-going

Congratulations are due to our newly elected Board of Directors. Ballot counting was finished on Saturday, March 6^th, 2010. Bart Lewis, President of the Retirees Local 001 and chair of the elections committee, called the candidates personally to let them know the election results. If you would like to see the entire list of Directors, go to the SEIU 503 web site. It's posted prominently on the front page.  read more »

Vote Now for your Board of Directors

Ballots for the Board of Directors have been mailed and you should be receiving them shortly if you haven't already. They were sent on February 8, 2010. If you still don't have yours by next week, you may want to contact SEIU 503 HQ for a replacement. They are due February 24, 2010 so you want to have enough time to return your ballot for counting.  read more »

Hopefully everyone has received the latest copy of The 503 Voice. This is a hugely important issue that everyone should read.

Page 1 starts out with a bang, covering the YES campaign. This is the campaign to pass Measures 66 and 67 at the special election in January. If you aren't familiar with this issue, you should be! The estimated $733 Million budget deficit that will be created if these measures fail will affect far more than just SEIU 503 members. It will affect critical services for the citizens of Oregon.  read more »

The battle is on again! Big business and the wealthy want a free ride at our expense!

Last Tuesday, a series of signs went up all over, especially along the I-5 corridor between Portland and Salem. You may have seen them. They're the ones talling you to "Vote NO on Job Killing Taxes."

This is especially galling when you consider that some of the backers behind this initiative are the banks! Would those be the same banks that just got BILLIONS of dollars in Federal BAILOUT money? Why YES, they would!  read more »

The biggest news right now is that OUS has reached a tentative agreement. If you have more information on this, or the of the other ongoing bargaining, please post that information here.

The vote on the DAS tentative agreement is imminent. We'll update when those results are known as well.

As promised, here's a report on the Bargaining Conference that took place last Saturday, August 15^th, 2009. There were a lot of familiar faces, and some new ones (to me).

The conference started at 9:00 AM with a welcome from SEIU Local 503 President Linda Burgin. She spoke about how the initial fast-track bargaining had served to involve the members and keep them involved for the entire bargaining session. She also mentioned that we came out of this with a, "fair contract in the worst economic times of our lives."  read more »

Bargaining continues of course. While the DAS coalition moves forward with a tentative agreement, the rest of the bargaining units continue to fight hard battles.

The first update from the Union came out on August 4^th:  read more »