Some 800 City of Portland employees could walk off the job as soon as November 1 after members of the City of Portland Professional Workers Union voted 93% in favor of authorizing a strike. The vote comes after ten months of bargaining over wages broke down between the union and city management, and it lands just as a second union representing hundreds of frontline laborers prepares to hold its own strike vote within days.
CPPW represents roughly 800 city workers in financial analysis, multimedia, and technology roles, according to Oregon Public Broadcasting. The union, formed in 2023, adopted its first two-year contract in 2025 and is now negotiating wage increases and layoff protections. CPPW says it declared impasse on September 24 and entered a 30-day cooling-off period on October 2, making November 1 the earliest date it could strike, according to the union's timeline.
CPPW president Kari Koch said the union would strike if the city continued seeking worker cuts while managers received raises, the OPB report notes. Koch also said the city's financial analysis is flawed, and that CPPW is simply seeking contract terms already included in other city unions' agreements to address inflation and the cost of living. The city's final offer to CPPW includes about $9.1 million in new spending, while the union's proposal would cost roughly $19.8 million over the same period, according to the same report.
City Cites Budget Strain, Union Points to Management Perks
The City of Portland's labor relations office said in an October 12 news release that it remains committed to reaching a fair agreement that recognizes employees' contributions while balancing city finances and taxpayer responsibility. Koch, however, pointed to the city's decision to give top bureaucrats six-figure exit payouts as evidence that the burden of cost-cutting is falling unevenly. That criticism echoes a longer-running union complaint: earlier 2025 budget proposals sought to eliminate 274 city positions, including 44 CPPW posts and 110 LIUNA Local 483 roles, even though unions pointed out that non-represented managers made up 20% of the city workforce but only 12% of proposed initial cuts, according to the Northwest Labor Press.
Compensation disparities have also fueled the standoff. Over the past decade, non-union management personnel received management leave hours outside standard paid vacation rules, a benefit program CPPW leaders have criticized as unfair, according to Willamette Week. The city has also imposed past COLA freezes or caps on nonrepresented employees, the outlet reported. The dispute over pay structure also follows the city's move away from indexing cost-of-living adjustments to regional inflation.
LIUNA Laborers Set for Their Own Vote
Portland city laborers represented by LIUNA Local 483 are set to vote on whether to authorize their own strike the week after CPPW's vote was announced, per the OPB report. That bargaining unit represents about 750 frontline city workers, including maintenance staff, community center employees, landscape crews, and bridge repair teams, and wage negotiations have stalled in recent months.
Ryan Sotomayor, business manager for LIUNA Local 483, said the city has not been transparent about its finances, which has hindered wage bargaining, and that stalled talks waste time for both the union and taxpayers by delaying problem-solving and work on next year's budget, per the same account. Sotomayor estimates at least 80% of Local 483 members will support strike authorization, which could put laborers on the picket line by the end of December. He said members are not pleased to face another potential strike, adding that his members are not high-paid even though city leaders often cite their work as an example of what the city does best without acknowledging that.
This would not be the laborers' first walkout. More than 600 Local 483 workers went on strike in February 2023 — the city's first municipal worker strike in two decades — and ended that three-day action after the city agreed to slightly higher annual raises.
Other Unions Reach Deals as Budget Fight Continues
Not every city union is headed toward a strike. Professional & Technical Employees Local 17 reached a tentative contract agreement on September 30 after bargaining and mediation, following earlier petitions protesting the mayor's changes to cost-of-living adjustments. The Portland Fire Fighters' Association Local 43 has also reached agreements with the city. The 790-member Portland Police Association remains in negotiations but cannot strike under Oregon law, which mandates binding arbitration rather than strike rights for sworn law enforcement personnel. Two additional unions representing more than 900 more city workers are also negotiating with the city but have not voted to authorize a strike, per OPB's reporting.
The standoff plays out against a municipal budget deficit that prompted earlier administrative layoff plans. Portland City Council members proposed a Fair Share Tax in October on publicly traded corporations with high executive-to-worker pay ratios, an adjustment to an existing business license fee structure that could generate an estimated $72 million annually, according to the Northwest Labor Press. If both CPPW and LIUNA Local 483 authorize walkouts, more than 1,500 municipal employees across IT, finance, park maintenance, and infrastructure operations could strike simultaneously by the end of December, per OPB. Hoodline previously reported on city labor friction when officials submitted new contract terms to AFSCME workers last October, part of a pattern of strained bargaining across Portland's municipal workforce.
