FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Trent Lutz, Executive Director director [at] dpo [dot] org (503) 239-8625
As the candidates for Commissioner of Bureau of Labor and Industries meet in Beaverton this evening, the Democratic Party of Oregon is launching www.foxforhenhouse.com, detailing the consistent opposition of Republican Bruce Starr to a wide variety of legislation aimed at protecting Oregonians in the workplace. These are the very laws he would be charged to protect if he won the office.
As a legislator, Starr opposed making it illegal to deny employment to gays and lesbians. Starr also opposed extending unemployment benefits at the height of the recession, supported a reduction in the minimum wage, and even voted to limit compensation paid to families of workers killed on the job.
“Bruce Starr’s outrageous record of opposing even the most basic workplace protections makes him totally unsuited to be Oregon’s Labor Commissioner,” said Meredith Wood Smith, Chair od the Democratic Party of Oregon. “Oregon’s middle class needs a Labor Commissioner focused on protecting our rights – not one who’d be dismantling these protections from his very first day on the job.”
“Starr is the fox that is applying for the job of guarding the henhouse.” Wood Smith continued.
Although he’s running to lead BOLI, Starr didn’t even support funding the agency — endangering the agency’s work in apprenticeships, vocational education, and enforcing laws against wage theft and discrimination.
“Starr’s clear hostility to Oregon’s middle class raises the question of why he’d even want to be Labor Commissioner,” said Wood Smith. “And that’s one question we can’t afford the answer to.”
###
