City of Portland Recreation Bargaining Update, Thursday, September 17th, 2026

We bargained with the City on Thursday, September 10th and September 17th.

Below is a summary of all articles passed and TA'd.

TA'd Articles

18 - Leaves: Gives access to administrative leave, up to 3 days, in response to traumatic work incidents. Also includes leave for immigration, tribal and citizenship leave, and reaffirms that employees can utilize their accrued leave for gender affirming care.

20 - Safety & Sanitation: Added the heat incentive pay to this article, and clarifies when heat incentive should apply. There is also stronger language identifying that people create unsafe situations, that employees can remove themselves from unsafe situations, and creates a digital packet of resources for traumatic events. Also recognizes current ejections procedure, and allows the division manager to give supervisors and Recreation Coordinators the authority to issue exclusions.

21 - Union Representation: Doubled the amount of stewards to 30, and almost tripled the ULCP hours to 1600.

22 - Pay Day: Brings Oregon State Law language around underpayments into the contract

The Union  provided a counter on the following:

Article 7 - Day Shift Hours: The Union wrote language to better establish a regular work week, clarified the language around premiums for when your shift or working days are changed.  The City has broadly indicated that they do not understand how premiums currently work, and suggested a way to control costs would be to remove the ability to flex.  The Union believes this would result in higher costs and worse work/life balance.

The City provided counters on 

Article 30 Discipline and Discharge

Article 31 Grievances, Complaints and Arbitration

What’s Next?

We anticipate that our next bargaining session will be in October- we will reach out with more details when we have them!

Thank you,

Recreation Bargaining Team