The Game-Show Strike

How Oregon’s SB 916 transforms labor disputes into a ten-week endurance contest

On Tuesday, as Governor Tina Kotek’s signature dried on the parchment of Oregon Senate Bill 916 (SB 916), proponents of this legislation—providing unemployment benefits to striking workers—promised that it “levels the playing field.” Reality, however, tells a different story.

Kotek, her Democratic minions in Salem, and the major labor unions have, instead, erected a battleground.

This legislation is not about a leveling, or justice, or fairness. It is, on the other hand, about funding union blackmail with Oregonian tax dollars.

By offering ten weeks of unemployment benefits to strikers—public and private alike—Kotek and the Democrats codified hostage ransom into law: workers seize public services while taxpayers foot the bill for their standstill.

The now predestined picket lines of the future will fester like open wounds on the civic body—injuries deliberately inflicted then dressed with taxpayer earnings.

SB 916 orders the state to bandage those wounds with unemployment insurance—paid by Oregon families, of course—after only a fortnight of labor unrest.

In fifteen days, the strikes will inevitably transition from a show of solidarity to a leveraged threat. This is corporate blackmail by another name: “Pay up or we stay out.”

No risk, all reward.

History warns about what happens when strikes become a game show. In 1946, President Harry Truman seized mines to protect the public interest as the coal miners’ strike nearly crippled basic industries like steel and electric power.

It is now as if Monty Hall is the emcee in the Beaver State studio, giving striking Oregonians a “limited-time offer”: ten weeks on the clock—outlast the governor (which won’t be hard), the municipalities, the small businesses—and you win. These new rules do not allow for “zonks” of any type.

But the ultimate prizes will nonetheless be hollow ones. The real victims are students missing classes, patients losing services, and communities drained of revenue. This is not endurance in service of principle but endurance for a bounty.

The true scandal lies with public-sector unions, the new aristocracy of grievance. They collect dues from the paychecks of their members (and non-members alike) while lobbying for benefits no market would tolerate. Under SB 916, those negotiating on behalf of government workers now hold a loaded weapon.

When civil servants threaten a strike, they do so not for wages that match productivity, but to reshape public policy on their terms—underwritten by taxpayers. What started as collective bargaining becomes collective extortion.

Oregon once stood for moderation. In the 1980s, under Governor Vic Atiyeh, the state balanced budgets and championed enterprise. Today, its leaders preach solidarity with public-sector zealots even as rural counties buckle.

Ask any farmer in Klamath County who has watched roads crumble, or the nurse in Medford facing staffing cuts, and they’ll render the same verdict: You can’t “level the playing field” by raising new barriers.

Every dollar spent on strike benefits is a dollar ripped from critical services.

In her sapphic wisdom, Kotek hails SB 916 as progress and as an equalizer when it comes to labor disputes. But true progress is not charity disguised as policy. Authentic progress is the fruit of responsibility, not produce plucked from the public marketplace.

By rewarding strikes with guaranteed pay, Oregon has now incentivized more frequent stoppages. Employers will hesitate to negotiate in good faith, fearing have-your-cake-and-eat-it demands. Meanwhile, taxpayers are caught in the crossfire and powerless when it comes to any substantive recourse.

Recall the Boston Police Strike of 1919. When officers walked off the job, Governor Calvin Coolidge declared, “There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, any time.” Coolidge’s defiance restored order and reaffirmed that some lines cannot be crossed.

Oregon’s SB 916 obliterates that principle. It asserts not that essential services come first, but that union tactics trump public interest.

What of America’s founding ideals? The Constitution enshrines the right to petition and to peaceably assemble, but not to conscript bystanders into your cause.

President James Madison warned of factions pursuing their own advantage at the expense of others. What Oregon has now enshrined into law with SB 916, however, is factionalism incarnate: one interest group cannibalizes the rest under the veneer of solidarity.

If the public purse can be tapped for strikes, where does restraint live?

Owing to the capped ten-week window, advocates call it “balanced.” But ten weeks of unpaid labor and ten weeks of public largesse—the math never adds up. When back pay arrives, workers owe the state, but who collects from the infrastructure that frays under strain?

Rural school districts, already thin on budgets, must reimburse themselves by docking future wages. Real budget cuts, in other words.

Portland and other urban districts already working with monumentally inflated budgets will certainly saddle taxpayers with more bond levies and further bloat their already more-than-chubby administrations. Either way, the loser is the citizen.

This is a fight for survival. Not merely for the health of the state’s budget, but for the soul of Oregon’s civic compact.

Do we reward brinkmanship with our tax checks? Or do we demand that disputes be settled in boardrooms rather than with barricades?

SB 916 tips the scale toward barricades, elevating rhetoric over reason and drama over dialogue.

Yet the elites in the corporate media—self-anointed arbiters of fairness—applaud and cheerlead. The Jacobins littering faculty lounges in Oregon’s schools and universities justify strike pay as “social justice.” Furthermore, the aspiring MBA types will soon eye Oregon’s unfunded liabilities as collateral for corporate influence.

Real Oregonians watch their infrastructure decay and wonder: Who speaks for us? Who will defend our rights against this political theater?

The answer? A return to tradition.

Consider. Public services are not bargaining chips. Strikes should cost those who call them, not those forgotten Oregonians who merely prefer stability and order.

Revive the spirit of Silent Cal’s stand against the Boston policemen. Recall the distrust of factions, held almost universally by the founding generation. Only then can balance be restored.

SB 916 is not reform but rupture. It weaponizes state funds and subsidizes stoppages, rewarding the wielders of the picket line. With the passage of this bill, Oregon’s Democratic operatives have transformed collective bargaining into collective blackmail, cloaked in the rhetoric of fairness.

But “fairness” should never be a subsidy for stoppage.

Oregon would be wise to choose a different path. Sooner rather than later.

A path where disputes are settled with mutual respect, not public ransom. One where public-sector unions operate like market actors, not fiscal freeloaders. One where taxpayers are partners, not pawns.

This fight has already started to shape Oregon’s future—and the future of America. We stand at a crossroads: uphold the covenant of public service or surrender to the spectacle of strikes funded by public dollars.

There is a choice to be made.

Let the line be drawn and let history judge the survivors.