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  • Denis C. Theriault
For anyone waiting for a bus or a train, or even just making their way out of their offices yesterday around City Hall, it was hard to miss the sight (and sounds) of some several hundred city workers marching over from a boisterous union rally at Chapman Square.

The District Council of Trade Unions, which represents some 1,700 city employees in seven different unions, had called the gathered just days after threatening to strike over a contract impasse, part of a very visible bid to put pressure on officials in time for talks to restart later this week.

The union is pushing back against a city plan to change the way overtime is allocated, with the two sides also arguing over the size of wage increases in future years and the way the city farms out work to non-city employees.

Not long after 5 pm, they filled the plaza on 4th Street just below the Portland City Council chambers—where council members and Multnomah County commissioners were swearing in the city's youth commissioners—and led a series of chants in hopes of reaching the ears of the politicians upstairs.

It was rather dramatic. Boos were showered, at one point, on the city's human resources czar, Yvonne Deckard. But to listen to Ken Allen, executive director for the DCTU's largest union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, you almost had to wonder if it was over the top.

Read on to find out why, and also to see what the city had to say in response.

According to Allen, in rousing remarks delivered before the march, the city's "goal is to try to get a contract tomorrow." (That's now today, Thursday.) And he said that while differences remained on overtime allocation, he claimed Mayor Sam Adams, in a meeting earlier in the week, had pledged to persuade a council majority to back the union's proposals on subcontracting city work.

"We're not going backward," Allen said.

Turns out, things might not be so rosy. Roy Kaufmann, Adams' spokesman, told me this morning that Allen's claim about the mayor's promise is "not accurate. There were a number of witnesses who can attest that the mayor never promised" to assemble a (three-vote) council majority.

Kaufmann also was less charitable when describing the pace of talks. He wouldn't describe a deal as imminent, only that "we have been working on these negotiations for some time, and it's fair to say we're close."

He was pretty unequivocal about one thing, though: "Folks could hear them. I do believe they were able to be heard by the council."

One mission accomplished for the unions, at least. We'll see about the bigger one.