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Since 1900 \ Volume 106, Issue 116 \ Tuesday, March 8, 2005
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Tim Bobosky | Photographer
Clockwise from left: Jonathan Hunt, Amalgamated Transit Union Division 757 vice president, rallies Lane Transit District strikers to look for LTD General Manager
Ken Hamm at the SELCO 69th Annual Membership Meeting at the Hilton Eugene Hotel; Gaia Perinchief Carney, a Service Employees International Union organizer,
shows support for ATU; Bus rider Ken Kickman joins LTD strikers at the LTD downtown station Monday night.
Union bus drivers picket, march
With both sides unwilling to
budge, Monday's rally may be
the beginning of a long process
BY MEGHANN M. CUNIFF
SENIOR NEWS REPORTER
Bus-free streets and stations lined
with picketers marked the first day of a
county-wide Lane Transit District driver
strike Monday, as the Amalgamated Transit
Union Division 757 protested LTD’s
handling of ongoing contract negotiations.
This is the first driver strike in LTD history.
There’s no telling how long the strike
will last, but a mediation session has
been scheduled for Thursday at the Hilton
Eugene Hotel.
Both ATU and LTD representatives said they
have pushed as far as they can go and it is up
to the other side to settle the 10-month dispute.
“We’ll be there to talk, but we are not in
a position to stretch any further than where
we were in mediation (last Friday),” LTD
Service Planning and Marketing Manager
Andy Vobora said.
I
Carol Allred, an LTD driver and executive
board officer for ATU Division 757, said
the union is not looking to make any different
contract offers than it has in the past and is
prepared to stay out on strike as long as it will
take for LTD workers to get a fair contract.
“It would have been much easier to keep us
in the door in the first place than to get us back
in the door,” Allred said at a union rally
Monday night at the LTD downtown station.
Lane County Commissioner Peter Sorenson
joined more than 100 union supporters at
the rally, and said it is important for elected
officials to get involved in issues like
the strike because they are representative of
nationwide problems.
“Having a contract that is given to or forced
on the worker, that’s something community
leaders need to be concerned about,” Sorenson
said, referring to LTD’s Feb. 1 implementation
of a portion of the disputed contract.
Sorenson said such “unilateral implementa
tion” is not respective of the definition of a
contract, which requires both parties to agree.
“Obviously, we don’t have agreement here,”
Sorenson said.
After the rally, about 40 people walked to the
SELCO 69th Annual Membership Meeting at
the Hilton Eugene Hotel, where LTD General
Manager Ken Hamm was rumored to be in
attendance seeking election to the credit union’s
Board of Directors.
ATU Division 757 Vice President Jonathan
Hunt said the intent behind going to
the meeting was to express the union’s
disapproval of Hamm’s handling of the
contract negotiations and to voice concerns
about the possibility of him being elected to
the SELCO board.
Hamm was not in attendance and did
not win the board position he was seeking.
However, Hunt said the union’s presence was
not a waste because Hamm will surely hear
about the visit, and the importance of the
contract negotiations to the union members will
be reiterated to him.
University senior Stacy Borke joined picketers
at the LTD downtown station Monday
afternoon to show support for the union cause.
“Workers have rights that aren’t being
paid attention to,” Borke said, emphasizing the
need for community members to get involved
in labor issues. “People depend so much on
LTD, page 4
HOW ARE YOU ADJUSTING TO THE LTD STRIKE?
Amy Stein | freshman
“It makes it really hard to get off
campus. I don’t drive and (there’s) no
other transportation besides the bus."
Mike Payne | senior
"I'm looking for a friend to get a ride from
right now. I didn’t know about the strike
but found out on the front page today."
Brtitany Moss | freshman
"I had a job interview today. I got a ride but
had to go an hour and a half early, and my
friend had to leave class to pick me up.
It made me look really bad because the
bus is my main source of transportation
and it's really unreliable right now.”
11
Nick Gillespie | junior
"I had to ride my bike because of the
strike. I wanted to ride the bus and went
to the station, but it was desolate. I had
to go back and borrow my roomie’s bike."
Weekend
conference
explores law,
environment
This year's theme was "Living as if
nature mattered" and addressed
both local and global challenges
BY EVA SYLWESTER
NEWS REPORTER
Speakers from around the country and beyond
emphasized the global nature of environmental
law issues this past weekend at the University's
23rd annual Public Interest Environmental Law
Conference. The conference, which ran from
Thursday, March 3 to Sunday, March 6, was or
ganized by the student environmental law organ
ization Land Air Water.
This year’s conference theme was “Living as if
nature mattered,” and was taken from the title of
the book “Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mat
tered” by Bill Devall.
“It’s what’s missing in decision-making in gov
ernment and society these days,” conference Co-di
rector Zack Mazer said. “We don’t really regard na
ture when we’re trying to decide what to do as a
culture, and we’re trying to change that.”
Devall, a professor emeritus at Humboldt State
University in California, spoke at the conference
Thursday night.
University law professor John Bonine helped ini
tiate the conference 22 years ago.
“We decided, students and I and professor Mike
Axline... that we wanted to bring together lawyers,
law students and activists,” Bonine said. “The idea
was that the law students could maybe find a job,
the lawyers could maybe find a client, and the ac
tivists could help the lawyers and remind them
why they went to law school. ”
Bonine said the conference this year included
200 speakers and several thousand participants.
Speakers shared different messages of
environmental challenges and their local and
global impact.
“All over the world, we find that minorities and
the poor bear the burdens of our highly technical
society,” said Beverly Wright, founder and director
of the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice
at Xavier University in Louisiana. To illustrate how
similar situations occur in different countries,
Wright displayed nearly identical photographs of
chemical plants located next to playgrounds in a
black neighborhood in Louisiana and a black
neighborhood in South Africa.
“A fight for environmental justice is really a fight
for the protection of all of us,” Wright said. “Pollu
tion doesn’t stop at a particular street. The air blows
everywhere.”
In another speech, cancer researcher Dr. Samuel
Epstein described industries’ reckless practices with
toxic chemicals as “a violation of human rights and
white-collar crime. ”
Epstein blamed these practices for rising
cancer rates, and said incidence of all cancers in
the United States has increased 23 percent from
1973 to 1999. Currently, one in two men and one
in three women will get cancer at some point in
their lifetimes, he said.
“If that isn’t the kind of thing that’s going to
touch 100 percent of Americans, I could step out
and start selling newspapers,” Epstein said.
Former FOX Television news reporters Jane Akre
and Steve Wilson spoke after Epstein. Akre and
Wilson were fired for refusing to distort information
in a news story on rBGH, a growth hormone
injected into cows at many American dairies.
“Sam (Epstein) said the truth shall set you free,”
Wilson said. “It set us free of our home and most
of our life savings. It set us free, all right.”
Other speakers also showed how environmental
changes have impacted them personally.
CONFERENCE, page 8