Let me say this about that
—By Gene Klare
Northwest congressional assembly gets
mixed results on AFL-CIO report cards
‘Who’s on Our Side’
campaign launched to
hold U.S. senators, reps
accountable.
Dean Wear dies, 78
DEAN WEAR, a former business manager of Operating Engineers
Local 701, died on Dec. 2, 2005 in Portland, his family reported. He was
78 years old.
Darrol Dean Wear was born on April 6, 1927 in Frontier County, Ne-
braska. The family moved to Oregon, living first
in Eugene before settling in Portland, where
Dean attended high school. Dean’s mother died
in a fire when he was 16, and he went to Kansas
to live with his maternal grandparents on a wheat
farm. After graduating from high school there,
he attended a nearby college where he met and
married Ann. They moved to Oregon, and Dean
worked as a heavy equipment operator, as did
his father, Ethmer (Olie) Wear.
THE FAMILY SAID that Dean and Ann had
two children, Dee and Karrol, and lived in every
county in Oregon except Lake. The couple later
divorced.
DEAN WEAR
Dean married Jerie Greer in about 1965, the
family said, and he adopted her two children, Larry and Mary. The fam-
ily moved to Wolf Creek, where Dean and Jerie owned and operated the
local restaurant. Later, they moved to Boardman, then to Vancouver,
Wash., in 1967, and next to Paxson, Alaska, southeast of Fairbanks. Dean
and son Larry ran the service station in Paxson and Jerie cooked at the ad-
joining lodge. Better jobs were found in Anchorage before they returned
to Vancouver in 1970, the family said. After that, Dean went back to op-
erating heavy equipment and later was elected business manager of Lo-
cal 701. The family said he held the union office for about eight years,
and later retired.
Back then, Operating Engineers Local 701 was headquartered in its
own building at SW 12th Avenue and Market Street near Portland State
University. Now, the union has its own building in suburban Gladstone in
Clackamas County.
WHILE IN OFFICE in Local 701, Wear served on boards and
trusteeships, including membership on Governor Vic Atiyeh’s Labor Ad-
visory Committee in the 1980s. He was a delegate from Local 701 to
various other labor organizations.
After he retired, Dean and Jerie moved to Dayton in Yamhill County
and he became active in a private security agency. She died in 1990.
LATER, WEAR MARRIED Elenor Orvis Parham and they lived in
Tigard, McMinnville and Newberg. The family said they made many
trips around the country in their motor home.
Dean belonged to the Sheridan Baptist Church and also attended the
Tigard Christian Church with his wife Elenor. Dean, a large man, was an
avid hunter and fisherman, a member of the National Rifle Association,
a lifelong Democrat and a community volunteer in Yamhill County.
SURVIVORS INCLUDE his wife, Elenor, of Newberg; three chil-
dren, Karrol Britton of Maui, Hawaii; Larry, of Vancouver; Mary Sauter,
also of Vancouver; four grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
Dean Wear’s funeral was on Dec. 10 at Tigard Christian Church with
burial at Rose City Cemetery in Portland. Sheridan Funeral Home han-
dled arrangements.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The na-
tional AFL-CIO released an interim re-
port card scoring the performance of
U.S. senators and representatives as
Congress completed the first half of its
term in December.
Democratic lawmakers from Oregon
and Washington scored quite well in the
five areas — jobs and wages, retirement
security, health care, tax fairness and
education — deemed by the national la-
bor federation as important to workers
and their families.
Republican officeholders were a dif-
ferent story.
U.S. Representative Peter DeFazio
of Springfield scored 100 percent, while
Earl Blumenauer of Portland and Dar-
lene Hooley of West Linn both scored
93 percent. David Wu of Beaverton and
Brian Baird of Vancouver, Wash., both
scored 87.5 percent.
Oregon Republican Greg Walden of
Hood River voted with labor on only
one issue — an amendment to delete
language in a Transportation appropria-
tions bill that restored funding for Am-
trak.
In the U.S. Senate, Democrats Ron
Wyden of Oregon and Patty Murray of
Washington both scored 89 percent.
Both voted against labor by favoring the
Central American Free Trade Agree-
ment and by confirming John Roberts
as chief justice to the U.S. Supreme
Court.
Washington Democrat Maria Cant-
well joined her Pacific Northwest col-
leagues in supporting CAFTA. She also
was on the wrong side of labor on a bill
limiting federal class-action lawsuits
against companies that violate state
wage and hour laws, and a tax reconcil-
iation bill that cut taxes — mostly for
the wealthy — while adding $60 billion
to the federal deficit.
Oregon Republican Senator Gordon
Smith voted opposite the AFL-CIO on
all but three positions. Two of his
“right” votes were procedural motions
involving amendments to an immigra-
tion bill that would have impacted the
H-2A agricultural guest worker pro-
gram. Another was an amendment that
he co-sponsored rejecting a proposal by
the Bush Administration to cut Medic-
aid by $14 billion over five years.
In scoring the lawmakers, the AFL-
CIO examined votes on trade, the min-
imum wage, job creation and commu-
nity wage standards, child labor
standards, protection for overtime pay,
the freedom to form unions, pension
and Social Security protections, Medic-
aid, health care, consumer protections,
tax cuts for the wealthy, student loans
and funding for public education. [For a
complete description of the legislation
as votes, go to www.aflcio.org and click
on “Hot Features” and “Who’s On Our
Side?”]
The report cards were issued as
Congress completed the first half of its
term in December. It is not the official
AFL-CIO 2005 voting record, but it
will be used as part of a union move-
ment-wide drive to hold lawmakers ac-
countable.
This year the AFL-CIO plans to con-
duct workers’ roundtables, grass-roots
mobilizations and other actions to put
elected leaders on notice that they need
to support issues that matter to workers.
“Working families, with the facts in
hand, have the power to take back the
country and make sure we are repre-
sented by leaders who are fighting for
our best interests — not special inter-
ests — every day,” said AFL-CIO Sec-
retary-Treasurer Richard Trumka.
Poll Gives Congress and
President Failing Grades
According to a Peter D. Hart Re-
search Associates Inc. poll conducted
for the AFL-CIO, only 30 percent of
U.S. voters approve of the job Congress
is doing, while 56 percent disapprove
— a sharp drop from the 41 percent ap-
proval rating cited in an NBC/Wall
Street Journal poll last January.
In the same poll, nearly three in five
voters surveyed in the West (58 per-
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NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
JANUARY 6, 2006