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About Northwest labor press. (Portland , Ore.) 1987-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 17, 2006)
Let me say this about that ...Public service (From Page 2) land and neighboring Vancouver, Washington. THE CPBCTC REPRESENTS 13 labor unions with jurisdictions in Northern Oregon, from Astoria on Oregon’s Pacific Coast to The Dalles in the Columbia River Gorge, and across the river in Vancouver and other Southwest Washington localities. The affiliates have more than 12,000 skilled members working for nearly 2,000 signatory contractors in the construction industry. The union members employed under CPBCTC collective bargaining contracts perform more than 25 million hours of work annually, with an economic value of nearly $80 million. OVER THE COURSE of his many years as an elected officer of labor or- ganizations, Wally Mehrens became a well-known figure in labor, industry, governmental, political and civic circles. He has served on the executive boards of the Oregon State and Washington State Building and Construction Trades Councils, plus the E-boards of the Ore- gon AFL-CIO and the Northwest Oregon Labor Council. He is president of LINK Community Development Corp., a nonprofit group set up to provide af- fordable housing, and serves on the executive committee of Worksystems Inc., which is the name of the Portland Private Industry Council. Other organizations Mehrens has been involved with include: Columbia River Crossing, which is considering a new bridge linking Vancouver and Portland plus an expansion of Interstate 5 at Portland’s Delta Park; a mayor-appointed committee to study new economic development strategies for the Portland Development Com- mission; the Labor Advisory Board of the Labor Education and Research Cen- ter of the University of Oregon; and an expansion study committee formed by Metro, the regional government. MEHREN’S OTHER ACTIVITIES have included helping to establish golf tournaments in Oregon and Washington in which labor, business and po- litical people plus others participate, and in the process raise money for chari- table organizations that serve children. The golf events have generated hun- dreds of thousands of dollars for the charities. Wally and his wife Judi have long been active in the Democratic Party. She was a delegate to the 2004 Democratic National Convention, and he has been involved as a Clackamas County precinct committee person and earlier as chair of the Multnomah County Democratic Central Committee. MEHRENS SAID he wants to publicly thank some unionists who were particularly helpful to him in his career. They include Earl Kirkland, his pred- ecessor mentioned earlier; Tom and LeRoy Worley of Iron Workers Local 29; Jim McNannay of Bricklayers Local 1; Bob Shiprack, executive secretary- treasurer of the Oregon State Building Trades; and Robert Stanfill, one of Shiprack’s predecessors, and Ray Shiprack, Bob’s late father who was manager of Cement Masons Local 555 and later was an international union representa- tive; Del French, who succeeded Ray Shiprack in both jobs; and Billy McNi- cholas and Don Getman, retired pipefitters who were Local 290 business agents. Wally has two brothers, Mike and Marty, who are Local 290 pipefitters; Marty is on the union’s executive board. ★★★ RALPH OLIVER, a union printer who was a participant in the 1959-65 Portland newspaper strike-lockout, died Jan. 25 at age 95. He was a member of Multnomah Typographical Union No. 58 employed at the Oregon Journal as a Linotype operator when the strike-lockout began at that paper and at the Oregonian on Nov. 10, 1959. Local 58 maintained that its members were locked-out of their jobs because the two papers replaced them with strikebreakers when members of the Stereotypers Union went on strike. OLIVER WAS AMONG those union members who were assigned to sell stock in the strike-born Portland Reporter to provide money to help finance the Reporter. He also was a typesetter at the Reporter plant at 1714 NW Over- ton St. After the Reporter ceased publishing, Oliver worked at Portland Lino- type. He was born on April 25, 1910 and lived in the Rose City all of his life. He was a graduate of Benson Polytechnic High School. SURVIVORS INCLUDE his wife, the former Ruth Ekdahl whom he mar- ried in 1940; a daughter, Margaret A. Hoffman, a son, Lee J. Oliver; two grand- children and four greatgrandchildren. A memorial service was held Feb. 4 at St. Mark Presbyterian Church in Southwest Portland. Arrangements were handled by Autumn Funerals and Cre- mations. FEBRUARY 17, 2006 Unionist wishes that all could be on Oregon Health Plan To The Editor: Tim Nesbitt wrote a very thought- provoking article about (Think Again, “What My Daughter and Grandson Can Tell Us About Health Care Reform, Jan. 20) health care reform. But the last two decades have shown us that more and more employers are forcing employees to help shoulder the fast-rising costs of health care. Nesbitt points out that in order to col- lect benefits from the government health care system, we must spend down our own assets and be poor. The experience of my family is also a telling example of what is right and wrong with our health care system. My wife draws Social Security insurance from her disability because she never earned enough work credits in her life. She also qualifies for the Oregon Health Plan. The OHP has been a lifesaver for my wife. Without it she would not be able to afford her lifesaving medicine that prevents her seizures, controls her pain and calms her mind. OHP pays for her medicine and all her doctor bills. Re- cently, she spent a week in the hospital with Crohn’s disease. All paid for by taxpayers. I wish all Oregonians were on the Oregon Health Plan. It would seem only fair that everyone benefit from our gov- ernment health care system. John Kitzhaber’s plan makes perfect Open Forum sense in today’s world-class economy. For employers to be competitive in to- day’s world economy we must un- shackle basic health care away from em- ployers and support it in a fair tax system where everyone pays — good and band employers alike. Why should workers struggle and battle employers, even go on strike, to obtain health care coverage, when basic health care could be made available for all Oregonians through a fair and just tax system? Douglas Heuer Steelworkers Local 8378 Salem Kulongoski had role revamping comp system in ‘90 To The Editor: In your article “Building Trades first labor group to back Kulongoski for re- election” (Jan. 20), a statement by Bob Shiprack about Governor Ted Kulon- goski was misleading. Shiprack credited Kulongoski’s ef- forts “in establishing Oregon’s re- vamped workers’ compensation system that protects injured workers, which is now the envy of many other states.” Before and during the 1990 special session of the Legislature, then-Insur- ance Commissioner Ted Kulongoski was the driving force behind Senate Bill 1197, a major workers’ compensation overhaul. The bill’s major provision in- volved exclusive remedy and provided immunity from civil claims to “negli- gent” employers, even when injury claims were completely denied by the workers’ compensation system, a com- mon occurrence. In 1995, the Oregon Supreme Court found the exclusive remedy provision of 1990 unconstitutional because it denied “due process of law” to workers. In the same year, the State of Washington con- sidered exclusive remedy. Their court ruled that although in the past it may have been acceptable that the blood of the worker was a cost of production, such a standard was no longer the public policy of a state that wished to consider itself civilized. The Oregon Legislature, apparently uncivilized by Washington standards, quickly reworded the associated statutes but kept exclusive remedy intact. Put simply, they voided the court ruling. And Senate Bill 369 (1995) applied retroactively, preventing those denied a constitutional right any justice for harm done to them by illegal legislation. Fast forward to May 2001. Once again the Oregon Supreme Court, in- cluding then-Justice Ted Kulongoski, unanimously find exclusive remedy un- constitutional in a ruling eerily similar to the 1995 decision. With his vote, Ku- longoski was admitting that the 1990 ef- fort he led violated the remedy clause of NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS Article I, Section 10, of the Oregon Con- stitution, which provides that “every [person] shall have remedy by due course of law for injury done him in his person, property, or reputation.” In reaction, the 2001 Legislature re- vamped exclusive remedy, allowing lawsuits only when a claim is com- pletely denied and an employer’s negli- gence caused the injury. Insurers have gotten around the change by awarding some disability, but at a rate so low that many seriously injured workers receive only a few hundred dollars but are sad- dled with thousands in medical bills and never compensated for lost wages. It’s resulted in many Oregonians losing as- sets earned over a lifetime. Bankruptcy is not uncommon. And many expect the 2001 revision to be found unconstitu- tional, too. To give Governor Kulongoski some credit, he has made positive manage- ment changes at the Department of Con- sumer & Business Services and its Workers’ Compensation Division. The agency now acts impartially and not as a servant of insurance companies and other special interests. But the governor vetoed House Bill 2588 last year. Ironi- cally, it would have restored treating physicians to the system that his 2000 legislation took away. The governor did this at a time when many injured can’t find a doctor willing to treat them. To be clear, I could never support Kevin Mannix for governor. During his legislative career, no one there was a bigger stooge for insurers than he. As an insurance company attorney preventing workers from receiving medical treat- ment, he profits handsomely. Mannix is also a lobbyist that advocates for anti- worker legislation. That said, Kulon- goski needs to step up as an advocate for workers in our state. He shouldn’t be the least of two evils. And Shiprack needs to admit that, if other states “envy” us, it’s because of Oregon’s low worker’s comp premiums. As a longtime member of the state’s Management-Labor Advisory Commit- tee, he knows very well that the “re- vamped workers’ comp system” has come at the expense of workers’ safety, health and well-being that have unjustly shattered tens of thousands of families across our state. Ernest Delmazzo Teamsters Co-founder Injured Workers Alliance West Linn Retirees group looking for input To The Editor: I am fortunate to have friends who are younger than me and who are still working. Many of my friends tell me that they don’t believe they’ll ever be able to af- ford to retire. Most of them are over 50 and they’re watching in horror as pen- sion funds evaporate, their Social Secu- rity status is threatened, and they’ve al- ready cashed in some of their 401(k) accounts to keep from going deeper into debt. Often, that debt is due to medical bills because their coverage is no longer adequate, even though they pay an in- creasingly larger share of the monthly premium. Retirees must ally ourselves with as many people in this 50-plus age group as possible. Pre-retirees have the same issues that we do. We MUST start work- ing together. The Oregon Alliance for Retired Americans certainly could use the ideas and energy of younger members. The Alliance is already focused on the cru- cial retirement security issues that they — and we — are concerned about. The message to the soon-to-retire, the hope-to-retire and the never-gonna- retire Baby Boomers is: Please join us! Together we can increase our strength and broaden our message. Verna Porter President Alliance for Retired Americans Portland PAGE 11
