Let me say this about that
—By Gene Klare
George Brown, a legend
GEORGE BROWN, a legendary lobbyist and political strategist for the
Oregon labor movement, gets the spotlight in this edition as a new member of
the Labor Honor Roll, which the Northwest Labor Press started to salute labor
stalwarts of bygone years.
The Labor Honor Roll provides recognition to men and women of the past
who are not eligible for the Labor Hall of Fame sponsored by the Northwest
Oregon Labor Retirees Council because the
Hall of Fame was established to honor retired
unionists while they are still living.
BROWN SERVED the Oregon AFL-CIO
as its elected director of political education and
legislation from the 1956 merger of the state
councils of the American Federation of Labor
and Congress of Industrial Organizations until
his retirement in 1969. Prior to the merger,
Brown was the executive secretary-treasurer
of the Oregon CIO State Council, a post he
was first elected to in 1949. That year he took
over the the state leadership of the CIO from
Stanley Earl, who left to undertake an assign-
ment in Korea for the United States Govern-
GEORGE BROWN
ment. Upon Earl’s return from Korea, he was
elected as a Portland city commissioner in 1952 and continued at City Hall
until his death in 1970.
BROWN AND EARL had started working together at the old Multnomah
Plywood Co. sawmill in 1934; Earl became president with Brown as vice pres-
ident of the AFL Lumber and Sawmill Workers local union at the mill. Later,
because of dissatisfaction with their union’s national leadership in the big 1935
strike to organize the Northwest lumber industry, Brown and Earl broke away
and helped form the International Woodworkers of America as a CIO union.
Brown became an IWA organizer, achieving his first big success in Longview,
Washington. In a series of bargaining rights elections there, the IWA got 5,000
members in two days. That had a two-fold significance: It was the key to or-
ganizing the rest of the industry in the Northwest, and it provided the votes
needed within the union to oust Communist-leaning leaders.
FOR 14 YEARS, Brown dedicated his energies to the rough-and-tumble
job of organizing logging and sawmill workers. He spent some of his organiz-
ing years in the South, where he insisted that the locals he organized be racially
integrated. Brown did some of his organizing in Oklahoma, where he was born
on Nov. 6, 1902, which was five years before it became the nation’s 46th state.
While trying to organize a sawmill in a small Oklahoma town, Brown was
alerted by some of the mill’s workers that the bosses and their goons were
planning to tar-and-feather him and chase him out of town. Forewarned, Brown
left before the gang got ready to look for him.
Brown, who eventually became the IWA’s director of organizing, did ex-
tensive organizing in Canada. When he left the IWA job in 1949 to head up the
State CIO Council, the Portland-headquartered IWA had grown from a mem-
bership of 15,000 to 150,000.
IN THE YEARS prior to the 1956 merger of the AFL and CIO, Brown and
his AFL counterpart James T. Marr (profiled in the last issue), cooperated on
politics and legislation so they could be more effective in representing workers’
interests. That cooperation reaped rewards, as was noted in the Marr article, in
the mid-1950s elections of Democrats to federal and state offices.
Over the years, George Brown put in countless hours as a spokesman for or-
ganized labor and a representative of workers’ interests while serving on gov-
ernmental and civic boards, commissions and committees. Among his major
contributions was service on a committee appointed by Portland Mayor Terry
D. Schrunk that eventually saw the formation of the TriMet Transit System as
a public agency which replaced a privately-owned bus line.
(Continued in Next Issue)
PAGE 2
Providence bosses frown on state
official’s role on ‘Fair Elections’ panel
After Oregon Secretary of State Bill
Bradbury agreed to look at the union
election rights of workers at Providence
Health Systems, he got a pair of threat
letters from Providence and its industry
association.
Service Employees International
Union Local 49 has been engaged in a
massive organizing campaign at several
Providence hospitals in the Portland
area for over a year, but the union has
been hesitant to file for a union election
unless Providence commits to a set of
ground rules. In campaigns in other
states, Providence — a Catholic-owned
nonprofit health system — has used le-
gal avenues under the National Labor
Relations Act to mount vigorous anti-
union campaigns that sometimes slow
or defeat union drives.
Bradbury had agreed to chair a May
25 hearing of a “Fair Election Oversight
Commission,” made up of members of
the activist group Jobs with Justice’s
Workers Rights Board. The Board is
comprised of religious, political and
community leaders who agree to use
their moral authority to advocate for
workers’ rights, usually with letters to
employers and sometimes in unofficial
but quasi-judicial “hearings” that result
in recommendations for neutrality.
As secretary of state, it’s Bradbury’s
duty to ensure free and fair elections for
public office.
But intervening in a union election
was going too far, said Providence CEO
Russ Danielson.
“Your decision to insert the office of
secretary of state into a private organi- law,” Bradbury said. “If that’s their re-
zation’s labor issues is both perplexing sponse to me, a statewide elected leader,
and disturbing,” Danielson wrote in a it makes me wonder what it’s going to
May 17 letter to Bradbury. “There sim- be like for the workers who want to
ply is no merit, precedent, or legal foun- form a union.”
Undeterred,
dation for your at-
Bradbury went a-
tempts to use your
head with the hear-
office as a vehicle If that’s their response
ing, and in a phone
for attempting to to me, a statewide
call to Danielson
legislate the union
and a letter to the
and labor issues of elected leader, it makes
hospital association,
a private com- me wonder what it’s
explained why: De-
pany.”
mocratic principles
“It would be in- going to be like for the
are not limited to
effective and leg- workers who want to
elections for public
ally questionable
office. Just as he ad-
to attend the meet- form a union.’
vocates for demo-
ing of a commis-
cratic principles
sion that — by law
— should not exist. We officially re- when he meets with foreign dignitaries,
quest that you disband this commis- Bradbury said, he encourages public
sion.… My belief is that responsible support for the right of Providence
Oregonians would strongly encourage workers for a free and fair election.
The hearing at the Portland Building
you to refocus your energies (and the
taxpayer’s dollars) on the official duties was packed wall-to-wall with Provi-
prescribed to you as Oregon’s secretary dence workers, union leaders and pro-
labor activists. SEIU brought Provi-
of state.”
CEO Andrew Davidson, president of dence workers from New York,
the Oregon Association of Hospitals California, and Yakima, Wash., to tes-
and Health Systems, sent a similar letter tify along with workers from the Port-
the same day, inquiring about what land area. There was a note-taker, and
statutory authority Bradbury had to con- simultaneous translation into Russian
vene such a meeting. The letters can be and Spanish.
“NLRB [National Labor Relations
viewed in their entirety on the North-
west Labor Press Web site at Board union certification] elections
www.nwlaborpress.org/2006/6-2- look more like the discredited practices
of rogue regimes abroad than like any-
06WRB.html
“They vaguely threatened, without thing we would call American,” testified
directly saying it, that I’ve broken the
(Turn to Page 3)
‘
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