Electrical Workers #280 elects Nicol as business manager
Last month, members of Interna-
tional Brotherhood of Electrical Work-
ers (IBEW) Local 280 voted new lead-
ers into union office.
Local 280, headquartered in Tan-
gent, Oregon, just east of Corvallis,
has 1,068 members in the electrical
construction industry, and a jurisdic-
tion that runs from Woodburn to Cot-
tage Grove and from the Cascade
Range to Crook, Deschutes and Jeffer-
son counties in Central Oregon.
For business manager — the local’s
top office — Local 280’s former polit-
ical director Tim Nicol won 57 percent
of the votes cast, out-polling incum-
bent Dennis Caster and two other can-
didates. At Local 280 as in many
unions, business manager is the one
elected office that’s also a full-time
paid position.
In the race for Local 280 president,
Jerry Fletcher, a current Examining
Board member, beat Mike Spade, the
current vice president. For vice presi-
dent, Drew Lindsey won in a runoff,
after he and Arnold Langendoerfer
were the top two of three candidates in
the first round. Running unopposed
were Tommy Paul for recording secre-
tary and Dave Baker for treasurer.
Members also elected Steve Bebout,
Mike Davis and Wayne Lathrop to the
Executive Board; Julie Emmit, Cory
Miller and Mike Sliper to the Examin-
ing Board; and Jerry Fletcher, Rich
Lofton and Tommy Paul as delegates
to the IBEW international convention.
The new officers will be sworn in
July 20 and take office July 21. All
terms are three years.
Turnout topped 42 percent. The
election was conducted by mail, with
the first round of ballots counted June
7, and the runoff June 28.
Incoming business manager Nicol,
53, grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin,
where both his parents worked as
union factory workers. Nicol became
an IBEW member in 1971, and after a
four-year apprenticeship with IBEW
Local 150 in Northern Illinois, moved
to Junction City, Oregon, where his
wife’s family lived. For 11 years, he
was on the road as a traveling journey-
man electrician, taking short-term jobs
wherever there was union electrical
construction work — and attending lo-
cal union meetings wherever he went.
In 1986 he transferred his membership
to Local 280. At the invitation of busi-
ness manager Al Reddig, he ran for
union office and won election as Local
280 Executive Board member and
then vice president, serving one term
each.
In 1998, then-business manager
Steve Rose hired Nicol to work on
building code enforcement. Local 280
faced competition from renegade con-
tractors using unlicensed electricians,
Nicol said. He soon found that filing
complaints with state enforcers wasn’t
enough, and began to lobby the Ore-
gon Legislature for tougher rules. That
work prompted the local to draft Nicol
as a political coordinator. In the 2004
general election, he helped IBEW Lo-
cal 280 achieve 92 percent voter
turnout, among the highest of any
union in the state.
Nicol's priority, he said, is “provid-
ing more communication to members,
so they can make the decision whether
they want to get involved.”
“Apathy is our biggest enemy,”
Nicol said.
TIM NICOL
Vancouver Hilton workers join UNITE HERE Local 9
VANCOUVER, Wash. — The
Hilton Vancouver Washington is now
the fourth union hotel in the Portland
metro area. Last month, 130 house-
keeping, laundry, restaurant, bar and
banquet workers became members of
the garment and hospitality union
UNITE HERE Local 9.
Under a neutrality agreement signed
before the hotel and adjacent conven-
tion center was built, management
agreed to recognize the union once a
majority of hotel workers signed union
authorization cards, said Jeff Richard-
son, financial secretary-treasurer of Lo-
cal 9.
The complex is owned by the City
of Vancouver’s Downtown Redevelop-
ment Authority, which signed a 15-year
contract with Hilton Hotels Corporation
to manage it. The 226-room hotel is lo-
cated at 301 W. 6th Street, across the
street from Esther Short Park in the
heart of downtown Vancouver.
Organized labor played a major role
in shepherding the $73.1 million deal
through bureaucratic red tape at the
state, county and city levels. Union
members also helped promote a bond
levy to voters to fund the project.
But the new facility hasn’t been
without controversy. The general con-
tractor for construction was from Texas,
and at least a dozen nonunion subcon-
tractors were hired to build it. A large
portion of the project was let to a
nonunion plumbing company, resulting
in picketing by Plumbers and Fitters
Local 290 and the Columbia-Pacific
Building and Construction Trades
Council during construction.
The building trades council called
for a three-year boycott of the hotel and
conference center when it opened June
15, 2005. Building trades officials said
they hope to meet with city officials
soon to discuss ways to end the boycott.
UNITE HERE contract bargaining
for the Hilton Vancouver staff is ex-
pected to begin shortly. Surveys have
been sent to workers, who are meeting
to establish priorities and select mem-
bers of the bargaining team. House-
keepers currently earn $8.50 an hour
and servers make minimum wage plus
tips.
UNITE HERE Local 9 also repre-
sents hotel workers at the Hilton, Ben-
son and Paramount in downtown Port-
land.
BENNETT HARTMAN
MORRIS & KAPLAN, LLP
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