Local Motion
June 2006
Union election activity in Oregon and SW Washington,
according to the National Labor Relations Board
and the Oregon Employment Relations Board
Elections held
Results:
Company
Date
Union
Union
No
Union
Bend
6
1
Sweet Home
14
16
Bend
11
5
Wasco County (Parole & Probation)
5/23
FOPPO
The Dalles
5
0
Sherm’s Thunderbird Market
6/21
Bakers Local 114
6
1
Location
Beko Membrane Technology
5/31
Machinists Lodge 1
Twin Oaks Rehabilitation
6/8
SEIU Local 503
Deschutes County (Parole & Probation)
5/18
FOPPO
Roseburg
ILWU holds Bloody Thursday memorial
Elections requested
Company
Union
Location
# of employees
Trouble Free Plumbing Company (decertification)
Plumbers and Fitters Local 290
Molalla
3
Vanport Fire Sprinklers
Road Sprinkler Fitters Local 669
Vancouver
10
Americold Logistics
Teamsters Local 324
Woodburn
23
Laidlaw (decertification)
Public School Employees of Washington
Battle Ground
7
‘Union Man’ to show at Clinton Theater
“A Union Man: The Life and Work
of Julius Margolin” will be shown at
the Clinton Street Theater, 2522 SE
Clinton Street, Sunday, July 23 at 7:30
p.m.
Margolin, 89, is considered a living
legend in the New York City labor
movement. He’s been active since the
1930s in the CIO, the National Mar-
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itime Union and Alliance of Theatrical
and Stage Employees. In 1999, he em-
barked on a new career, making music
with George Mann.
Following the film, Margolin and
Mann will perform labor and folk
songs.
Admission is $7, or $5 for seniors,
children and those unemployed.
“Bloody Thursday” fell on a Wednesday
this year for members of the International
Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU).
That’s because the Thursday referred to
was Thursday, July 5, 1934, the day two San
Francisco dock workers were shot dead by
police during a West Coast port strike.
It was a founding moment in ILWU his-
tory, and in commemoration, ILWU con-
tracts list July 5 as a paid holiday. Every year,
members of Longshore locals gather to
honor the martyred workers. At first, Port-
land longshoremen marked the date with
solemn marches downtown and wreaths of
flowers dropped in the river from bridges.
In recent years, the commemoration has
come to take the form of a picnic at Oaks
Park.
At this year’s event, before the hot dogs
and bingo, there were memories.
Portland had its own bloody dock strike
in 1934, with prominent businessmen form-
ing a committee to try to break the strike, and
strikers facing off against strikebreakers es-
corted by police and private security guards.
Six days after the San Francisco killings,
Portland police shot and wounded four strik-
ing longshoremen near Terminal 4 in St.
Johns.
Longshore worker Marvin Ricks (pic-
tured at right), now retired, took part in the
Portland dock strike, and spent 42 days in jail
on murder charges. The accusation, later
dropped, was that he shot into the Northeast
Alberta Street meeting hall of the company-
run union that strikebreakers belonged to.
Authorities eventually concluded that the
victim was shot by a fellow strikebreaker
who was shooting at strikers outside the hall.
In every West Coast city, there were po-
lice shootings of strikers, Ricks told the
crowd at Oaks Park.
“We weren’t discouraged,” Ricks said.
“We were irritated.”
Dockworkers were on strike to demand
that employers recognize their union, and
agree to a union-run hiring hall. And while
on strike, they weren’t going to let anyone in
to take their jobs, never mind what the law or
the police said.
At Terminal 4 in St. Johns, several hun-
dred police tried to disperse hundreds of
picketers blocking a train from getting
through. After the melee in which four strik-
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
ers were shot, the pickets were eventually moved off the tracks. But the train
went nowhere: Picketers had greased the tracks with lard, soap and axle
grease.
In the second volume of his history of Portland, historian E. Kimbark
MacColl calls the strike “the most devastating work stoppage in Oregon’s
history.”
The strike lasted from May 9 to July 31, involved about 3,000 waterfront
workers, and paralyzed Portland’s commercial life. It also put thousands of
others out of work temporarily, including lumber mill workers and workers in
the grain business, who couldn’t ship their products.
Eventually, shippers realized they weren’t going to be able to reopen the
port, and agreed to arbitrate union workers’ list of demands, thus ending the
strike.
Back to the present, at Oaks Park, the speeches concluded with a proces-
sion. Accompanied by recorded bagpipe playing “Auld Lang Syne,” the
crowd of longshore workers and family members made its way to the river-
side. There, as a bugle played taps, two boatmen carried a wreath of flowers
out and laid it into the Willamette River. The wreath was festooned with a rib-
bon that read “In memory of those who gave their lives July 5, 1934.”
“I read the history and I asked myself, ‘What were they thinking when
they faced cops with clubs? ‘“ said Tom Chamberlain, president of the Ore-
gon AFL-CIO. “They weren’t thinking about the impact on future genera-
tions. They were thinking about how they could hold the line and feed their
families.
“It’s time for us to get off our hands and do what they did in ‘34.”
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