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About Northwest labor press. (Portland , Ore.) 1987-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 17, 2006)
Let me say this about that Kentucky River decision AFL-CIO complains to United Nations ...IWW’s Joe Hill recalled that new supervisor rule violates rights (From Page 2) from closed sessions that daily newspaper reporters were allowed to attend. He was on the board for 12 years. Within the labor movement, Allen was appointed as the reading clerk of the Multnomah County Labor Council and chaired the Oregon State Federation of Labor’s Law and Legislation Committee at conventions. (The Oregon AFL- CIO was not formed until 1956, five years after Allen had moved on.) ALLEN LEFT the Labor Press in 1951 to become secretary and man- ager of the Associated Restaurants of Oregon. He later operated several union- ized restaurants. He served for many years as chairman of the Hotel and Restaurant and Beverage Employees Health & Welfare Trust Fund and the Oregon Hospitality Service Pension Trust Fund. Active in politics first as a Democrat and later as a Republican, Gene Allen was elected as a state senator in the Oregon Legislature in 1952 and served one four-year term. Later he was appointed to the Multnomah County Civil Ser- vice Commission. Another activity in his career after the Labor Press was teaching economics at Multnomah College where he also held the office of dean. Another job he held was executive secretary of Downtown Portland Inc. HIS LAST occupational pursuit was dealing in real estate and business opportunities. He died in 1991 at age 76. Allen’s successor as Labor Press editor was James W. Goodsell. ★★★ LABOR MARTYR Joe Hill’s execution by a State of Utah firing squad took place on Nov. 19, 1915 — 91 years ago. Hill, an organizer and trouba- dour for the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), was shot to death be- cause he’d been convicted of murder in the case of a Salt Lake City grocer and his son who were killed by gun- fire in a night-time robbery on Jan. 10, 1914. The crime was said to have been committed by two men whose faces were covered by red kerchiefs. A fired handgun was found by the son’s body, causing police to think he had wounded one or both of the rob- bers. The storekeeper was a former policeman who had voiced fear that someone he’d once arrested might one day seek revenge. HILL WAS ARRESTED and charged with the crime after a doctor told police he had treated him for a JOE HILL bullet wound the night of the shoot- ings. Hill’s alibi was that he’d been shot by a man in a dispute over a woman, but he refused to identify either of them. To avoid involving his union, known as the Wobblies, Hill told police his name was Joseph Hillstrom. That was a name he’d used in an attempt to hood- wink an employer blacklist of Wobblies. Bosses in the West, where the IWW was strong, thought they could starve out the militant IWW if they could deny them employment. Joe later adopted the name Joe Hill and it was under that name that he became known for his singing of songs he’d written and ac- companying his singing with his guitar playing. Joe’s real name was Joel Hag- glund, given him by his Swedish parents when he was born in the Scandina- vian country on Oct. 7, 1879. He had left home for life in the United States in 1902. JOE’S NAME RUSE was discovered by a Salt Lake newspaper, which re- sulted in attracting worldwide attention to his trial. A labor historian wrote: “Despite the flimsy evidence, a hostile judge, a vengeful prosecutor and an en- flamed press succeeded in securing a conviction.” Worldwide protests criticized the trial’s outcome and the subsequent death sentence. U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, the Swedish government, AFL President Sam Gompers and many others sent protesting telegrams and letters to Utah’s anti-union Republican governor. But he didn’t budge. “DON’T WASTE any time mourning. Organize!” was Joe Hill’s message to his IWW colleagues. Displaying his sense of humor, Hill wrote to IWW leader “Big Bill” Haywood to ask that he arrange for his body to be moved from Utah to neighboring Wyoming “because I don’t want to be caught dead in Utah.” The IWW shipped Hill’s body to Chicago, site of the union’s headquar- ters,where 30,000 mourners attended his funeral. His ashes were later scat- tered in every state but Utah. NOVEMBER 17, 2006 WASHINGTON, D.C. — Claiming the recent decisions by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in a trio of cases destroy workers’ collective power by denying their freedom to form unions and bargain collectively, the na- tional AFL-CIO last month filed a complaint with the International Labor Organization (ILO), an arm of the United Nations. AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said the NLRB ruling strips millions of America’s workers of a fundamental human right recognized all over the globe — the freedom to bargain collec- tively and have a voice on job. The complaint to the ILO’s Com- mittee on Freedom of Association al- leges the decisions violate the funda- mental internationally recognized labor rights of freedom to form and join unions and engage in collective bar- gaining. In the Oct. 3 ruling, the Bush-ap- pointed majority on the NLRB broad- ened the definition of supervisor, open- ing the door for workers, including nurses, building trades workers, news- paper and television employees and others to be barred from joining unions. The 3-2 party-line vote gave employers the ability to transform workers with sporadic oversight over co-workers into “supervisors” even when they lack gen- uine managerial or supervisory author- ity, the AFL-CIO said. In their dissent, NLRB members Wilma Liebman and Dennis Walsh said the decision “threatens to create a new class of workers under federal labor law — workers who have neither the genuine prerogatives of management, nor the statutory rights of ordinary employees.” Liebman and Walsh wrote that most NOLC picks winners Most of the candidates and ballot measures endorsed by the Northwest Oregon Labor Council won on Nov. 7. The labor-backed Portland Public School Levy, Measure 26-84, passed easily, and a bond levy for the Hills- boro School District also was ap- proved. Cheryl Albrecht was elected Cir- cuit Court judge for Position 31; Lynn Peterson was elected Clackamas County commissioner in a three-per- son race; Dick Strathern was elected to the Gresham City Council; and Kathryn Harrington was tapped for Metro councilor in District 4. The only NOLC-endorsed candi- date to lose was Mary Overgaard, who placed second in a nine-person race for Circuit Judge in Position 28. Winner Judith Hudson Matarazzo captured 21.48 percent of the vote to Overgaard’s 20.71, in unofficial re- turns. NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS professionals and other workers could fall under the new definition of super- visor, “who by 2012 could number al- most 34 million, accounting for 23.3 percent of the workforce.” The Repub- lican majority did not follow what Con- gress intended in applying the National Labor Relations Act, Liebman and Walsh said: “Congress cared about the precise scope of the Act’s definition of ‘super- visor,’and so should the Board. Instead, the majority’s decision reflects an un- fortunate failure to engage in the sort of reasoned decision-making that Con- gress expected from the Board, which has the primary responsibility for de- veloping and applying national labor policy.” In the ILO complaint, the AFL-CIO said the Board’s ruling violates ILO standards specifying that all workers “without distinction whatsoever” have the right to freedom of association, in- cluding the right to join a union and bar- gain collectively. All ILO member countries, including the United States, are bound to respect these principles. The AFL-CIO complaint cited ear- lier rulings by the ILO’s Committee on Freedom of Association in cases from other countries involving supervisory status of employees. In those cases, the committee declared that “the expression ‘supervisors’should be limited to cover only those persons who genuinely rep- resent the interests of employers,” and that changing employees’ status to un- dermine the membership of workers’ trade unions is contrary to the principle of freedom of association. Although the ILO committee does not have enforcement power to change national labor laws, the AFL-CIO asked the body to add its “authoritative voice and moral weight in the international community” in a push for legislation to restore the traditional, more balanced test for supervisory status, limiting it to gen- uine supervisors and managers. The federation also asked the Geneva, Switzerland-based committee to send a special delegation to the United States to investigate the effects of the NLRB’s decision. BENNETT HARTMAN MORRIS & KAPLAN, LLP Attorneys at Law Representing Unions and Workers Since 1960 S ERIOUS I NJURY AND D EATH C ASES • C ONSTRUCTION I NJURIES • A UTOMOBILE A CCIDENTS • M EDICAL , D ENTAL AND L EGAL M ALPRACTICE • U NSAFE P RODUCTS • B ICYCLE AND M OTORCYCLE A CCIDENTS • P EDESTRIAN A CCIDENTS • P REMISES L IABILITY ( INJURIES ON PROPERTY ) • W ORKERS ’ C OMPENSATION I NJURIES 111 SW Fifth Avenue, Suite 1650, Portland, Oregon 97204 503 227-4600 www.bennetthartman.com (Our Legal Staff are Proud Members of UFCW Local 555) PAGE 11
