Let me say this about that
—By Gene Klare
...Labor’s 2007 legislative agenda
(From Page 1)
Fame for Billy Mitchell
BILLY MITCHELL, a retired officer of Portland-based Iron Workers Local
29, takes center stage in this first issue of 2007 of the Northwest Labor Press as
the newest honoree in the Labor Hall of Fame, which is sponsored by the North-
west Oregon Labor Retirees Council.
The Retirees Council is affiliated with the NW Oregon Labor Council, AFL-
CIO, and meets monthly in the NOLC boardroom at 1125 SE Madison St., Port-
land.
MITCHELL, 70, retired in 1993
from the presidency of Local 29; he
also was the assistant to the union’s
business manager, Tom Worley. Earlier
in his career, Mitchell had been the
business manager.
Billy T. Mitchell was born on June
10, 1936 at the family home in McLen-
nan County, Texas, near the town of
Lorena, which is south of Waco. He
graduated from high school at nearby
Gatesville, and later served in the U.S.
Navy. He was an engineman on the
USS St. Paul, a cruiser which operated
in the Pacific Ocean’s Far East region,
docking in Japan and Taiwan. The first
time he saw the Pacific Northwest was
when his ship was drydocked at Bre-
merton, Washington, for repairs at the
U S. Naval Shipyard there.
BILLY MITCHELL
AFTER HIS NAVY SERVICE,
Mitchell returned to Texas, working
construction in Dallas and Houston. In Houston, he worked on permit from the
Iron Workers local union there. The contractor he worked for in Houston ob-
tained a major project in Kalispell, Montana, where Mitchell became a member
of the Iron Workers Union in 1964. From there he moved to Portland in 1966 and
transferred his membership into Local 29. At that time Local 29 was still in the
old Labor Temple, diagonally across the street from City Hall, and John O’Hal-
loran was the business manager. (Local 29 and other tenants of the Labor Tem-
ple, including the Labor Press, moved into the new Labor Center at SW First
and Arthur in mid-June of 1966.)
Mitchell told the Labor Press that he “worked all over the country” as a mem-
ber of Local 29. Later, working in Portland, he became active in the union and
was elected sergeant-at-arms, and next was elected as an Executive Board mem-
ber and a delegate to the Pacific Northwest Iron Workers District Council. He was
tapped by Local 29 Business Manager LeRoy Worley to be his assistant in 1978.
When Worley was appointed a general organizer by the Iron Workers Interna-
tional in 1981, Mitchell succeeded him as business manager. (LeRoy Worley ad-
vanced in the International to a vice president and later was the union’s general
secretary in Washington, D.C. When he retired, he retuned to the Pacific North-
west. LeRoy and Tom are brothers.)
MITCHELL REPRESENTED Local 29 as a delegate to various labor or-
ganizations including the Columbia-Pacific and Oregon State Building and Con-
struction Trades Councils, the Oregon AFL-CIO and, of course, conventions of
the International Association of Bridge, Structural and Ornamental Iron Workers.
He served as a trustee of health & welfare and pension trust funds covering Lo-
cal 29’s members.
JOBS IN OREGON were scarce in the Reagan Recession after Republican
Ronald Reagan, elected in 1980, had been in office a couple of years. Mitchell
and Tom Worley decided to work together on projects in California. They re-
managers bring in a speaker to talk
about the perils of unionism, and re-
quire employees to attend. Oregon
unions will be backing a local version
of a bill that passed last year in New
Jersey which prohibits employers from
requiring attendance at any meeting to
communicate an opinion about reli-
gious or political matters.
• Ban the use of public funds to
fight unionization. Any employer that
gets grants, contracts or subsidies from
the state government would be prohib-
ited from spending money to oppose
union campaigns among its employees.
• Extend union rights to farm-
workers. Farmworker advocates want
Oregon to adopt a variant of a Califor-
nia law that gives farmworkers a
process for unionizing. It includes
union recognition on the basis of “card
check,” and binding arbitration to set-
tle a first labor agreement.
• Get full collective bargaining
rights for state-subsidized child care
providers. The American Federation
of State, County and Municipal Em-
ployees and the Service Employees In-
ternational Union will try to expand
b h
m k
the collective bargaining rights of a
group of child care providers they rep-
resent under a pair of governor’s exec-
utive orders. Right now the orders di-
rect only that the state agency
overseeing the low-income child care
subsidy “meet and confer” with the
unions as representatives of the
providers, and honor the terms of in-
formal agreements they reach.
P ROMOTING J OB G ROWTH OF
D ECENT P AYING J OBS
• Invest in infrastructure. Building
trades unions will back Governor Ku-
longoski’s proposals for new rounds of
public investment, which will provide
employment to thousands of construc-
tion workers. The proposals include up
to $600 million in bonds to finance re-
pair and upgrade of college buildings;
lottery-backed bonds to build a new
light-rail line connecting Portland and
Milwaukie; and $100 million to up-
grade port facilities, railroads, airports
and transit systems. Unions will also
support a plan backed by business in-
terests to raise fuel tax and vehicle reg-
istration fees to deal with highway
maintenance and congestion problems.
• Stimulate growth in the alterna-
Bennett Hartman
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Oregon’s Full Service Union Law Firm
Representing Workers Since 1960
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• Construction Injuries
• Automobile Accidents
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• Pedestrian Accidents
• Premises Liability (injuries on premises)
• Workers’ Compensation Injuries
• Social Security Claims
tive energy industry. The Oregon
AFL-CIO has been working with envi-
ronmental groups in the Fair and
Clean Energy Coalition, and con-
tributed ideas to a governor’s task
force on the subject. Unions will be
backing the governor’s proposals,
which include requiring utilities to
generate 25 percent of their electricity
from renewable resources by 2025; in-
creasing the ethanol content of gaso-
line and the availability of biodiesel;
raising the tax credit for investment in
alternative energy projects; and devel-
oping the nation’s first commercial-
scale wave energy park. Unions will
want to add one thing to the governor’s
package that’s not in there now —
some assurance that the jobs created
will be family wage jobs and will be in
Oregon.
• Assure that mixed public-private
construction projects pay the prevail-
ing wage. Building trades unions ex-
pect to go to Salem hand-in-hand with
their longtime adversary, the Portland
Development Commission (PDC), to
pass a compromise law resolving a
long-contested issue — whether proj-
ects that mix public and private money
must pay state-mandated “prevailing
wages” to construction workers. Both
parties have agreed to back a bill that
says any project with more than $1
million of taxpayer money would
have to pay prevailing wage, regard-
less of how much private money went
into project.
G IVING G OVERNMENT T HE
R ESOURCES T O G ET T HE J OB D ONE
Right-wing Republicans want the
poor, sick and elderly to turn to the
private sector, not government, for
aid, and they don’t like government
regulatory restraints on corporations.
So they’ve worked over the years to
deprive state and local governments
of resources. Now, a return to Democ-
ratic control is raising hopes of “tax
fairness” and greater stability of fund-
ing for schools, law enforcement and
other priorities. Here are some ideas
the governor is proposing, with union
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NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
JANUARY 5, 2007