First U.S.-made streetcars will carry union label
School District hires
former union official
for labor relations job
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lene Hooley and Earl Blumenauer,
Portland Mayor Tom Potter, Portland
City Commissioner Sam Adams,
Clackamas County commissioners,
and TriMet General Manager Fred
Hansen for the announcement.
Funding for the project was secured
as a $4 million line-item in the 2005
Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient
Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy
for Users (SAFETEA-LU) bill, which
authorizes the federal surface trans-
portation programs for highways,
highway safety, and transit for the five-
year period 2005-2009.
United Streetcar LLC will build a
prototype streetcar based on the model
currently manufactured in the Czech
Republic by Skoda, which makes cars
Kaiser gets okay to build new hospital
Kaiser Permanente has received approval from Oregon state regulators to
build a $285 million hospital on a 15-acre site in the Tanasbourne area of Wash-
ington County.
Kaiser has historically used union contractors and workers on its construction
projects.
The 138-bed, 380,000-square-foot facility will house surgical suites, an inten-
sive care unit, an emergency department, a labor and delivery unit and a phar-
macy. The campus will also include a specialty care medical office and outpatient
surgery center.
State law charges the Oregon Department of Human Services with reviewing
proposals for new hospitals and nursing facilities to ensure health-care con-
sumers don’t pay for the cost of unnecessary facilities.
The hospital is projected to be complete in 2011.
for Portland’s streetcar system.
If interest in streetcars develops,
United Streetcar could be supplying
them to cities across North America.
“We believe there are 80 cities in-
terested in streetcar systems,” said De-
Fazio, chairman of the House Sub-
committee on Transportation. “The
resurgence of streetcars throughout the
United States will play an increasing
role in urban transit.”
According to Chandra Brown, vice
president of Oregon Iron Works, the
project will create 20 new jobs, with
the potential for hundreds more as na-
tional demand increases.
“We intend to provide modern, effi-
cient American-produced streetcars,
and to be a pioneering force in increas-
ing urban transit options throughout
the United States,” Brown said.
Using United Streetcar, a domestic
company, means the streetcar would
comply with all federal Buy American
rules.
“This project is a shining example
of how when we come together across
public and private sector lines, that we
can deliver economic benefits for busi-
nesses, individual Oregonians and our
communities,” Kulongoski said.
When the prototype streetcar is com-
pleted it will be added to the Portland
Streetcar fleet, increasing capacity and
working towards the expansion of
streetcar service to the Eastside, Lake
Oswego, and city-wide.
Oregon Iron Works is a specialized
fabrication and manufacturing company
that produces components for the U.S.
and foreign governments, as well as
dams, bridges and other civil engineer-
ing and commercial projects. The com-
pany employs over 400.
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Electricians, Carpenters, Laborers, Glaziers, Sheetmetal Workers, Floorcoverers, Bricklayers, Cement Masons, Roofer, Asbestos Workers, Family, Mill Wrights, Painters, Elevators, Plasterers
Tom Gunn, a former grievance di-
rector for United Food and Commercial
Workers Local 555 and a business agent
for Oregon Council 75 of the American
Federation of State, County and Mu-
nicipal Employees, has been hired as
director of labor relations for Portland
Public Schools.
Gunn worked for AFSCME during
the 1980s, leaving in 1991 to accept a
governor’s appointment to the Oregon
Workers Compensation Board. He
served there until 1996. He then joined
the Local 555 staff before leaving to
take a job as employment relations
manager for Marion County in Salem.
Gunn has a full agenda at the school
district, where the 15-union District
Council of Unions has been working
under the terms of a contract that ex-
pired in 2006. Negotiations also are on-
going with classified employees and
cafeteria workers. The Oregon Educa-
tion Association contract doesn’t open
until 2008, and bargaining has yet to be-
gin for school custodians, who were re-
instated last year by order of the Ore-
gon Supreme Court.
“People at the School District are in-
terested in solving problems, not creat-
ing them,” Gunn said. “The direction
for me is to build a collaborative rela-
tionship with the unions.”
Gunn, 58, lives in Hillsboro with his
wife, Pearl, a retired school teacher.
Electricians, Carpenters, Laborers, Glaziers, Sheetmetal Workers, Floorcoverers, Bricklayers, Cement Masons, Roofer, Asbestos Workers, Family, Mill Wrights, Painters, Elevators, Plasterers
TOM GUNN
The nation’s first U.S.-manufac-
tured modern streetcars will be union-
built at Oregon Iron Works.
At a press conference Jan. 26 at the
company’s headquarters in Clacka-
mas, company officials, politicians and
union leaders announced that Oregon
Iron Works, through its subsidiary
United Streetcar, LLC, had secured a
$4 million contract to manufacture a
prototype streetcar for the City of Port-
land.
“It will create dozens of good union
jobs,” said Mike Lappier, business
manager of Iron Workers Shopmen’s
Local 516, which represents workers
at Oregon Iron Works.
Lappier joined Gov. Ted Kulon-
goski, U.S. Reps. Peter DeFazio, Dar-
Glaziers, Carpenters, Laborers, Electricians, Sheetmetal Workers, Floorcoverers, Bricklayers, Cement Masons, Roofers, Asbestos Workers, Family, Mill Wrights, Painters, Elevators, Plasterers
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
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