Inside
MEETING NO TICES
See
Page 6
V olume 108
Number 10
Ma y 18, 2007
P ortland
SEIU 49 agrees to no
card check organizing
By DON McINTOSH
Associate Editor
Learning a trade
Trish Chancellor, a journey-level steamfitter out of Plumbers and Fitters Local 290, shows a Reynolds High
School student how to solder a pipe at the 15th annual Women in Trades Fair held May 3-5 at the NECA-IBEW
Training Center in Northeast Portland. Chancellor, of Grants Pass, emphasized the importance of math and
science to the students. “A lot of the students say they’re not good at math, But if you can apply it to something
you like, there is a reason to learn,” she said. Chancellor also told the students about apprenticeship training
and how they work and get paid while they learn a trade. “It’s a great way to make a living and learn a valuable
skill,” said Chancellor, who has attended the fair since 1996. The trades fair is geared toward attracting women
to high-paying, highly-skilled careers in the construction, highway, electrical and mechanical trades. It features
80 hands-on workshops and exhibits led by tradeswomen from apprenticeship training centers, community
colleges, trades-related employment and government agencies. May 3-4 was set aside specifically for junior high
and high school students. May 5 was open to the public. More than 1,350 people attended the trades fair.
Portland-based Service Employees
International Union (SEIU) Local 49
appears to have been targeted for legal
action by the National Right to Work
Legal Defense Foundation, an anti-
union group based in Virginia.
Lawyers for the group helped a Port-
land maintenance worker press a pair
of unfair labor practice complaints
against both Local 49 and his em-
ployer — Somers Building Mainte-
nance (SBM) — a janitorial contractor
based in Sacramento.
In a settlement agreement with the
National Labor Relations Board, Lo-
cal 49 pledged last month not to use
card-check organizing for six months
and SBM agreed to not recognize Lo-
cal 49 for a period of one year unless
the union goes through an NLRB
election. The NLRB is the federal
agency that runs union elections.
SBM is unionized except for sev-
eral locations in Oregon, said Local 49
organizer Maggie Long. A couple
years ago, the company agreed to a
stance of neutrality toward union
drives at its nonunion locations, and
said it would grant union recognition
where SEIU presented authorization
cards from a majority at any location.
So in January 2006, Long and fel-
low Local 49 organizer Silvia Ruiz
began contacting workers from a 33-
worker SBM unit that cleans a Port-
land silicon wafer plant owned by Sil-
tronics. Working from a list provided
by the company, they began visiting
workers in their homes to tout the
merits of belonging to a union. By
June, Long says, they believed they’d
signed up a majority, and presented
cards to the company. But SBM man-
agers held off on union recognition,
saying that in fact the union was short
of a majority. And then three SBM-
Siltronic workers wrote to the union
saying they’d changed their mind.
Notwithstanding SBM’s neutrality
commitment, Long says she thinks
company managers provoked the turn-
arounds in mandatory one-on-one
meetings with workers. Meanwhile,
the company experienced turnover, so
that the slim pro-union majority that
existed in June evaporated.
Nonetheless, on Oct. 12, SBM
agreed to recognize the union retroac-
tively, on the basis of the ostensible
majority in June.
That ran afoul of NLRB rules. So-
called “card-check” agreements like
the one SEIU had with SBM rely on a
provision in the law that allows em-
ployers to voluntarily recognize a
union where there is majority support
for it — without going through an
NLRB-supervised election. But the
law forbids granting or accepting
union recognition unless there is some
objective demonstration that the union
has a majority.
Unions prefer card check because
they say the NLRB election ground
rules tilt the field heavily in the em-
ployers’ favor, and are working to
make card check possible by passing
the Employee Free Choice Act in
Congress. Employer groups, including
the National Right to Work Founda-
tion, are pushing a bill that would out-
(Turn to Page 3)
Major reform possible in immigration policy, proponents believe
Major reform of U.S. immigration policy may soon be coming.
As of press time, U.S. Senators Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) and John
Kyl (R-Ariz.) were negotiating with the White House. If they
hammer out an agreement, the Senate could debate and pass an
immigration reform bill by Memorial Day, which would then go
to the U.S. House of Representatives for approval. On the other
hand, if they fail to come up with a bill the president will sign,
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has said he will
schedule as much as two weeks for the Senate to debate proposals,
such as one the Senate approved last year when Congress was in
Republican hands. That bill failed because it couldn’t be recon-
ciled with an enforcement-only bill that passed the House.
If the two sides do reach a compromise, it will most likely in-
clude:
• Increased border enforcement;
• Quicker and easier ways for employers to verify employees’
legal status, but tougher penalties on employers who hire illegal
immigrants;
• A path to legal status for illegal immigrants who are now
working in the United States; and
• A guest worker program that would allow employers to bring
in new immigrant workers.
Both labor and business interests are working intently behind
the scenes to make sure any reform is one they can live with. Busi-
ness, represented by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, wants a
steady supply of immigrant workers. Labor, chiefly the AFL-CIO
and several members of the Change to Win union federation,
wants a policy that protects American workers — in part by ensur-
ing immigrant workers have some kind of legal status and basic
workers’ rights, so they can’t serve as super-exploited competitors
to other workers.
U.S. population surpassed 300 million last year, and about 36
million of those are foreign-born. Of foreign-born U.S. residents,
just over a third are naturalized U.S. citizens, a third are legal resi-
(Turn to Page 4)