Let me say this about that
—By Gene Klare
Fame for Per Fagereng
THE LABOR HALL OF FAME has a new member: Per (pronounced Pear)
Fagereng, 73, of Portland, who in the course of his working career belonged to
seven labor unions. He was voted into the Hall of Fame by the sponsoring North-
west Oregon Labor Retirees Council. The Retirees are affiliated with the NW Ore-
gon Labor Council, AFL-CIO.
Per Daniel Fagereng was born on Feb. 7, 1934 in New York City. His parents
were immigrants from Norway. After his father,
Edvard, became a certified public accountant, the
family moved to suburban Long Island. Per’s
mother, Lily, was a nurse. Per went to grade school
and high school on Long Island.
PER JOINED his first union at age 15 when
he worked in a summer job as a mess boy on a Nor-
wegian freighter and joined a Norwegian maritime
union. After high school, he attended Brown Uni-
versity in Providence, Rhode Island, from which
he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in philoso-
phy. A summer job in college took him to Alaska
where he worked for a gold mining company. After
college came service in the United States Army
from 1956 to 1959. Following basic training at Fort
PER FAGERENG
Ord in California, he was assigned to a base in Ger-
many where he served as a mail clerk and played
soccer on an Army team against German teams. He finished his Army service at
Fort Benning in Georgia and was honorably discharged with the two stripes of a
specialist-fourth.
AFTER THE ARMY, Fagereng went to San Francisco, which he became in-
terested in while at nearby Fort Ord. There he joined his second union, the Team-
sters, while working as a taxi driver. He also worked as a stock clerk in an I. Magnin
store. He next got a job in the circulation department of the San Francisco News
Call-Bulletin, a newspaper that was the product of a merger of the News and the
Call-Bulletin. The Call-Bulletin was the product of an earlier merger. Next came a
job as a copyboy in the paper’s newsroom ,which led to a copy editing job wearing
a green-visored eyeshade on the copydesk. Newspaper work put Fagereng in his
third union, The Newspaper Guild. “I liked that job,” he said. “I stayed nearly 15
years.” He walked the picket line during a strike in the 1960s. He went through a
merger when the S.F. Examiner took over the News Call-Bulletin. He also got
married and started a family.
Fagereng and his wife, Susan and their sons moved to the Oregon Coast in 1976
and built a house at Nehalem in Tillamook County. He worked at odd jobs there be-
fore deciding to move to Portland in 1977. He and Susan were later divorced.
IN THE ROSE CITY, Per joined his fourth union, the National Association of
Letter Carriers Branch 82, working for the United States Postal Service delivering
mail. A transfer to a clerk’s job put him in his fifth union, American Postal Work-
ers Union Local 128. He worked for the USPS about 15 years, which he said was
about evenly divided between outdoor and inside jobs. His next job was driving a
Laidlaw school bus for Portland Public Schools as a member of Amalgamated
Transit Union Local 757, which was his sixth union. He left that job after a year in
the early 1990s.
The Multnomah County Library was Per Fagereng’s next employer. He worked
at the main facility in downtown Portland and joined his seventh union, Multnomah
County Employees Local 88 of the American Federation of State, County and Mu-
nicipal Employees (AFSCME). Much of his time was spent mailing books to li-
brary patrons.
FAGERENG WAS EMPLOYED at the Central Library at SW 10th and
Yamhill when it was vacated for a remodeling project and relocated in the old
multi-story State Office Building situated between SW 4th and 5th Avenues and
Washington Congressman Brian Baird
explains positions on union issues
VANCOUVER — Washington
Congressman Brian Baird wants to set
the record straight.
He supports unions. He supports a
workers’ right to form a union without
being harassed by their bosses. He
supports project labor agreements,
state and federal prevailing wage laws,
and buying American-made goods.
The national AFL-CIO’s Commit-
tee on Political Education (COPE)
ranks Baird among the top members
in the U.S. House of Representatives,
with a lifetime COPE voting record of
89 percent on issues it deems impor-
tant to working men and women. The
Change to Win Labor Federation
doesn’t track voting records, but its af-
filiates have always endorsed the five-
term Democrat from Vancouver.
“There’s a lot we agree on — defi-
nitely more than we disagree on,”
Baird told the Northwest Labor Press
in an hour-long interview May 4
arranged by the congressman.
Baird has been getting a lot of heat
from organized labor — especially
building trades unions. It started late
more than a year ago when he let go
his labor liaison, longtime Teamster
b h
m k
REP. BRIAN BAIRD
Harry Glaus. Most recently it’s over
positions he has taken on proposed
construction projects and global trade.
It reached a breaking point a month
ago when a union member chastised
him for supporting fast-track trade ne-
gotiating authority, the Central Amer-
ica Free Trade Agreement and the
North American Free Trade Agree-
ment.
“I didn’t support any of those. I
wasn’t even there (in Congress) when
Bennett Hartman
Morris & Kaplan, llp
Attorneys at Law
Oregon’s Full Service Union Law Firm
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NAFTA passed,” he said.
It’s true. Baird voted against fast-
track trade authority, and against free-
trade agreements with Central Amer-
ica and Chile. He did support labor-
opposed trade deals with Oman,
Bahrain, Morocco, Australia and Sin-
gapore, and he voted for permanent
normal trade relations with China and
Vietnam.
Fast track (now called trade promo-
tion authority) slipped through Con-
gress in the middle of the night in
2002 by only two votes. Under fast
track, the president is authorized to
negotiate trade agreements with for-
eign countries without consulting law-
makers. After the terms of the deal are
negotiated it is presented to Congress,
which is only permitted a yes or no
vote on the agreement within 90 days
of its submission.
Fast-track trade promotion author-
ity is set to expire in June and it faces
renewal by Congress. Baird told the
Labor Press that he probably will vote
against it.
He says he has a “fundamental
constitutional concern” about fast-
track trade promotion authority. He
cited Article 1, Section 8 of the Con-
stitution that states, “Congress shall
have power to regulate commerce
with foreign nations...” Baird says
fast-track authority takes that respon-
sibility out of Congress’ hands.
He reminded the Labor Press of his
early support for the Employee Free
Choice Act. “This might be the most
significant bill out there (for labor),”
he said. EFCA, a bill designed to level
the playing field between workers and
employers in union organizing and
collective bargaining, passed the
House earlier this year 241 to 185.
A member of the House Trans-
portation and Infrastructure Commit-
tee, Baird led the way in getting a bill
introduced to help strengthen enforce-
ment of the Buy America Act. The
federal law stipulates that American-
made steel and iron be used on federal
transportation bridge projects unless
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(Turn to Page 11)
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NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
MAY 18, 2007