Let me say this about that
...Family of unionists
(From Page 2)
the region before shipping out to fight the Germans in campaigns that included the
Battle of the Bulge.
Sometimes the Stammers travel farther. They’ve cruised by oceanliners to places
like the Greek Isles, Croatia, Turkey and, closer to home, Alaska. They’ve trav-
eled by car to Yellowstone National Park in summer and Arizona in winter. Anita
said they also like to hike and “hang out at lakes.” She photographs their travels on
a digital camera.and stores the pictures in their computer. At their Clackamas home,
Anita and Roger enjoy growing flowers and vegetables.
★★★
ARTHA DARLENE ADAIR, a former second vice president of the Oregon
AFL-CIO, died on June 29 in Salem at age 68. A friend, Lorene Lavertich, said
Artha had recently undergone sinus surgery and reportedly became ill upon taking
post-operation medication.
A memorial service is scheduled at 2 p.m. Saturday, July 28, at Engelwood
West, 1068 Park Ave. NE, in Salem. She was cremated and her ashes are to be in-
terred July 21 at a cemetery where her mother is buried in Riddle, near Roseburg.
Ms. Adair was born in Riddle on Sept. 7, 1938. In her 20s she took a job in the
Portland area at a Pendleton Woolen Mills plant and joined Clothing Workers Lo-
cal 291.
Eventually, she was hired by the Amalgamated
Clothing Workers and assigned to handling con-
sumer boycotts of nonunion clothing and textile
products. The Clothing Workers later became part
of UNITE HERE.
AMONG POSTS she held were secretary-
treasurer of Coast-Valley Labor Council covering
Washington and Tillamook counties; board mem-
ber of Labor’s Community Service Agency; vice
president of Clackamas County Labor Council;
charter member of Oregon Pioneer Chapter of
Coalition of Labor Union Women; teacher at Pa-
cific NW Labor College; business agent of Ameri-
can Federation of Television and Radio Artists’
Portland Chapter. She also ran the Union Label
ARTHA ADAIR
Shows at five Oregon AFL-CIO conventions.
AFTER SERVING as the elected second vice
president of the state labor federation in the early 1980s, Adair moved to Salem and
became office manager for the Oregon Democratic Party but left the job in the
1990s when the office was moved to Portland.
Survivors include a sister, Robyn Hansen; and numerous nieces and nephews.
★★★
ERNA JANE SWEENEY, whose career included running the Portland office
of Congressman Bob Duncan, died on June 17 at age 82. Her husband, Robert N.
Sweeney, who died in 1992, was the port agent of the Marine Firemen’s Union.
She was born as Erna Jane Lindsay on Aug. 20, 1924 in Portland and graduated
from Commerce High School, which was later renamed Cleveland. She and her
husband were married in 1944.
A MEMORIAL SERVICE was conducted at St. Aidan’s Episcopal Church in
Gresham on June 23.
Survivors include her sons, Richard and Michael; four grandchildren and four
great-grandchildren.
Memorial contributions can be made to the church. Bateman Carroll Funeral
Home handled arrangements.
★★★
FRANK T. JOHNS is another unionist whose story is told in the new book,
“The Portland Red Guide: Sites & Stories of Our Radical Past,” written by histo-
rian Michael Munk.
Of Johns, whose story has appeared in the past in the Labor Press, Munk writes:
“PORTLAND’S ONLY presidential candidate, Frank T. Johns, was the nom-
inee of the Socialist Labor Party in 1924 and 1928. He was a member of the Car-
penters Union Local 226, which merged into today’s Local 247... Johns received
about 1,000 votes in Oregon and 36,000 nationwide in 1924. On May 20, 1928,
only weeks after his nomination, he died in the middle of a campaign speech on the
banks of the Deschutes River in Bend. As the private memorial erected in 1970 re-
lates, Johns dove into the river in a vain attempt to save a drowning boy and
drowned in the effort. His Carpenters Union declared that their brother ‘had devoted
his life to the working class’ and died a hero, but noted that the majority of his
union’s members did not agree with his political theories.’ ”
Johns succeeded union leader Eugene Debs of Terrae Haute, Indiana, as the
presidential nominee of the Socialist Labor Party. Debs had run five times. He was
the leader of a railroad workers union and was one of the founders of the Industrial
Workers of the World.
JULY 20, 2007
Labor planning ballot measure
strategy to counter Sizemore
By DON McINTOSH
Associate Editor
Several Oregon labor organizations
are already planning ballot measure
strategy for the November 2008 elec-
tion.
In part, that’s because they don’t
have a choice: Frequent union foe Bill
Sizemore, despite a 2002 jury finding
of fraud and racketeering, is more ac-
tive than he’s been for years. But
unions will also consider a proactive
strategy — what initiatives can organ-
ized labor help get on the ballot to
move the agenda forward for working
people?
On July 10, the Oregon AFL-CIO
and several of the state’s larger, more
politically active unions (including
Change to Win’s Service Employees
International Union) met with a hand-
ful of big progressive groups to confer
over ballot measure plans. Our Ore-
gon, a group that’s tracking ballot
measure activity, reported that Size-
more has been busy circulating seven
measures. His ballot initiative com-
pany, Democracy Direct, is also circu-
lating three crime-related ballot meas-
ures sponsored by 2002 Republican
gubernatorial nominee Kevin Mannix,
plus two measures sponsored by Russ
Walker, vice chairman of the Oregon
Republican Party.
On June 26, Sizemore turned in to
the secretary of state’s office about
120,000 signatures each on two of his
measures. One would create an unlim-
ited state income tax deduction for
federal personal income taxes paid;
the other would prohibit teaching pub-
lic school students in a language other
than English for more than two years.
Other actively circulating Sizemore
measures include:
• Banning political candidate con-
tributions by public employee unions
— such contributions would be prose-
cuted as felony bribery;
• Requiring that public school
teacher pay raises and job security be
based on performance, not seniority;
• Prohibiting public employers
from facilitating union dues payments
to public employee unions that make
political contributions;
• Requiring that judges not be la-
beled “incumbent” on the ballot if
they were appointed; and
• Allowing property owners to
make up to $35,000 of improvements
without having to obtain a building
permit.
A 2000 union lawsuit revealed that
Sizemore’s ballot measures were mo-
tivated in part by a desire to tie up
union money. Many of the current
crop of proposals seem aimed to do
that as well. Voters have rejected sev-
eral of them before, like the federal
tax deduction measure, which went
down 55-45 percent in 2000. But get-
ting them back on the ballot will push
unions to spend money again to defeat
them.
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
“Voters don’t like his ideas, as a
rule,” said Patty Wentz, Our Oregon
communications director (and former
Oregon AFL-CIO communications di-
rector.) “They reject his proposals.
But it’s the only business at which
he’s ever been successful.”
In January, Sizemore told The Ore-
gonian that 2008 will be the most in-
teresting initiative year in 20 years.
“Bill Sizemore is back in action,
and that can only mean bad things for
Oregonians,” said Arthur Towers, po-
litical director of SEIU Local 503.
“Working families have a lot to be
concerned about with the ballot.”
For its part, Local 503 is weighing
whether to go forward with a ballot
measure to prevent hospital price
gouging of the uninsured. A bill to re-
quire hospitals to charge uninsured pa-
tients no more than their best rate to
insurers failed to pass the Legislature
this year. So SEIU filed it as an initia-
tive the day before the Legislature ad-
journed. It hasn’t yet been approved to
circulate. The measure’s chief peti-
tioner is Verna Porter, president of
Oregon Alliance for Retired Ameri-
cans, a union retirees group affiliated
with the AFL-CIO.
Another measure that might get
union support was filed in April by
Labor Commissioner Dan Gardner
and State Rep. Diane Rosenbaum, a
longtime union political leader. Their
measure would require overtime pay
after eight hours of work, except in
workplaces that have an alternative
regular 40-hour-a-week schedule, like
four 10-hour days a week. Gardner
said he planned to test the waters in
the coming weeks to see if there is or-
ganizational support for getting the
measure on the ballot.
And the Oregon AFL-CIO is con-
sidering four ideas that could be filed
as ballot initiatives:
• A declaration that corporations
are not people. That may sound like
declaring that the moon isn’t made of
green cheese, except that courts have
ruled corporations are people in the
sense of having rights like free speech
and so forth. “It’d be really something
to see the opposing campaign try to
convince people to go against their gut
instinct on that one,” said Oregon
AFL-CIO Campaign/Political Direc-
tor Duke Shepard.
• Protecting the minimum wage.
Oregon voters passed a 2002 initiative
that increases the minimum wage an-
nually for inflation, but since then,
some business groups have tried to get
the Legislature to create a sub-mini-
mum wage for certain kinds of work-
ers, like tipped employees. They’d be
stopped in their tracks by a measure to
require that any changes to the mini-
mum wage law get a three-fifths vote
in the Legislature. And that would
give the right-wing a taste of their own
“super-majority” medicine, Shepard
said, referring to current super-major-
ity requirements that hamstring any
legislative proposals to raise revenue.
• Defending the freedom to nego-
tiate. From time to time, union oppo-
nents like Sizemore get behind ballot
measures to make Oregon a so-called
“right-to-work” state, where it would
be illegal for employers sign a union
contract requiring employees to pay
union dues to maintain employment.
Of the 22 states that have such a law,
none has a strong labor movement. To
halt any future efforts to make Oregon
a right-to-work state, the Oregon
AFL-CIO is considering a constitu-
tional amendment to say that the sub-
jects of collective bargaining can’t be
limited in that way.
• Stopping unemployment insur-
ance from being used for anything
else. This would be a way to prevent
the return of Jobs Plus. Jobs Plus, a
project dear to the heart of Dick
Wendt — Sizemore’s latest financial
backer — was a pilot program that
gave unemployment insurance funds
to employers who hired unemployed
people. Unions called it corporate
welfare — and an outrageous misuse
of funds intended for workers. The
program died in June 2005 after the
Legislature failed to reauthorize it. But
Wendt would like to see it return.
CWA promotes
union discount
for AT&T wireless
Members of AFL-CIO unions
can receive a 10 percent discount on
AT&T wireless phone service, along
with a $50 savings on new phones
and accessories when they sign up
for service through Oct. 31, 2007.
AT&T (formerly Cingular) is the
only wireless company that is 100
percent union, with 40,000 members
of Communications Workers of
America (CWA) under contract.
“For union families, the choice in
wireless is clear,” said CWA Presi-
dent Larry Cohen. “And now mem-
bers can take advantage of these spe-
cial savings while supporting their
fellow union members at AT&T.”
The 10 percent discount is avail-
able off the regular monthly rate for
any AT&T individual or family plan.
Current customers will need to re-
new their contracts for two years to
be eligible.
The offer is only available at
AT&T-owned retail stories, not by
phone or online. When signing up or
renewing service, give the store
clerk the following AT&T Union
Discount FAN number: 00113662.
For information on AT&T store
locations, and to download a coupon
to take to the store with the FAN in-
formation, go to www.unionplus.org
and click on Union-Made Savings.
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