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About Northwest labor press. (Portland , Ore.) 1987-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 3, 2007)
Let me say this about that —By Gene Klare Bill Shatava in Hall BILL SHATAVA, 80, of Portland, is the newest member of the Labor Hall of Fame, which is sponsored by the Northwest Oregon Labor Retirees Council, of which he is the president. He is a retired member of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Earlier this year, he was elected as the council’s new president to succeed John Klein, also a Teamster, who died. Shatava also succeeded Klein as president of the Teamsters Joint Council No. 37 Retirees. Before becoming president, Shatava was vice president of both re- tiree organizations. He was nominated for the Hall of Fame by Harold King, secretary-treas- urer of the NW Oregon Labor Retirees Council, who is a retired member of the Association of Western Pulp and Paper Workers. The NWOLRC is affiliated with the NW Oregon La- bor Council, AFL-CIO, and meets at 10 a.m. on the second Monday of the month in the Labor Council’s boardroom, Suite 100G, Scandia Bldg., 1125 SE Madison St., Portland. All BILL SHATAVA unions are invited to send delegates, Shatava and King said. SHATAVA RETIRED in 1992 after serving as business agent of Teamsters Local 81. He had earlier held other offices in the union. Bill Dean Shatava was born on June 12, 1927 in Prussia Township, lowa. His father died when he was eight years old. After graduating from high school in Orient, Iowa, in 1945, he joined the U.S. Navy. After boot camp at San Diego, Calif., he served on an LST (Landing Ship Tank) transporting ammunition from the Navy’s Mare Island Base at Vallejo, Calif., to the Navy Base at Hawaii. When his Navy hitch ended, he returned to Iowa to re-paint and re-roof his mother’s home, then moved to Portland and got a job driving a truck. He had picked Ore- gon as a place to live after visiting earlier with his sister and her husband at the Camp Adair Army Base near Corvallis, where his brother-in-law was stationed. SHATAVA’S FIRST JOB in Portland was driving a truck for the Kerr-Gifford Grain Co. He joined Teamsters Local 81. He worked for Converse Trucking and then for Ringsby, hauling for Moore Business Forms. At Ringsby he was a shop steward for Local 81. When that firm left town, Delta took over Moore’s hauling and he worked there until Delta went out of business. His next job was with Con- solidated Freightways, where he became a shop steward and held a series of elected offices — trustee, vice president and president — in Local 81. His next elected office was the full-time job of business agent. Bill and first wife, Helen, who was his high school sweetheart in Iowa, were married after his Navy service. She died in 1970. He and his second wife, Mildred, have been married for 27 years. Bill has a daughter, Jo Anne; another daughter, Laurel, died last year at age 55. He has two grandchildren and three great-grand- children. Mildred has three daughters, Julie, Laurie and Terri; and a son, Richard. Mildred has seven grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren. THE ELKS have counted Shatava as a member for 33 years. He joined Lodge 142 when it was in downtown Portland and later moved his membership to the Milwaukie facility on SE McLoughlin. ★★★ CHARLIE MERCER, president of the national AFL-CIO’s Union Label & Service Trades Department in Washington, D.C., commented on gasoline prices in the Department’s recent LABEL LETTER newsletter, in these words: Iraqi oil workers protest proposed law to turn over oil reserves to U.S firms NEW YORK (PAI) — A controver- sial Iraqi oil law drafted by the Bush Administration that could turn over at least half of that nation’s oil reserves to multi-national corporations was stalled until October, according to the leader of one of Iraq’s largest oil workers’ unions. Faleh Abood Umara, general secre- tary of the Federation of Iraqi Oil Unions, said the delay was due to pres- sure from unionized oil workers who struck against the law earlier this year. Umara said the law is onerous to Iraqis, “because the nation’s constitu- tion guarantees oil revenue should go to benefit its people. The law should not pass.” Umara and President Hashmeya Muhsin Hussein of the Iraqi Electrical Utility Workers recently finished a two-week U.S. tour, sponsored by U.S. Labor Against The War, explain- ing the oil law and also why Iraqis, in- cluding unionists, want U.S. armed forces to leave their nation. Both spoke to the U.S. Social Forum in Atlanta, and Umara discussed the oil law on the July 11 Democracy Now! radio program from New York. Hussein also led a demonstration in Washington, D.C., against a Bush Ad- ministration private contractor that met behind closed doors with U.S. of- ficials earlier this year to draft the oil law. Umara said Iraqi oil workers, af- ter a strike in June, had returned to the fields and are “persevering in their Nurses reach tentative deal at Mercy Medical ROSEBURG —The Oregon Nurses Association and Mercy Medical Center reached a tentative agreement to cover the hospital’s 344 registered nurses. The agreement was reached after a 17-hour bargaining session that ended early Fri- day morning, July 20. It marked the 43rd round of bargain- ing since the nurses first voted for union representation in January 2006. The Oregon Nurses Association held several large rallies and on July 16, sup- porters from throughout the region joined nurses on an informational picket line. Under the tentative agreement, Mercy nurses will be paid wages com- parable to hospital nurses in Eugene and Medford. Details of the pact will not be released until after members vote to ratify the contract. That vote is sched- uled for Monday, Aug. 6. “We are very pleased with this his- toric contract. It’s one that will serve the community, the Medical Center and the nurses well,” stated Paul Goldberg, RN and ONA’s assistant executive director of labor relations. (Turn to Page 11) PAGE 2 NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS work and preserving the Iraqi oil wells.” “We went on strike to make 27 de- mands, which we submitted to the prime minister. He agreed to them, but the oil minister did not implement the demands that led to the strike. “The most important point or one of the most important points is our de- mand not to rush through the new Iraqi oil law, because we believe this oil law does not serve the interests of the Iraqi people. So we ask our friends in the United States, as well, to stand in soli- darity with us and publicize the ill ef- fects of this law, so that it never is agreed upon in the Parliament,” Umara said through a translator. Passage of the Iraqi oil law is one “benchmark” Congress set for the Iraqi government when it agreed to Bush’s demand for another $124 bil- lion for the war in Iraq earlier this year. But after Hussein explained the impact of the law in a press conference on Capitol Hill, anti-war Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), a Democratic presidential hopeful, pledged to try to repeal that requirement. b h m k Umara explained the oil law’s “most important point is the produc- tion-sharing agreements, which allows the international oil companies, espe- cially the American ones, to exploit the oil fields without our knowledge of what they are actually doing with it. And they take about 50 percent of the production as their share, which we think it’s an obvious robbery of the Iraqi oil.” He also said the oil firms would get the contracts from a board the new oil law establishes that includes foreign advisers. At the D.C. protest, Hussein added the multi-national oil compa- nies themselves would have seats on that board. “We demanded that it’s actually the Iraqi experts that need to be consulted with regards to the granting of the con- tracts,” Umara said. “In brief, there is hardly an article in the law that actu- ally benefits the Iraqi people. But they all serve American interests in Iraq. And we know well the law was actu- ally written here in the United States. It serves the interests of the American government and not the Iraqi people.” Bennett Hartman Morris & Kaplan, llp Attorneys at Law Oregon’s Full Service Union Law Firm Representing Workers Since 1960 Serious Injury and Death Cases • Construction Injuries • Automobile Accidents • Medical, Dental, and Legal Malpractice • Bicycle and Motorcycle Accidents • Pedestrian Accidents • Premises Liability (injuries on premises) • Workers’ Compensation Injuries • Social Security Claims We Work Hard for Hard-Working People! 111 SW Fifth Avenue, Suite 1650 Portland, Oregon 97204 (503) 227-4600 www.bennetthartman.com Our Legal Staff are Proud Members of UFCW Local 555 AUGUST 3, 2007
