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
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AUGUST 3, 2007