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About Northwest labor press. (Portland , Ore.) 1987-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 17, 2007)
Inside MEETING NO TICES See Page 14 V olume 108 Number 16 A ugust 17, 2007 P ortland Enjoy Your Labor Day! “It will be a day full of fun and ex- Vocalist and saxophonist Patrick citement,” said Bob Spicher Jr., pro- Lamb, a member of Musicians Local moter of Northwest Sports Entertain- 99, will perform at this year’s Labor ment. (Spicher is the son of Bob Sr., a Day picnic on Monday, Sept. 3, at retired union representa- Oaks Amusement Park tive of United Food and in Southeast Portland. Commercial Workers The picnic, which Local 555.) attracts nearly 15,000 Plenty of politicians people, is sponsored by will be on hand — no, the Northwest Oregon not to wrestle, but rather Labor Council. to meet union members Lamb is a popular and their families. The performing and record- politicos will take the ing artist from Port- stage from 1 to 2 p.m. land. He plays rhythm The Labor Council and blues, soul and will sell food scrip for 25 jazz. cents each. Three scrip He will perform on will get you a hot dog the main stage from and chips, two scrip a noon to 1 p.m. and soda pop, and four scrip again from 2 to 3 p.m. a beer. A deluxe ride Also featured for bracelet costs $8.25 and the first time this year is good from 10 a.m. to 5 will be professional p.m. The ride bracelet wrestling, starring Dr. also includes admission Pain. Matches will be PATRICK LAMB to the roller skating rink. held throughout the Call the Labor Council at 503-235- day, capped by a 20-man “over the top 9444 to order scrip or for more infor- battle royale” starting around 3 p.m. mation. Other featured wrestlers are Cau- The following are union-sponsored tion, Hazard, Cowboy ‘Tex’ Thomp- Labor Day picnics that have been con- son, Widowmaker, Buddy Highway, plus more. (Turn to Page 6) 2007 Labor Day Picnic Schedule Pulse of the Unions: How are workers doing? By DON McINTOSH Associate Editor What kind of shape is the local labor movement in, and how are working people doing? Labor Day is a good time to take the pulse of labor, so for perspectives on the subject, the Northwest Labor Press talked to Tom Chamberlain, president of the Oregon AFL- CIO; Bob Bussel, director of the University of Oregon’s Labor Ed- ucation and Research Center (LERC); and Art Ayre, labor econo- mist for the Oregon Employment Service. Overall, says Ayre, wages for Oregon workers have been rising faster than inflation, though most of the wage growth has been at the high end and low end. Meanwhile, Oregon’s unemployment rate has dropped a lot, from 8.5 percent in mid-2003, the highest in the nation, to 5.1 percent now — about the middle among states. But union membership, Ayre said, is flat. As of 2004, Oregon union membership stood at 223,500. That number is almost identi- cal to 1983, when Oregon had 223,000 union members. Thus, unions represent a smaller share of Oregon’s workforce — from 26 percent in 1983 to 15 percent today. And the composition of the labor movement has changed, Ayre said, tracking the decline of manufacturing and extractive industry employment. Today, Oregon’s public-sector union members out- number private sector 115,000 to 109,000. Close to 46 percent of Oregon’s public workers are union, compared to 8.1 percent of pri- vate-sector workers. In most occupations, union members earn more on average than their nonunion counterparts. And the real union difference contin- ues to be in benefits, where the defined benefit pension plan and employer-paid full-family health coverage are still the union stan- dard, even as they become rare in nonunion workplaces. “The union movement is about building power for working peo- ple,” says the AFL-CIO’s Chamberlain. “Workers join a union to get better wages and health care. One worker standing alone can’t do it.” At one time, when unions represented a much bigger slice of certain industries, and workers by custom had the right to strike, union power was chiefly economic. Today, it’s chiefly political: Unions have come to focus limited resources on the democratic process to try to level the playing field when they face powerful employers. Professor Bussel says unions are much more political today than they were 30 years ago. Three things have happened: The Re- publican Party became more anti-union. The union movement be- came more political. And finally, the Democratic Party began to take labor movement more seriously. “In the mid-1970s, there were easily a dozen Republican U.S. senators who had 80 percent or better union voting records,” Bus- (Turn to Page 12)
