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About Northwest labor press. (Portland , Ore.) 1987-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 5, 2007)
Let me say this about that ...Multi-faceted career (From Page 2) Woodworkers of America (IWA). Diamond applied for a job with PNLC and in the fall of 1979 he went to work there. With the help of the national AFL-CIO’s In- dustrial Union Department, PNLC obtained a financial grant from the federal En- vironmental Protection Agency for a labor environmental studies program, which he taught. Diamond worked with Roger Lyons, a business agent of Portland-based Machinists District Lodge 24, in organizing PNLC employees into the Machinists Union. IN 1980, the PNLC governing board appointed Diamond as the school’s pres- ident. He moved the labor college from the campus of Marylhurst University in the Lake Oswego area into office space available in the building of Operating Engi- neers Local 701, which was located at 1529 SW 12th Ave. in Portland. (Local 701 later moved its headquarters to Gladstone.) While at PNLC, Diamond and others started Labor Players II, carrying on the name of a theatrical troupe active in Portland in in the 1920s. Diamond and his col- laborators wrote and produced a play, “Season of Silence,” which told the story of two strikes in the early 1900s by woman workers at a woolen mill in Clackamas County. Diamond left PNLC in 1982 and did free-lance worker education programs as a member of the nationwide Worker Education Local 189, which later merged into the Communications Workers of America. One of his projects was a work- shop for school teachers in the Portland area. He received financial backing from the Harry Bridges Institute, established by International Longshore and Ware- house Union members and named for the union’s founder and first president. Norm co-authored a book, “The Power in Our Hands,” about labor history. His co-author, Bill Bigelow, is a high school teacher. Norm also started producing and narrating labor-oriented programs on the non-profit KBOO community radio sta- tion. He still does volunteer work there. ANOTHER FREE-LANCE project handled by Diamond was to organize workers, including doctors, at the Virginia Garcia Clinic for migrant workers and their families in Washington County. Diamond’s work overseas has included traveling in 1983 to Budapest to advise the Hungarian government on how to set up a workers’ compensation system to provide benefits to workers injured or sickened on the job and to compensate fam- ilies of workers killed in workplace accidents. He also taught adult workers in university classes at Montpellier, France. While in Europe, Diamond wrote free- lance articles for the Labor Press. DIAMOND PARTICIPATED in founding the Portland Alliance, an alterna- tive newspaper, and served as its editor for three years in the early 1990s. He still writes articles for the newspaper, whose office is in Southeast Portland. Norm holds the elected position of Oregon trustee for the Pacific Northwest La- bor History Association. He helped arrange its annual conference which was held in the Rose City last May. DIAMOND’S WIFE is Dr. Patricia Kullberg, who is the medical director for Multnomah County. Their son, Alexander Diamond, 21, is a senior at Wesleyan College in Middletown, Connecticut. While at Franklin High School in Portland, he helped organize a campus union for students and was active in Jobs with Jus- tice, a labor support group. The Northwest Oregon Labor Council hailed Norm Diamond for his contribu- tions to the labor movement by presenting him with a Labor Appreciation and Recognition Certificate at a dinner in Westmoreland Union Manor. ★★★ THE TERM “yellow-dog contract” dates back more than a century. An ex- planation of it is provided in “The Lexicon of Labor,” written by Robert Emmett Murray, a Seattle newspaperman who is a former president of the Pacific North- west Newspaper Guild. His excellent book, published in 1998, defines the term in these words: “An illegal agreement forced on newly hired workers in which they state they are not members of a labor union, and promise not to join a union for as long as they’re with the company. The Norris-LaGuardia Act of 1932 nullified the yellow-dog contract by declaring it unenforcible in court. The turn-of-the-cen- tury term ‘yellow dog’ meant an inferior or worthless person or thing.” Before becoming a newspaperman, Murray worked as a member of the Inter- national Union of Operating Engineers. ★★★ HERE IS SOME historical information on occupational safety and health: The first state to study occupational safety was Massachusetts, which did so in 1850. Twenty-seven years later, in 1877, Massachusetts passed a law requiring certain safeguards in factories. In 1879, Massachusetts passed a law to require safety inspections in factories. In 1886, the same state mandated the reporting by employers of industrial accidents. The first company to establish its own medical department was the Homestead Mining Co. in North Dakota, which did so in 1887. The first federal report on industrial hygiene was issued in 1903 by the U.S. Bu- reau of Labor Statistics. OCTOBER 5, 2007 Big raises for managers a slap in the face of workers To The Editor: Rank-and-file state employees have been slapped in the face with the news that Gov. Kulongoski has issued top- heavy pay raises for all state managers. With 33 years of collective bargain- ing experience — 16 of those years at various state negotiations — I thought I’d heard and seen everything. But we are outraged at this proposed package for state managers. Having just finished months of face-to-face bargaining with the state, we feel like we’ve been lied to. Some quick background. The Amer- ican Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees is the second- largest union of state employees. We represent several state agencies with unique jobs and job classifications that are difficult to fill under any circum- stances. We represent a variety of scien- tists and other advance-degreed people at DEQ, the Department of Land Con- servation and Development and others. We represent most Corrections employ- ees in the state, both correctional officers and the others who work inside prison walls. In the last 15 years, seven of those years have seen pay freezes for state workers, so they’ve only averaged a raise about every other year. In late August, after months of nego- tiating, we signed off on a deal that the state said was the absolute maximum it could afford. As part of that process, we spent weeks comparing data from other NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS states and some Oregon counties and with a special eye on classifications where we know the state has special re- cruitment and retention problems. But noteworthy is the fact that the Depart- ment of Administrative Services (DAS) always balks at using cities and other lo- cal governments as comparators for us, especially the cities of Portland and Salem that absolutely compete with the state for employees. Yet, DAS is happy to turn right around and use such cities as comparators for justifying its man- agement raises! Here’s another problem: This man- agement package is more than triple than what our agreement was, and the state has unilaterally given this across- the-board increase to every manager. But not every management position is a recruitment and retention problem for Open Forum the state. Yet every state agency will now have to “eat the costs” of these raises, meaning our members could face lay- offs — or at the least, face increased workloads as agencies won’t be able to “afford” to replace front-line workers. Finally, this move is short-sighted be- cause it portends a bad future for the state in upcoming negotiations. How can we trust DAS when it tells us “this is all we can afford” in the future? Why would we ever settle again before we find out what management is giving themselves? Our trust has been violated, we’ve been slapped and lied to and we will not forget it. Ken Allen Executive Director AFSCME Oregon Council 75 Portland Where was Witt on BCTC list? To The Editor: It has often been said that “labor takes its own for granted.” After reading your recent article “Meeting in Newport, Building Trades Unions Savor Legisla- tive Victories,” I am inclined to believe that saying. Rep. Brad Witt, one of labor’s own, has been a loyal supporter of not only the craft unions’ legislative agenda, but equally loyal to public employees’, serv- ice trades’ and industrial unions’ con- cerns. As I scan the list of those mentioned in the article as “all stars,” I question the trades neglect of Rep Witt’s role in mak- ing the recent session one of labor’s best in the past 30 years. Irv Fletcher President Emeritus Oregon AFL-CIO Woodburn PAGE 11
