Let me say this about that
...’Bud’ Lent dies at 86
(From Page 2)
committees at the Portland Art Museum and the TriMet mass transit system.
FINDLEY RESIGNED as Local 99’s secretary-treasurer in 1993 because he
thought it was time for a career change, and went to work as a CWA member at
AT&T. He maintains his membership in Local 99 and still catches a musical gig
now and then. He has also kept his OEA membership because he occasionally
fills in as a substitute teacher in a couple of suburban school districts. He also
stays busy as chairman of his neighborhood association in the Arnold Creek area
of Southwest Portland.
“We met in the House of Labor,” Findley said of his 1980 marriage to Kathryn
Bunch. They met as delegates from their local unions at an Oregon AFL-CIO con-
vention. Bob has a son, Jeffrey, who live in New York City; and a daughter, Susan,
of Tigard. Kathryn has a son, Brian, of Oregon City; and a daughter, Christine, of
Salt Lake City, who is the mother of Kathryn’s and Bob’s granddaughter.
★★★
BERKELEY (BUD) LENT, a workers’ lawyer who became a Democratic
legislator, a Circuit Court judge and an Oregon Supreme Court justice, died of a
heart attack on Nov. 11 at his home in Las Vegas at age 86.
He was watching a football game on television when he told his wife “Call 9-
1-1, I’m having a heart attack, “ a friend told the Labor Press. The friend, Edward
J. Whelan of Portland, recalled that Lent was general counsel for the Oregon AFL-
CIO when Ed was executive secretary-treasurer and later president of the labor
federation from the mid-1960s into the ‘70s.
LENT WAS BORN in 1921 in Los Angeles; the family moved to Southeast
Portland when he was a child, settling in the Lents community, a working-class
neighborhood named for an ancestor, Oliver P. Lent, who had traveled to Oregon
from Ohio by wagon train in 1866.
After graduating from Franklin High School, Bud Lent served in the U.S. Navy
in World War II, earning the stripes of a signalman second class. Later, he attended
Occidental College in Los Angeles and graduated from Reed College in Portland,
followed by studying for a law degree at Willamette University in Salem. He sup-
ported himself at law school by working as a guard at the Oregon State Peniten-
tiary. At Reed he’d worked in a sawmill.
LENT WAS FIRST ELECTED to the Legislature as a state representative in
the late 1950s and later was elected to the Senate. As a lawyer, his clients included
injured workers, unions and the Labor Press. Part of the time his law office was in
the Portland Labor Center. He became a judge in 1971 when Gov. Tom McCall ap-
pointed him to a Circuit Court vacancy in Multnomah County. Five years later he
won election to the Supreme Court in Salem. He served as chief justice for a year
in the early 1980s. He retired in 1988 and worked in Oregon and Nevada as a me-
diator, attempting to settle civil lawsuits without a trial.
Survivors include his wife, Joan; four daughters, Patricia Brandt of Portland,
Deirdere Lent of San Diego, Terry Ling of Beaverton, and Suzanne Robinson of
Butler, Pa.; two sons, Eric Lent of San Diego and Scott Othus of Lake Oswego; a
brother, Perry of Portland; 13 grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.
A memorial service will be scheduled later.
★★★
FOLLOWING ARE some recent comments by Charlie Mercer, president of
the national AFL-CIO’s Union Label & Service Trade Department in Washington,
D.C., which were published in his End Notes column in the department’s Label
Letter:
“Hats Off To the United Steel Workers and its recent roll-out of a campaign en-
titled ‘Protect Our Kids — Stop Toxic Imports.’ The campaign features the Web-
site protect-our-kids.org. Teaming up with Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, USW is
asking the public to sign its online petition calling on government to fix the toxic
toy problem.
“USW IS WORKING with two grass-roots organizations — Women of Steel
and Moms Rising — to call attention to the problem and to distribute thousands
of ‘Get the Lead Out’ screening kits along with a series of ‘Safe Home Sessions’
to help families learn more about protecting themselves and their loved ones.
“Announcing the campaign at a Washington, D.C. press conference, USW
President Leo Gerard urged Congress to move ahead on legislation sponsored by
Brown to improve consumer protections and require country-of-origin labeling.
“CHINA’S ATTEMPT to export its poor standards is a serious problem,’Ger-
ard said, ‘but a huge number of dangerous imports are made for North American
manufacturers that choose profits over safety. Meanwhile, our government regu-
latory agencies are being gutted.Those facts are equally disturbing.”
Mercer went on to say:
“It’s a topsy-turvey world for U.S. consumers. Ignoring recent flare-ups of
meat products and the concerns of millions of Americans, the Bush Administration
appears intent on ending hands-on federal meat and poultry inspection.
“IN YEARS PAST, the White House promoted a bogus notion that it could
substitute a ‘risk-based’inspection system that would rely on periodic quality con-
trol sampling of meat and poultry products...”
DECEMBER 7, 2007
Bush uses signing statements to
illegally inflate his office power
To The Editor:
Over the last few years, signing
statements are being used to claim ex-
ecutive privilege by George W. Bush.
He has claimed the authority to bypass
more than 750 statutes, which were
provisions contained in about 125
bills.
Bush has routinely asserted and
claims the right to “supervise the uni-
tary executive branch.” In other
words, bypass the Congress as subor-
dinate, no matter what laws are
passed. Basically, Bush asserts that
Congress cannot pass a law that under-
cuts the constitutionally-granted au-
thorities of the president. He asserts
that essentially the laws of Congress
do not apply to the president when
negated by his declaration in a signing
statement.
The theme in these signing state-
ments is clear, in that the laws enacted
by the Congress will not be rigidly ad-
hered to, but rather be “construed” or
loosely interpreted and are subordinate
to the wishes of the president. Under
this premise, the president may choose
to follow or ignore legislation enacted
into law.
Example: HR 5441 signing state-
ment:
“The Executive Branch shall con-
strue section 522 of the Act, relating to
privacy officer reports, in a manner
consistent with the President’s consti-
tutional authority to supervise the uni-
tary Executive Branch.”
This appears to be an attempt at
defining the presidency of the United
States as a supreme power, an office in
which one may set aside acts of Con-
gress without regard to the practical
application of the law.
In July 2006, an ABA “Blue Rib-
bon Task Force” found that these pres-
idential assertions of constitutional au-
thority “undermine the rule of law and
our constitutional system.”
Lawrence Tribe wrote that signing
statements are “constitutionally unob-
jectionable.”
The president has put himself
above the Congress, has put himself in
the position of willfully failing to sup-
port or enforce the laws of the land
and “his actions have resulted in harm
to others” as well as harm to the Con-
stitution which he claims to defend.
There is no exemption from the law
that allows George W. Bush to inflate
the office of the presidency. The regu-
larity and copiousness with which
Bush uses signing statements demon-
strates a will to usurp the power of the
Congress through acts of impunity, a
violation of the Constitution and law.
Carroll Wikander
Machinists 1005
Retired
Aloha
Industrial accident kills Jeff Baker;
son of Carpenter leader Ray Baker
Jeffrey Baker, the son of retired Car-
penters Union official Ray Baker, was
killed in an industrial accident Nov. 16.
He was 46.
Ray Baker is a retired financial sec-
retary-treasurer of Carpenters Local
1388 and a past president of the North-
west Oregon Labor Council. After retir-
ing he moved to Wichita Falls, Texas.
Jeffrey had been a member of Local
1388, having gone through its appren-
ticeship training program. A motorcy-
cle accident, however, prevented him
from continuing that career.
He found work as a welder for Al-
lied Systems of Sherwood, a nonunion
firm. According to Local 1388, Baker
was welding a 500-pound piece of steel
onto a logging truck when a sling used
to hold the steel in place broke. The
steel piece struck Baker in the head.
The accident is under investigation
by the Oregon Occupational Safety and
Health Administration.
Jeffrey H. Baker was born Nov. 3,
1961, in Portland. He grew up in the
Milwaukie area and lived for a time in
Kansas and Nevada before returning to
Oregon in 1988.
He was a member of the U.S. Ma-
rine Corps Reserve.
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
He is survived by his wife, Kim-
berly Nicholson; his father; mother,
Lorna Bufton-Renfro of Lake Oswego;
daughters, Elizabeth Barns and Crystal
Baker of Nevada; son, Jeffrey of
Nevada; brothers, David and Robert,
both of Wichita Falls; sisters, Cindy
Wray of Wichita Falls and Linda Mor-
gan of Colton; and one grandchild.
Services were held Nov. 19 at Hood-
view Church of God in Woodburn.
Open
Forum
Portland members
of UFCW #555
urge Eugene pact
To The Editor:
Last week, over 100 Portland-area
rank-and-file members of United
Food and Commercial Workers Local
555 signed a letter which was sub-
mitted to the Oregonian for publica-
tion. We asked Albertsons, Fred
Meyer and Safeway to start bargain-
ing fairly with our members in Eu-
gene-Springfield. It’s been nearly
nine months since the contract in that
area expired and negotiations began.
In October, our union filed an un-
fair labor practice because the compa-
nies had refused to discuss wages.
Then the companies offered a 15 cent
per hour annual raise. That’s less than
half the cost of living increases. Eu-
gene-Springfield members then voted
to authorize their bargaining commit-
tee to call a strike if necessary. Bar-
gaining continues.
Portland members are disappointed
with the low wage offer. Portland
journey-level clerks have gotten an
average of one-half percent annual
raise since 2003 and apprentice clerks
have gotten no raises. We know the
Eugene settlement will likely set
precedents for our contract negotia-
tions next year.
Gasoline prices are rising. Rents
are rising. Food prices are rising and
so are profits of our companies. Yet
they make a wage offer that continues
our loss of buying power.
We urge the companies to start ne-
gotiating in good faith and offer fair
wages and benefits.
Stuart Fishman
UFCW Local 555
Portland
2,600 casino dealers join Auto Workers
Card dealers at Foxwoods Resort
Casino, the largest private employer in
Connecticut and owned by the Mashan-
tucket Pequots Tribe, voted last month
to join the United Auto Workers Union.
There are 2,600 employees in the bar-
gaining unit.
It is the first union to be established at
a tribal casino under a contested vote,
according to Connecticut Attorney Gen-
eral Richard Blumenthal. Blumenthal
had argued in favor of the right to union-
ize at the casino, stating that federal
courts already have ruled that labor laws
apply at tribal casinos.
The Mashantuckets Pequots tried to
stop the vote, arguing that tribal em-
ployment law had jurisdiction in the
matter. The regional office of the Na-
tional Labor Relations Board rejected
that argument and ordered the election.
“Its impact could be seismic in
changing the landscape of labor rela-
tions at tribal casinos, not only in Con-
necticut, but across the nation,” Blu-
menthal told Associated Press.
The victory at Foxwoods comes a
month after workers at Casino Aztar in
Evansville, Ind., also voted for UAW.
Aztar is owned by Columbia Sussex
Corp.
UAW also represents about 6,000
gaming employees in Detroit, Atlantic
City, N.J., and Newport, R.I.
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