Inside
MEETING NO TICES
See
Page 6
V olume 109
Number 10
Ma y 16, 2008
P ortland
Experiencing
Something New
Shane Proper (above left), a member of Operating Engineers Local
701, shows the fundamentals of operating a backhoe at the Women in
Trades Fair May 3. The annual event is sponsored by Oregon
Tradeswomen Inc. This year, 414 women people attended the
Saturday session, which is open to the public. Thursday and Friday
were reserved for students, and 69 schools — from as far away as
LaPine — brought over 1,000 middle school and high school
students. Once there the young women had an opportunity to
experience hands-on workshops presented by apprenticeship
programs and employers, and taught mostly by tradeswomen like
Shaz Lynch, pictured above right helping a youngster bend a metal
flower pot. Lynch, a first-term apprentice and member of Sheet
Metal Workers Local 16, is a 1999 graduate of Rutgers University in
New Jersey with a degree in women’s studies. She was working as a
bartender when she came to Oregon Tradeswomen in February
2007. She wanted a career in the trades, she said, “because it’s
something I know I can feel really good about for a long time.” Lynch
started as a Sheet Metal worker in June of 2007, earning $16.14 an
hour, plus health insurance benefits. When she turns out as a
journeywoman she will make $32.27 an hour, plus fringe benefits.
Eighty-seven exhibitors were at the 2008 fair to recruit and educate
attendees. Quint Rahberger, apprenticeship coordinator for the
Operating Engineers, said the fair generates lots of interest from
women considering a career in the field of construction.
Initiatives
dogged by
suspicions
By DON McINTOSH
Associate Editor
Oregon labor will start preparing in
the months to come for a boatload of
initiatives expected to appear on the No-
vember ballot.
Get ready for déjà vu. At least 10 ini-
tiative campaigns this year are spon-
sored by the same chief petitioners who
have filled ballots in previous years —
Bill Sizemore, Kevin Mannix, and Russ
Walker. The campaigns have the same
millionaire funders, and the same for-
profit company is gathering their signa-
tures — Democracy Direct, run by
Sizemore associate Tim Trickey. And
just like in years past, measures are
headed for the ballot despite suspicions
that the law was broken to get them
there.
Staff members at Our Oregon, a
union-funded group that monitors ballot
measures, are convinced that laws in-
tended to clean up the initiative process
are being routinely broken.
In Oregon, the ballot initiative
process is overseen by the secretary of
state’s Elections Division. Our Oregon
complained to that agency in December
2005 that Democracy Direct subcon-
tractors were violating a voter-approved
ban on the pay-by-the-signature bounty.
Circulators alledgedly were being paid
in cash out of cars in some cases. In De-
cember 2007, the Oregon secretary of
state fined two Democracy Direct sub-
contractors $10,900 each, and Trickey
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How time flies: Building trades council turns 100
Three generations of construction workers helped celebrate the
100th anniversary of the Columbia Pacific Building and Construc-
tion Trades Council May 10 at the Oregon Convention Center.
Nearly 700 people attended the event. Among them were U.S.
Congressman Earl Blumenauer; Portland Mayor Tom Potter, La-
bor Commissioner Brad Avakian, and Portland City Councilor
(and mayoral candidate) Sam Adams.
Four decades of building trades council leadership also was in
the room, including Earl Kirkland, Wally Mehrens and John
Mohlis.
Kirkland was executive secretary-treasurer from 1966 to his re-
tirement in 1988. He is a 60-year member of Heat and Frost Insu-
lators Local 36. Mehrens, a 36-year member of Plumbers and Fit-
ters Local 290, led the council through the 1990s, winning election
in 1988 and retiring in 2005. Mohlis, a former business manager
of Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers Local 1, succeeded
Mehrens.
Maybe more importantly, however, were the many rank-and-
file workers in attendance — the men and women who have had a
hand in building the Portland metropolitan area into what it is to-
day. Retirees, journeymen, journeywomen, and apprentices remi-
nisced about the projects they helped build: from dams on the Co-
lumbia River to the Astoria-Megler Bridge at the coast, hospitals,
nuclear and electronics plants, shopping centers, courthouses,
light-rail, schools and institutions of higher learning, pulp and
paper mills and high-rise office buildings. The list is endless.
“All of us in the building trades take great pride in our work,”
Mohlis said. “Every one of us has driven by a building we worked
on and told our spouse or our children, ‘I helped build that build-
ing.’ “
The Portland Building & Construction Trades Council was first
chartered with eight organizations representing 800 craft workers
on July 27,1908 — the same year that the National Building
Trades Department of the American Federation of Labor (AFL)
was established. In the 100 years since, the local council has been
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