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About Northwest labor press. (Portland , Ore.) 1987-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 1, 2008)
Group presses Oregon to enact ‘sweat-free’ policy Anti-sweatshop activists are hop- ing to persuade Oregon Gov. Ted Ku- longoski to enact a “sweat-free” pol- icy by executive order. Since April, representatives of the group Sweatfree Northwest have been meeting monthly with the governor’s labor liaison and the state’s chief pro- curement officer to discuss such a pol- icy. Sweatfree Northwest coordinator Elizabeth Swager said her group wants Oregon to require uniform ven- dors to disclose which factories are making the uniforms, and to declare that to the best of their knowledge, no local labor laws are being violated in those factories. The campaign has been endorsed by about a dozen labor organizations, including Oregon AFSCME and Ore- gon State Fire Fighters Council. The State of Oregon buys uniforms for all sorts of workers, from snow plow operators to state police officers. Activists have yet to demonstrate that any of the clothing purchased by the state was made in sweatshops, but in- dustry trends make that increasingly likely. Sweatshops — factories that violate international labor standards and local labor laws — are the norm in the garment industry, in which companies shifted production abroad in the last 40 years to take advantage of lower wages. While there are some garment sweatshops in the United States, by far the worst abuses are in the poorer countries. Uniforms have been one of the last bastions of U.S. apparel manufac- tures, owing to the small, quick turn- around nature of the market — and to the Berry Amendment, which requires the U.S. military to buy products man- ufactured domestically whenever pos- sible. But Roger Heldman, co-owner of Seattle-based Blumenthal Uni- forms, thinks a majority of the uni- forms sold in the United States may now be supplied by foreign factories. Heldman said the police and fire uni- forms his company sells to Portland and the state of Oregon are still made by union workers in several U.S. states. Sweatfree Northwest is part of the national group Sweatfree Communi- ties. A July 1 report by Sweatfree Communities faults Cintas, one of the vendors that sells uniforms to Oregon, for abuses at a Honduras factory it does business with. The abuses in- clude unpaid overtime, illegally low wages, and lack of safety equipment. If Oregon adopts the sweatfree pur- chasing rules, it would become the eighth state to do so, joining Califor- nia, Illinois, Maine, New Jersey, New ‘Unity Team’ goal is to aid in organizing A delegation from Oregon attended the National SweatFree Summit in Philadelphia July 11-13. The summit coincided with a meeting of the National Governors Association. Participants at the SweatFree Summit rallied across the street from the governors’ gathering to urge the elected officials to join the sweatfree consortium. Pictured from left to right are Wes Brain of SEIU Local 503, Les Jones of Elevator Constructors Local 23, Deborah Schwartz of SEIU Local 503, Arthur Stamoulis of the Oregon Fair Trade Campaign, and Al Bradbury of SEIU Local 49. York, Pennsylvania, and Vermont. So far, the state commitments are largely symbolic, said Liana Foxvog, Sweat- free Communities national organizer. The next step would be to launch the Sweatfree Consortium, which would hire independent monitors to visit factories where uniforms are made. The consortium will be launched when the group gets finan- cial commitments from participating governments that have $100 million a year in combined purchasing power. So far, just three local jurisdictions have made the financial commitment, pledging a small percentage of the purchasing budget. One of them is the City of Port- land, which passed a “sweatfree” res- olution last year. A Portland city coun- cil resolution created a committee that’s crafting an ordinance to go back for the council’s approval this fall. Steelworkers team with Britain’s Unite to establish global union ‘Bush Legacy’ bus tour stops in Oregon Ariel Brantley-Dalgish checks out the Bush Legacy bus July 23 at Portland’s Waterfront Park. The union-backed Bush Legacy Tour kicked off June 24 in Washington, D.C., and is traveling to 150 cities this summer. Portland was the 29th stop on the tour. The State Capitol in Salem was stop number 30 the following day. Using video and guide-by-cell-technology, the bus is an interactive museum on wheels that encapsulates how Bush Administration policies and conservative ideology have harmed workers and the economy. “We mustn’t forget that Bush didn’t do this alone,” said Julie Blust of Americans United for Change. “He had the help of Congress — members like (Oregon U.S. Senator) Gordon Smith, who rubber-stamped his most disastrous policies.” Blust and the tour bus pointed to “reckless tax cuts” for millionaires and big corporations, and an energy bill written by and for big oil companies who are now raking in record profits while gas and food prices skyrocket. “Gordon Smith voted with Bush 81 percent of the time,” Blust said. Americans United for Change was founded in 2005 to help stop Bush’s plan to privatize Social Security. Oregon Action and several community leaders hosted the tour bus stop in Portland. AUGUST 1, 2008 The United Steelworkers signed a pact July 1 with Britain’s largest union, Unite, creating a global union that will have 3.2 million members in four countries. The new global union is called Workers Uniting. It will engage in joint bargaining and organizing across the Atlantic Ocean with such multi- national employers as ArcelorMittal — the world’s largest steel firm, Shell, British Petroleum and Alcoa. Unite General Secretary Derek Simpson and Steelworkers President Leo Gerard made it clear the new union would be aggressive against multi-national firms that try to cut workers’ wages and conditions. “Globalization is a man-made disas- ter,” Simpson said. “This union is crucial for challeng- ing the growing power of global capi- tal,” Gerard said. “Globalization has given financiers license to exploit workers in developing countries at the expense of our members in the devel- oped world. Only global solidarity among workers can overcome this sort of global exploitation wherever it occurs.” NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS Under terms of the agreement, the Steelworkers and Unite will keep their headquarters in Pittsburgh and in Lon- don, respectively. Much of the new union’s business will be carried out by teleconferenc- ing. And the merger itself will not be fully consummated until union attor- neys on both sides of the Atlantic pore over the agreement and adjust provi- sions to conform to the labor laws of the four nations involved. The Oregon AFL-CIO is trying to find ways to help affiliated unions or- ganize nonunion workplaces. In April, the state labor federation brought Graham Trainor on staff to coordinate the effort, which was man- dated by a September 2007 conven- tion resolution. Prior to that, Trainor headed up the Oregon chapter of the AFL-CIO’s community affiliate, Working America. His new position is funded by a grant from the national AFL-CIO. The effort — dubbed the Unity Team — brings together unions that are interested in organizing, so that they can share resources. In June, about two dozen union de- cision-makers met to talk about ways to collaborate. The group voted to un- dertake six projects of varying sizes. Those include helping recruit a ‘salt’ for one campaign, lending organizers to help visit workers in their homes on several campaigns, and turning out members for a rally to highlight unfair labor practices of a large corporation that is being targeted by an affiliate. Other ideas were floated. If a union tries to organize in a remote part of the state where it has no office, other unions could make meeting or office space available. The Working Amer- ica member list — citizens signed up by paid canvassers as supporters of la- bor movement goals — could be lent out as needed. And the AFL-CIO would help smaller affiliates train their organizers. The decision-makers will continue to meet quarterly. Trainor is also helping to resurrect the Oregon AFL-CIO Organizing Committee, a kind of roundtable for professional organizers to share ideas and strategy. They’ll meet six times a year, the second Tuesday of every other month. Sept. 9 is the next meet- ing. And the third Wednesday of each month, union organizers will meet for a happy hour event. “We want to build a federation-wide culture of organiz- ing,” Trainor said. Zachary Zabinsky • Social Security • SSI - Disability Claims Personal Attention To Every Case Working For Disability Rights Since 1983 NO FEE WITHOUT RECOVERY 621 SW Morrison, Portland 223-8517 PAGE 7
