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About Northwest labor press. (Portland , Ore.) 1987-current | View Entire Issue (May 1, 2009)
May 1, 2009 :NWLP 4/28/09 9:55 AM Page 2 ...DePaul fires union promoters (From Page 1) b h m k Bennett Hartman Morris & Kaplan, llp Attorneys at Law Oregon’s Full Service Union Law Firm Representing Workers Since 1960 Serious Injury and Death Cases • Construction Injuries • Automobile Accidents • Medical, Dental, and Legal Malpractice • Bicycle and Motorcycle Accidents • Pedestrian Accidents • Premises Liability (injuries on premises) • Workers’ Compensation Injuries • Social Security Claims We Work Hard for Hard-Working People! 111 SW Fifth Avenue, Suite 1650 Portland, Oregon 97204 (503) 227-4600 www.bennetthartman.com Our Legal Staff are Proud Members of UFCW Local 555 PAGE 2 wouldn’t immediately attract manage- ment attention. To sign up the plant’s many Span- ish speakers, Pierre and Taylor re- cruited another quality control worker — Priscilla Perez. Perez, a well-liked 18-year-old of Cuban and Puerto Ri- can descent, was six months into the job, her first. She liked the job, but was bothered by what she described to the Labor Press as management fa- voritism. And she had felt wronged when a supervisor wouldn’t grant her a day off to attend a court hearing de- termining her guardianship of her 14- year-old sister. With Taylor, Pierre and Perez sign- ing up co-workers and passing out union authorization cards, the break room became a hotbed of union re- cruitment. So did Taylor’s car, parked out back along a windowless wall. Within two weeks, over 100 of the ap- proximately 130 workers had signed cards saying they wanted to join BCTGM. The union was an easy sell. De- Paul’s charitable mission may be to provide employment opportunity, but the supposed recipients of that charity — its employees — sure had a lot of complaints. And not just about low wages and bare-bones benefits. Ac- cording to six current and former workers interviewed for this article, managers showed favoritism toward some and verbally abused others. The office area was air conditioned, but workers packaging products for Frito- Lay, Tazo Tea, and Starbucks would sometimes faint from exhaustion on the hot and poorly ventilated shop floor. The assembly line moved so fast that Frito-Lay’s own managers at one point asked that it be slowed down. Forklifts raced around, with no taped- off “safe” areas. One worker was hos- pitalized when a forklift ran over his foot. And on top of that, workers faced termination without warning for trivial 7LUHG LQ 3$,1" 0RVW ,QVXUDQFH 3ODQV $FFHSWHG 3 528'/< 6 (59,1* 3 257/$1' : 25.(56 ) 25 2 9(5 < ($56 offenses. Taylor, Pierre, and Perez tried to use caution, talking to workers they knew, getting signatures while on break. But when one co-worker told Perez she wouldn’t sign the union card, and would have to talk with a su- pervisor about it, Perez knew her cover was blown. A team leader friendly to Perez told her to be care- ful, warning that she’d be fired if she was caught collecting union signa- tures. Soon after, a manager accosted Perez and demanded to know what the signature campaign was about. Perez, frightened, told her to talk to Pierre. Pierre told her he was signing up co- workers for a martial arts class he planned to teach. The manager began appearing in the break room, watching workers, trying to make small talk in English with foreign-born assembly line work- ers who couldn’t speak the language. Then a whole shift of workers who’d signed union cards was trans- ferred to another location. New work- ers were brought in to replace them. A week after her exchange with the %HHVRQ &KLURSUDFWLF (Turn to Page 3) KHOSV EULQJ WKH UHOLHI \RX QHHG RI :RUNLQJ DePaul employee Claude Pierre helped collect union authorization cards. For that, he believes he was fired. manager, Perez was the first of the union supporters to be fired. Managers wouldn’t tell her why, she says. Pierre was next. According to his version of events, the same manager who had talked to Perez told him he was being disciplined — for failing to complete a scale calibration report. He protested: He had done the report, and he tried to show her. Told she was go- ing to discipline him anyway, Pierre pulled out a cell phone and took a pic- ture of the scale readout, which he felt proved he’d done the work. The man- ager told him it was against company policy to take pictures, and demanded he hand over the phone. Pierre re- fused, and tried to leave the building. He said two managers then pushed him into an office and blocked the door, one of them spitting out a pro- fanity and using a racial epithet. Pierre pushed his way out. A visit to the hu- man resources department the follow- ing day confirmed he had been fired. Other firings followed. Billy Fran- cois, 19, signed a union card on break and was fired that day without expla- nation, after seven months without in- cident. So was Pierre’s ex-wife Clari- nate Vilson. The firings took place the week be- fore what was supposed to be the big union meeting. Several dozen DePaul workers turned up at the North Port- land Carpenters Hall, but Crane said the fear was pervasive. “It may be the worst job in the world,” Crane said, “but it’s not like the people working there have so many other opportunities.” The union campaign was for all in- tents and purposes dead, except that it had an echo in a pair of unfair labor practice charges — the bureaucratic term for violations of the National La- bor Relations Act, the 1935 law that established U.S. workers right to unionize. An agent of the National La- bor Relations Board looked into whether the DePaul firings had been meant to kill the union campaign. Pierre’s story was said to be com- pelling, but DePaul management 7UHDWPHQW IRU SDLQ GXH WR RYHUXVH DQG UHSHWLWLYH PRWLRQ &KLURSUDFWLF DGMXVWPHQWV 7UHDWPHQW IRU DFFLGHQW DQG VSRUWVUHODWHG LQMXULHV 5HKDELOLWDWLRQ H[HUFLVHV 7KHUDSHXWLF PDVVDJH ,QWHUQDO GLDJQRVLV DQG WUHDWPHQW /DE WHVWV DQG [UD\V (International Standard Serial Number 0894-444X) Established in 1900 at Portland, Oregon as a voice of the labor movement. 4275 NE Halsey St., P.O. Box 13150, Portland, Ore. 97213 Telephone: (503) 288-3311 Editor: Michael Gutwig Staff: Don McIntosh, Cheri Rice Published on a semi-monthly basis on the first and third Fridays of each month by the Oregon Labor Press Publishing Co. Inc., a non- profit corporation owned by 20 unions and councils including the Oregon AFL-CIO. Serving more than 120 union organizations in Ore- gon and SW Washington. Subscriptions $13.75 per year for union members. Group rates available to trade union organizations. PERIODICALS POSTAGE PAID AT PORTLAND, OREGON. 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