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.
CHANGE OF ADDRESS NOTICE: Three weeks are required for a
change of address. When ordering a change, please give your old
and new addresses and the name and number of your local union.
POSTMASTER: Send address changes to
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS, P.O. BOX 13150,
PORTLAND, OR 97213-0150
'U 'DQ %HHVRQ &KLURSUDFWRU
6( 7KLUWHHQWK $YH LQ 6HOOZRRG
&$//
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
MAY 1, 2009
