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OCT. 2, 2009 :NWLP 9/29/09 9:53 AM Page 5 At national convention IN MEMORIAM B ARRY W HITE , a former financial secretary and or- ganizer for Mill- wrights Local 711 and the Pacific Northwest Re- gional Council of Carpenters, passed away Sept. 22 after suffering a heart at- tack. He was 56. White was a 22-year member of Portland-based Local 711 and a third- generation millwright. He had recently retired due to complications from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. White was born Nov. 19, 1953, in Taunton, Massachusetts, and was raised in Pine Bluffs, Wyoming. After graduating from high school there, he joined the Marine Corps, where he served for four-years. Following his stint in the military he worked briefly as a police officer in St. Louis, but opted to follow in his fam- ily’s footsteps as a millwright. His home at that time was in Libby, Montana, though he worked mostly on the West Coast, where he ran large jobs at power plants and paper mills in Ore- gon and Washington. “No matter where he was working, Barry never missed a union meeting,” said his friend and colleague Hank Mroczkowski of Carpenters #1388. White was hired by the Carpenters as an organizer in 1999. He was elected and served two terms as financial sec- retary of Local 711 from 2003 to 2008. During his career he also held posts as an executive board member, delegate, trustee, and as chair of the Millwrights Caucus. White was an avid motorcycle rider, and in 2003 he helped found the Unions for Kids Motorcycle Poker Run. To date, the charity event has raised $171,000 for Dornbecher Chil- dren’s Hospital. White moved to Vancouver, Wash- ington, in 2005. He is survived by three sisters and a brother, Brad, who is a retired union millwright and Barry’s next door neighbor in Vancouver. A celebration of life was held Sept. 25. The family requests remembrances be in the form of donations to Unions for Kids. Former Oregon AFSCME Council 75 staffer D IANNA M C C OY passed away Sept. 16, following a three-month battle with kidney cancer. She was 54. McCoy worked for Council 75 from 1996 through 2002, primarily in the po- litical department. Dianna Marie Pauley was born in Portland April 19, 1955. She graduated from Washington High School and Portland State Univer- sity. In 1974 she married Michael Mc- Coy. A union painter, he died in an in- dustrial accident in 1981. They have two children, Michael and Kelly. McCoy began a career in and around politics in 1981, working at the Oregon Legislature as a committee staffer and later as a legislative aide to several law- makers over the years, including John Kitzhaber and Bill Bradbury. McCoy was Kitzhaber’s primary staffer during his tenure as Oregon Sen- ate president; she worked on his guber- natorial campaign team in 1994 and on his transition team in 1995. Tired of the commute to Salem, she declined offers to work for him as governor and instead accepted a job at AFSCME in 1996. McCoy and her family have a long history of union activism. Her brother, Jim Pauley, is president of Iron Work- ers Local 29 and of the Columbia Pa- cific Building Trades Council. Another brother, Jack, also is a member of Local 29. Her sister, Jan Pauley, is a teacher and member of the Oregon Education Association, and her son Michael also is a union ironworker. UNITE HERE returns to AFL-CIO PITTSBURGH — The last day of the AFL-CIO Convention Sept. 17 opened with a bang when UNITE HERE President John Wilhelm took the stage to announce that his union was reaffiliating with national labor federation. The 400,000-member international union, which represents workers in the hotel, restaurant, textile, laundry and airport industries, was one of seven unions that left the AFL-CIO in 2005 to form the Change to Win labor feder- ation. UNITE (Union of Needletrades, In- dustrial and Textile Employees) and HERE (Hotel Employees and Restau- rant Employees) merged in 2004. That merger included a power-sharing agreement between UNITE President Bruce Raynor and HERE President John Wilhelm. Wilhelm took the title of hospitality president. However, the leadership had a falling out earlier this year and Raynor and 135,000 members seceded from the union and formed Workers United. The new union became a sector of the Service Employees International Union and is now challenging HERE in its core jurisdiction of hotel and food serv- ice workers. Wilhelm and the UNITE HERE Ex- ecutive Board voted to return — with its remaining 265,000 members — to the AFL-CIO. The re-affiliation marks a huge step forward in the push for unaffiliated unions to rejoin the AFL-CIO. In the coming months, newly- elected AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka will continue to lead conversa- tions on reaffiliation with United Food and Commercial Workers, Teamsters, Laborers, SEIU, United Farm Workers, and Carpenters. The Carpenters Union left Change to Win in late August and is not affiliated with any national labor federation. SEIU Secretary-Treasurer Anna Burger told Politico.com after the AFL- CIO convention that “SEIU has no in- terest in unification.” (Editor’s Note: James Parks of the AFL-CIO Now Blog and PAI con- tributed to this report.) 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