OCT. 2, 2009 :NWLP
9/29/09
9:53 AM
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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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OCTOBER 2, 2009
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
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