OCT. 16, 2009:NWLP
Inside
10/13/09
10:21 AM
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MEETING NOTICES
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Volume 110
Number 20
October 16, 2009
Portland, Oregon
Portland City Council
gets earful from AFSCME
About 350 City of Portland employees and their supporters turned out for a “Rally for a Real Recovery” Sept. 30 in
front of City Hall.
Leaders of the City of Portland’s
largest union blasted city managers and
Portland City Council at a lunchtime
rally Sept. 30 outside City Hall.
American Federation of State,
County & Municipal Employees (AF-
SCME) Local 189 represents nearly
1,100 city workers. Officers of the
union say the Bureau of Human Re-
sources and the city attorney's office
are obstructing labor-management
agreements worked out by city man-
agers and the union, and blame City
Council members for not getting in-
volved.
“We used to be able to work things
out,” AFSCME staff rep James Hester
told the Labor Press. “Now they’re not
even resolving simple disputes.”
Local 189 has seven pending unfair
labor practice charges being looked into
by the Oregon Employment Relations
Board — each of them an allegation
that the city is violating Oregon’s Public
Employee Collective Bargaining Act. In
one of the charges, the union alleges
that managers are retaliating against and
coercing union officers and union mem-
bers in the Portland Police Bureau and
Portland Water Bureau.
Meanwhile, at the Bureau of Devel-
opment Services, about 130 workers
have been laid off, including 57 mem-
bers of the City of Portland Profes-
sional Employees Association. COP-
PEA is an independent union rep-
resenting some 700 workers.
The layoffs have generated numer-
ous complaints. AFSCME members
said frontline employees are being cut
in disproportionate numbers, while
managers are keeping their jobs. Some
workers were told they would be laid
off and then weren’t, while others did-
n’t find out they would be laid off until
almost the day before.
The cuts stem from a drop in build-
ing permit fees. AFSCME says every
effort by union employees at BDS to be
(Turn to Page 4)
Union members, cardiac resuscitation device, help save a life
By MICHAEL GUTWIG
Editor
ESTACADA — Terry Anglin lay
motionless on the floor. His skin color-
less. Eyes open and fixed. No pulse.
“I thought for sure he was dead,”
said neighbor John Kirkpatrick, who re-
sponded after hearing Anglin’s girl-
friend screaming in the front yard
across the street from his rural home.
Kirkpatrick, a volunteer firefighter
and retired Painters and Allied Trades
District Council 5 representative, started
CPR as his wife ran to call 9-1-1.
Less than six minutes later, the Esta-
cada Fire Department rolled onto the
scene.
The team of firefighters immediately
went to work, first strapping Anglin to a
device called an AutoPulse, a relatively
new piece of equipment that performs
the action of chest compressions. Over
the next 45 minutes Anglin was
shocked with a defibrillator three times
and injected with vasopressin, epineph-
rine and atropine — all while receiving
perfectly-administered CPR.
“We followed protocol by the book
and he took everything we had,” said
Estacada Fire Lt. Bruce Courtain.
Paramedics from American Medical
Response Northwest arrived and trans-
ported Anglin to Mt. Hood Medical
Center, then to Providence Hospital,
and finally to Kaiser Sunnyside, where
he remained in an induced coma for 18
days.
Terry Anglin (second from right) is shown life-saving AutoPulse by Estacada
firefighters, from left to right: Sam Em, Brandon Smith, Tim Corner
(kneeling), Lt. Bruce Courtain, and volunteer firefighter John Kirkpatrick.
When he awoke, the 62-year-old re-
cently retired pipefitter and longtime
member of Plumbers and Fitters Local
290 thought his union brothers had
pranked him. After all, he hadn’t even
cashed his first retirement check.
“A heart attack? Yeah, right. Where
are they? This is the best joke ever,” An-
glin recalled telling nurses as he looked
for his buddies to come in laughing.
In fact, Anglin had not had a heart at-
tack. It was worse than that. He had ex-
perienced sudden cardiac arrest (no
heart beat). Cardiac arrest claims more
than 325,000 lives each year in the U.S.
and is the leading cause of unexpected
death worldwide.
Fortunately for Anglin, he had a
neighbor trained in CPR and willing to
help, and a fire department with state-
of-the-art equipment.
Statistics show that the chance of
surviving cardiac arrest outside a hos-
pital setting are poor — only 2 percent
of victims make it without long-term
damage. According to the American
Heart Association, for every minute that
goes by without CPR, the survival rate
decreases seven to 10 percent.
“Quick thinking and proper training
made the difference in Mr. Anglin’s
case,” said Estacada Fire Department
public information officer Tim Trickey.
“Had John (Kirkpatrick) not been there
to start CPR, having all of the equip-
ment in the world wouldn’t have mat-
tered.”
But the AutoPulse definitely helped.
“I would like to see one of those in
every fire station, ambulance, and hos-
pital in the country,” said Anglin, who
on Oct. 1 met for the first time the fire-
fighters who saved his life Aug. 29.
For victims of cardiac arrest, circula-
tion of blood has to be returned to the
brain and vital organs as soon as possi-
ble (known as perfusion). Standard
manual compressions, even when they
are done perfectly, can only provide up
to 20 percent of normal blood flow to
the heart and up to 40 percent to the
brain.
“And one person can’t do CPR for
very long,” Kirkpatrick said. “Just the
few minutes that I did it, I was ex-
hausted.”
(Turn to Page 9)