July 2, 2010:NWLP
6/29/10
9:57 AM
Page 4
This just in: DOL wins back pay for
Umatilla workers, six months ago
When it comes to reporting on
workers, the Northwest Labor Press
has too little competition.
Staff at Operating Engineers Local
701 were surprised to read June 15 in
the Oregonian that Umatilla Chemical
Depot workers “are getting” $4.2 mil-
lion in back pay.
Those checks went out last Decem-
ber to several hundred union members
at the Depot, and the Labor Press re-
ported it — six months before the
state’s largest daily newspaper took
notice. Workers there incinerate
chemical agents like sarin nerve gas,
and their employer, federal contractor
URS EG&G, had not paid them for
breaks, or for the time-consuming
donning and doffing of life-saving
protective gear.
More perplexing to Local 701’s
Nelda Wilson, assistant to the busi-
ness manager, was what was left out
of the Oregonian article — the union’s
role in the settlement. According to
the newspaper, the back pay award
came “after an investigation by the
U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and
Hour Division,” when the agency’s
Portland office “determined” that de-
pot workers were underpaid.
But as Labor Press readers may re-
member, Wilson and her Umatilla
Chemical Depot members — as well
as co-workers belonging to IBEW Lo-
cal 112 — had to hound the Depart-
ment of Labor (DOL) to enforce the
law, even appealing to U.S. Senator
PAGE 4
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
Jeff Merkley’s office for help after
they grew impatient with the DOL’s
bureaucratic delay.
Like dozens of other news outlets
— Business Week, CNBC, USA To-
day, and regional papers — the Ore-
gonian ran the story as it was pro-
duced by the Associated Press (AP).
The AP story relied entirely on a June
14 DOL press release — nothing in
the AP story is not in the release.
DOL press spokesperson Jeanine
Lupton said an AP staffperson asked
no questions, only whether AP should
use a Portland dateline.
The anonymous AP press release
re-writer did leave out this self-serv-
ing quote, attributed to U.S. Secretary
of Labor Hilda Solis: “The U.S. De-
partment of Labor will not hesitate to
take action against employers that vio-
late our laws. I am proud of the hard
work of our investigators in recover-
ing back wages for these working
families.”
Wilson, hearing that quote, said it
felt like her head was about to ex-
plode. “That’s total bullshit,” Wilson
said. “Their investigators screwed it
up the first time. Our guys had this
huge action to get this done.”
As early as 2003, Local 701 had
written to the DOL, complaining of
the violations. No action. Then in
2008, an alert union steward learned
that URS EG&G had settled a lawsuit
over the same practices at its facility
in Utah. The union hounded DOL to
take action. But DOL let URS EG&G
off the hook for the first four years of
violations; the $4.2 million payout
covers only two years. And the DOL
agent assigned to the case low-balled
the settlement amount for that period,
re-doing the calculation after the
unions complained. When Wilson
wrote to Solis seeking her personal in-
tervention, she got back a formulaic
response: Solis said she was confident
the agency’s field investigators would
take care of it. In the end, DOL
dragged its feet approving the settle-
ment, months after the company and
union had agreed on terms.
But only the Labor Press reported
any of that.
JULY 2, 2010