Northwest labor press., March 04, 2011, Page 4, Image 4

MARCH 4, 2011:NWLP
3/1/11
10:09 AM
Page 4
Union sponsors sought for kids’ fishing event
The 12th annual Klineline Kids
Fish-In will be held Saturday, April 9,
at Klineline Pond, located at Salmon
Creek Park in Vancouver.
More than 1,500 children ages five
to 14 are expected to attend. Cost is $5
and each child will receive a Zebco rod
and reel.
The program is presented by the
Washington State Department of Fish
and Wildlife and Klineline Kids Fish-
ing, a partner with the non-profit Go-
Play Outside Alliance of Washington.
In the past, this and other similar
fishing events throughout Washington
have been subsidized by the State of
Laborers Local 483 Business Manager Richard Beetle presents check for $600
to Vickie Burns, executive director of Labor’s Community Service Agency.
Laborers #483 donates to LCSA
Laborers Local 483 donated $600 to Labor’s Community Service Agency,
whose Helping Hands program provides short-term assistance to the jobless. The
union collected the money through an incentive program it has to get members to
attend monthly union meetings. If a member’s name is called at the meeting and
that member is present, they win the cash. If not, the money is carried over to the
next meeting. The kitty was at $600 at the end of 2010. “We talked about what to
do with the money and decided to donate it to Labor’s Community Service
Agency,” said Local 483 Business Manager Richard Beetle. “There are a lot of
people unemployed. This donation will only do a small part to help the jobless.
It’s not enough.”
Beetle would like to see Congress quickly pass a jobs program. “High unem-
ployment is a crisis for working families,” he said. “We bailed out Wall Street;
where are the jobs for Main Street? Tax money must be used to stabilize the econ-
omy.”
Beetle encourages all union members, their families and friends, and the un-
employed to attend a “Jobs Rally” at the front steps of the Oregon State Capitol at
noon, Monday, March 7, sponsored by the Oregon AFL-CIO. Buses and carpools
will be available from several locations. For more information, contact Chris He-
witt at 503-287-3114 or by e-mail at chris@oraflcio.org.
Washington, but with budgets stretched
thin, financial assistance has been cut
off.
Roben White of Painters Local 10 is
asking unions to step up as sponsors to
help fill the budget gap. A donation of
$250 will get your union logo on T-
shirts that are given to each child, and
provide space to hang your union ban-
ner at Klineline Pond the day of the
event.
“We need young people to replace us
in the labor force. We need to teach the
children about natural resources so we
have good enough quality and access to
those resources,” White said. “Seeing
and being guided by members of labor
at these events is an imperative for both,
and one hell of a bang for the buck.”
Unions have been involved in the
event for many years, both with finan-
cial assistance and as volunteers. Last
year, for instance, a dozen members of
Sheet Metal Workers Local 16’s Volun-
teer Outreach Committee spent the day
at the pond helping kids fish.
Donations should be made to Kline-
line Kids Fishing. A deadline of March
15 has been set in order to have your
logo printed on T-shirts.
For more information, contact White
at 360-608-8537.
Effort to defund NLRB fails 250-176
The U.S. House defeated an amend-
ment Feb. 17 that would have defunded
the National Labor Relations Board
(NLRB), the agency that oversees and
rules on labor-management relations for
most U.S. industries and workers.
The proposed amendment to H.R. 1,
the Full Year Continuing Appropria-
tions Act of 2011, would have set a
funding level for the NLRB that was so
draconian it would have defunded the
agency completely through the end of
the fiscal year in September.
The vote was 250-176 to reject the
amendment.
Every one of the 190 Democrats vot-
ing opposed it. Republicans voted 176-
60 to kill the NLRB. Among Republi-
cans voting against the amendment
were Greg Walden in Oregon’s 2nd
District and Jaime Herrera Beutler in
Washington’s 3rd District.
The amendment was introduced by
Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), chairman of
the House Republican Policy Commit-
tee. Price charged the “out-of-control”
NLRB with “rigging the deck” for
unions and workers. A portion of the
amendment read: “... the blatant shilling
the current NLRB is doing at the behest
of union bosses, a defunding of this
union-corrupted agency would be a wel-
come step to making it easier for Amer-
ica’s job creators to create jobs.”
The brief debate the day before the
vote roused the minority Democrats to
defend the NLRB against the onslaught.
“This creates chaos and denies peo-
ple rights, be they employers or em-
ployees, be they pro-union or anti-union,
whatever it is,” said Rep. George Miller,
(D-Calif.), top Democrat on the House
Education and Workforce Committee.
Had Price’s amendment passed,
Miller added, workers who are “fired
every day for simply suggesting ... they
would like to have a union” would be
left “without a job and (with) no right
of action to find out whether they were
wrongfully fired.”
Defunding the NLRB was just one
of the provisions in the Republican fed-
eral budget proposal. It also attacked the
middle class by taking away job safety
protections, employment training op-
portunities, and slashed hundreds of
thousands of family-supporting jobs.
AFL-CIO Legislative Director Bill
Samuel described it as an “all-out as-
sault against middle-class Americans.”
Obama names Trumka, UFCW’s
Hansen to new jobs council
WASHINGTON, D.C. — President
Obama named national AFL-CIO Pres-
ident Richard Trumka and United Food
and Commercial Workers Union Inter-
national President Joe Hansen to his
Council on Jobs and Competitiveness.
The panel was created in January to fo-
cus on lifting hiring and promoting
growth.
The Council is chaired by Jeffrey Im-
melt, CEO of General Electric. Among
others named to the 22-member com-
mittee were Paul Otellini, CEO of Intel;
Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl
Sandberg;AOL founder Steve Case; and
Comcast chief executive Brian Roberts.
In his State of the Union address,
Obama discussed the need to out-inno-
vate, out-educate, and out-build global
competitors in order to win the future.
The President’s Council on Jobs and
Competitiveness is charged with carry-
ing out those goals by finding new ways
to promote growth through investments
in American business to equip workers
with the skills they need to succeed, en-
courage the private sector to hire and in-
vest in American competitiveness, and
attract top jobs and businesses in the
United States.
Sweeney gets Medal of Freedom
Retired AFL-CIO President John
Sweeney received the Presidential
Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest
civilian honor, at a White House cere-
mony Feb. 15.
Sweeney was honored along with 14
other Americans that included former
President George H.W. Bush; baseball
Hall-of-Famer Stan Musial; author and
poet Maya Angelou; civil rights icon
PAGE 4
John Lewis; and billionaire investor
Warren Buffett.
Prior unionists who received the
medal include the late longtime labor
lobbyist Evelyn Dubrow and the late
political cartoonist Herbert Block of
The Newspaper Guild. Both received
the honors from President Bill Clinton.
Sweeney served as president of the
national AFL-CIO from 1995–2009.
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
MARCH 4, 2011