Northwest labor press., March 18, 2011, Page 11, Image 11

NWLP-03-18-11:NWLP
3/15/11
10:16 AM
Page 11
Mill closure another example of failed trade policies
By GREGORY PALLESEN
Once again, Oregon has lost a major
employer as a direct result of failed U.S.
trade policies.
The Blue Heron paper mill in Ore-
gon City has closed its doors, eliminat-
ing 175 good-paying jobs. Gone is a
major customer for numerous small
businesses and the city’s largest single
source of tax revenue. The ripple effect
of the mill closure will be felt by many
more than the 175 direct jobs that were
lost. In the midst of the worst economic
crisis in generations, families and com-
munities are now forced to grapple
with this loss, one that could have been
prevented had we exercised sound
trade policy.
Blue Heron had been a cornerstone
of the city’s economy for more than a
century, at one point employing more
than 500 people. In recent decades, the
mill’s business model had focused on
producing some of the world’s green-
est and finest-quality recycled paper. To
do so, it relied heavily on the wastepa-
per collected from people’s recycling
bins throughout the Northwest.
Then, in 2001, Congress voted to al-
low China to join the World Trade Or-
ganization. Exports of wastepaper to
China soared, while overall U.S. ex-
ports of paper and other paper products
plummeted. China now produces more
paper products than any other country
in the world. Wastepaper is now one of
America’s single largest exports and its
price has gone through the roof.
Chinese companies can afford to
pay more than anyone else for wastepa-
per, partly because they’re subsidized
by their government and partly because
of China’s low labor costs, the result of
weak labor, safety and environmental
standards. Although the Blue Heron
mill has a backlog of orders for its
products, like so many other mills up
and down the West Coast, it simply
can’t compete.
And like so many mills that do not
survive, the equipment will most likely
be dismantled, shipped overseas, re-
assembled and be brought back on line;
producing the same products that were
made here in the United States.
The Association of Western Pulp
and Paper Workers had urged Congress
to oppose China’s entry into the WTO a
decade ago, and it’s been advocating
policies to correct that blunder ever
since. For some time we’ve been urg-
ing Rep. Kurt Schrader, who has an of-
fice just blocks away from the Blue
Heron mill, to support trade reform leg-
islation called the TRADE Act.
The TRADE Act would create con-
sistent labor and environmental stan-
dards across borders, while making it
easier for our government to address
unfair subsidies in China and else-
where. Schrader called the bill “too
prescriptive.” His solution instead has
been to promote business-as-usual poli-
cies that would spread problems with
the existing trade model into still new
countries. Just last month, he said dur-
ing a town hall meeting in Oregon City
that he’s leaning toward supporting the
pending Korea Free Trade Agreement.
For many, the closure of the Blue
All union members want is a
decent life for their families
To the Editor:
Currently, union workers are being
criticized for having better pay and ben-
efits than nonunion workers. Also,
unions are being criticized for being
past their prime and should be history.
It’s 2011 now, and as far as history
goes, I remember in 1971 when I was
working at a nonunion bank. I got $3 an
hour, a pension provided, and the bank
provided medical insurance with the
premium 100 percent paid. Gas for my
car was 37 cents a gallon; a nice home
cost $40,000; a nice new car was
$4,000; and you could get a Big Mac,
Coke and fries, with change back for a
dollar.
Currently, good bank wages are $10-
12 an hour; medical insurance is not all
paid; gas is $3.70 a gallon; a nice home
is $400,000+; nice new cars, well mod-
est ones, are $20,000, but my old Mus-
tang new would be $45,000 (it was a
hot one); a Big Mac, Coke and fries has
left $6 way behind. Shouldn’t the wages
increase reasonably?
It sure sounds to me that with the in-
creased cost of our homes, cars and Big
Macs, that nonunion wage earners are
MARCH 18, 2011
losing more ground than union mem-
bers. It also sounds like the nonunion
workers need to realize that unions have
gotten wages for their members that
have not been as badly decimated by
the ever-increasing cost of living.
Other comparisons can be made. For
example, regular saving accounts in
banks earned 4.7 percent interest. The
same basic actuarial tables are still in
use by insurance companies; however
profits are higher now. These compar-
isons can go on and on, and the total
picture shows all the union and
nonunion workers falling behind.
The business climate has unions as
the greedy blood-suckers, with non-
union workers, who have lost much
more than unions, being indignant that
union workers have a so-called “gravy
train.”
We don’t have a gravy train. We’re
not greedy blood-suckers. We want a
decent life for our families, and that’s
the real foundation of our country.
G. Brevick
ATU 757
Woodburn
Heron mill comes as a shock; most clo-
sures do. However, the closure of the
Blue Heron mill is not a surprise. Be-
cause of economic pressures, union
members at the mill voted more than
once to take pay cuts. Salaried employ-
ees also took pay cuts. Five years ago
the Blue Heron management team
shared with union leaders the business
and financial status of the mill. Since
then we’ve all made it clear to Schrader
and others that if U.S. trade policies
weren’t changed, the mill would close.
These also aren’t the first job losses
at Blue Heron. The workforce had pre-
viously qualified for trade adjustment
assistance, a federal program that ex-
tends unemployment and retraining
benefits for those whose jobs are lost
because of unfair competition from
other countries or if U.S. jobs are
shipped overseas. The TAA program is
valuable for many who go through it,
but one can’t help but feeling cynical
about it at the same time.
In Oregon and Washington alone,
nearly 115,000 people have qualified
for the program since NAFTA was en-
acted in 1994. But what jobs are all
those people training for? How many
have been forced to settle for low-pay-
ing work in the retail sector, selling
goods that used to be made in Amer-
ica? I know literally hundreds of mill
workers throughout the Northwest who
have gone through the assistance pro-
gram over the years, and I’m not aware
of a single one who ever found a job
that was better compensated than the
one he originally had.
You’ll hear some say that our trade
policies create jobs and, yes, some jobs
are created. But they fail to look at the
rest of the equation — jobs created plus
or minus jobs lost. Along with the job
losses we also have a staggering trade
deficit. The trade deficits are directly re-
sponsible for our other deficits
Our nation is broke, our states are
broke and our counties are broke. We
O PEN
F ORUM
no longer have the tax base required to
maintain our infrastructure — money
for our schools and basic services.
Many of our current political lead-
ers believe the solution to our deficit
problems is for working families to
take pay cuts, to pay more for health in-
surance, to reduce or eliminate pen-
sions. But it’s our trade policies that are
destroying the middle class, piece by
piece, and our members of Congress
are directly responsible.
We must change our trade policies.
(Editor’s Note: Gregory Pallesen is
international vice president of the Asso-
ciation of Western Pulp and Paper
Workers, an affiliate of United Brother-
hood of Carpenters and Joiners of
America.)
Who’s On Our Side?
By Tom Chamberlain
T
hroughout history there have tip-
ping points when the moment, fo-
cus and outcomes have shifted.
In the 1930s, John L. Lewis, presi-
dent of the United Mine Workers of
America, responding to the mecha-
nization of work, observed that organ-
izing by craft was outdated and inef-
fective. He developed a strategy to
organize workers by industry, result-
ing in bringing millions of workers
into the labor movement. This, cou-
pled with New Deal legislation, was a
tipping point for America and resulted
in the creation of the middle class.
Rosa Parks refusing to give up her
set on a bus was the tipping point for
the civil rights movement.
Another tipping point occurred on
March 25, 1911; a small fire broke out
in a scrap bin in the Asch Building,
which was occupied by Triangle Shirt-
Waist Company. Within minutes, fire
engulfed the top three floors of the
building and the 500 employees —
mostly Jewish and Italian immigrant
women — raced to the exits to escape
the flames. To reduce theft the owners
had locked all exits and the foreman of
each floor held the only key. The ninth
floor foreman was an early evacuee,
leaving ninth floor exits locked with no
escape. One hundred forty-six of the
500 employees died. Hundreds of
New Yorkers, including 31-year-old
Frances Perkins, watched 62 death
leaps from ninth floor windows.
While the fire was horrendous, it in
itself was not the tipping point for
workers and the union movement. In
1911, over 100 workers died every
day on the job. More important is
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
what the union movement had done
before, and did as a result of the fire.
A year before the fire, 20,000 cloth-
ing workers, including the Triangle
workers, struck for increased pay and a
52-hour workweek. After almost four
months, their strike was broken.
After the fire, more than 350,000
people participated in a funeral march
for the Triangle dead. After three full
months of continued pressure from
activists, NewYork’s governor signed
a law creating the Factory Investigat-
ing Commission, chaired by Robert
Wagner. The Commission investi-
gated nearly 2,000 factories in dozens
of industries and, with the help of such
workers’ rights advocates as Frances
Perkins, enacted eight laws covering
fire safety, factory inspections and
sanitation and employment rules for
women and children, entirely rewrit-
ing New York’s labor laws and creat-
ing a State Department of Labor to en-
force the laws.
During the Roosevelt Administra-
tion, Secretary of Labor Frances
Perkins and U.S. Sen. Robert Wagner
helped create the nation’s most sweep-
ing worker protections, including the
National Labor Relations Act.
There are tipping points in our his-
tory, though, that were not so success-
ful. During the “Battle in Seattle” in
1999, the union movement captured
American attention. Our nation was
focused on the impact of trade on the
American worker. Unions were
viewed as leading the charge for
change. But we did not develop long-
term strategies, and the tipping point
slipped through our fingers.
Today, long term worker success
isn’t just about beating back anti-
union legislation in Wisconsin, Ohio
and Indiana. Union support grows
each day we are in the streets — from
Portland, Oregon, to Portland, Maine.
But our success will depend on what
we do when the battle is over.
Will unions capitalize on the op-
portunity by modifying our organizing
programs as Lewis did in the ‘30s and
‘40s? Will we build our movement
through increased public support as
the civil rights movement did when
Rosa Parks stood her ground? Or will
we go back to business as usual and
miss a monumental opportunity as we
did in the Battle in Seattle?
A month from now we will re-
member the death of Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr. He was killed at a san-
itation worker strike. That strike was
about respect. Remember, they carried
signs that simply stated: “I Am a
Man.”
A month from now, will our lead-
ers remember that all workers are peo-
ple, demanding respect? Or will they
remember that one governor denied us
respect and took our rights without
consequence?
History can be on our side, but
only if we’re willing to continue the
fight after the reporters go home and
this first battle ends.
Tom Chamberlain is president of
the Oregon AFL-CIO.
PAGE 11