NWLP-03-18-11:NWLP
3/15/11
10:16 AM
Page 8
The new face of labor?
At Dosha salon, 155 workers will vote whether to go union
By DON MINTOSH
Associate Editor
Dosha Salon and Spa could become the first sa-
lon in Portland to go union in recent times. Its 155
union-eligible employees will vote March 29 and
30 whether they want to join Communications
Workers of America (CWA) Local 7901.
Dosha does hair, nails, makeup, and massage.
It’s a successful business, with four Portland-area
locations and plans to add a fifth later this year. But
a group of employees have decided they want
more say over their working conditions — and
maybe a greater share of the profit, too.
Dosha charges $70 for an hour-long massage,
and pays a licensed massage therapist $13 to $17
an hour to perform it. It pays hair stylists as little as
Oregon’s $8.50-an-hour minimum wage, while
customers pay $35 for a 45-minute haircut.
Higher-in-demand stylists can make $20 an hour,
with customers paying $70 to $120.
Dosha co-owner Ray Motameni also owns
Aveda Institute Portland, and Dosha hires many of
its graduates. Students can take out $10,000 in stu-
dent loans to pay for the training at Motameni’s
school, then work at his salon for $11 an hour
while they pay off the loans.
Yet money isn’t the top motivation for unioniz-
ing, pro-union Dosha workers say. And while they
suffer an accumulation of low-level indignities,
they have no personal difficulty with owners Ray
and Melissa Motameni. More than anything, they
see a union as a way to turn a job they love into a
career that can sustain them.
The union campaign has been bubbling below
the surface for a year and a half, several workers
told the Labor Press. It began when a Dosha es-
thetician talked about work with her friend
Cameron Taylor, a business agent for Bakers Local
364. Joe Crane, then the local’s volunteer organ-
izer, met with Taylor and several co-workers,
helped them get a committee started, and called
around for a union willing to help. Eventually,
CWA Local 7901 agreed to sponsor a union or-
ganizing drive.
Dosha employees have many motives for
unionizing.
• Employees interviewed by the Labor Press
said management favoritism dictates how well any
employee will do at Dosha. New hires might make
$1 an hour more than senior employees, for no ob-
vious reason.
• There are no sick days, so when workers get
Pro-union workers at Dosha Salon and Spa attend a March 7 elections hearing of the National
Labor Relations Board. About 155 workers at Dosha’s four locations will have a chance to vote
March 29 and 30 whether to join CWA Local 7901. Pictured from left to right are: esthetician Ali
Grove, licensed massage therapist Philip Aust, hair stylist Kelanie York, esthetician Rachel
Voorhies, spa host Sarah Pearson, and laundry worker Dominic Casciato.
sick, they must get co-workers to cover them, or
work sick and expose their customers, or go to a
doctor for a note.
• Dosha will pay half the health insurance pre-
mium for full-time workers, but workers remain
uninsured if they can’t afford the other half on their
earnings.
• Employees who work full-time hours get a
week’s paid vacation after a year, but if they want
to use it, they’re responsible for getting co-workers
to cover their shifts.
• There’s no pension or 401(k).
• Workers are made to sign broad “non-com-
pete” agreements which forbid them from working
their trade within three miles of any Dosha loca-
tion, during and up to 18 months after employment
at Dosha.
• There’s constant pressure to sell product to
their customers. An esthetician, for example, is ex-
pected to sell $15 of product per customer —
whether they’re paying $16 for a 15-minute brow
wax or $65 for an hour-long facial. Stylists sell
Labor Bowl Challenge for MDA
Clark County MDA ambassador Conor McCarty gets help from his father, Paul, at 22nd
annual Labor Bowl Challenge for the Muscular Dystrophy Association. Early tallies from
the March 13 event show $13,600 raised, with more to come. A full report and more photos
will appear in the April 1 issue of the Labor Press.
PAGE 8
shampoos. Massage therapists sell oils. They get
no commission for the sales, but are written up if
they fail to sell enough.
• Managers set employees’ sales goals each
month. Employees are disciplined if they don’t
meet them, but have no control over how many
clients they’re given, except that they’re expected
to re-book.
• Workers are sometimes talked down to or
yelled at by managers for minor infractions or
missing sales goals.
• Employees often start at an hourly wage and
later have a chance to be paid on commission, but
how the commission is computed is very poorly
understood, and they may be automatically docked
nearly one-fourth of their commission for product,
regardless of how much they actually use.
• Rules can change at any time.
Union supporters want more affordable health
benefits. They’d like to be paid extra if they have to
work on Christmas eve. They’d like greater assur-
ance that they’ll get tips their customers give them.
[Cash tips don’t always make it to their intended
recipients, workers say.]
“I joined the union to make things better,” says
esthetician Rachel Voorhies, 26.
Voorhies is part of the third committee of Dosha
workers to work on the union campaign at Dosha
in the last 18 months. Two previous efforts fizzled
when committee members quit or were fired. In
late January, Voorhies and co-workers began gath-
ering signatures on official union authorization
cards. They kept going until they reached a super-
majority of Dosha workers.
On Feb. 22, Voorhies and eight co-workers en-
tered company offices armed with a petition re-
questing that the company voluntarily recognize
their union.
“[Going into the office] they were terrified,”
Crane recalls. “But after that, they were jumping
up and down. They had conquered their fear.”
Human resources manager Trisha McMakin
didn’t agree to union recognition. So the group
asked the National Labor Relations Board to con-
duct a union election, which it set for March 29
and 30.
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
Owners and managers — with support from
some workers — have been campaigning vigor-
ously against unionizing: holding meetings at each
location, talking about all the things Dosha does
for employees, giving out Blazer tickets and spa
packages. Right-wing talk radio host Lars Larsen
gave an anti-union Dosha worker five minutes on
his March 8 show.
But pro-union workers say management’s cam-
paign has sometimes backfired. Crowing that styl-
ists make $23.71 an hour plus tips isn’t persuasive
to a room full of stylists making $11. Loving testi-
monials by favored employees who have risen rap-
idly in the company only further the sense that the
rest of them need a fairer, more transparent system
of pay and promotion to replace the current sys-
tem based on arbitrary management decisions.
Since Feb. 22, the two camps have set up duel-
ing Facebook pages, but the pro-union page is
trouncing its counterpart. At last count, 431 Face-
book users are signed onto the “Dosha Workers
Unite” group, compared to 231 for “Dosha As Is.”
The pages make for entertaining and revealing
reading. Dosha Workers Unite has a consistently
positive and enthusiastic tone. Workers comment
that they love the job, and want it to be a career.
Dosha As Is, by contrast, is broadly anti-union,
with hyperventilating posts like this one from styl-
ist ShaddieYazd: “It angers me to no end that these
moronic, inexperienced, selfish people think they
have any right to change or take away something
that Ray and Melissa have worked so hard for.”
If it succeeds, Dosha would be the only large
union-represented salon in Portland. United Food
and Commercial Workers Local 555 represents 11
barber shops and salons [See “Union Style” below],
but they’re small shops, brought into the union in
1980 when it absorbed the tiny Barbers, Beauti-
cians and Allied Industries International Associa-
tion. A union at Dosha would be an altogether new
creature in an overwhelmingly non-union industry.
It would be whatever Dosha workers make of it.
UNION STYLE
At 11 barber shops and beauty salons in
Oregon and Southwest Washington, a shave
and a haircut will cost more than six bits. But
it’s still very affordable, and it supports the
wages and benefits of members of United
Food and Commercial Workers Local 555.
Carman and Co Salon, 1133 SW Market
St., Suite 200, Portland. 503-224-3171
Donovan’s Barber Shop, 12344 SE Divi-
sion St, Portland. 503-761-977
Marshall Union Manor Salon of Beauty,
2020 NW Northrup St., Portland. 503-248-
9917
Sam’s Barber Shop, 2430 SE 182nd Ave.,
Portland. 503-661-7989
Mirror Image Hair & Nail Salon, Al-
bany. 541-791-3910
Frank’s Barber Shop, Astoria. 503-338-
4700
First Edition Hair Designs, Eugene. 541-
689-7004
Split Ends Salon, Eugene. 541-683-1317
Dick Rowe’s Clip Snip & Style,
Creswell. 541 895-4500
Jesse’s Barber Shop, Grants Pass. 541-
474-1004
Sportsmen’s Barber Shop, White
Salmon, Washington. 509-493-2120
MARCH 18, 2011