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About Northwest labor press. (Portland , Ore.) 1987-current | View Entire Issue (July 15, 2011)
July 15, 2011 _NWLP 7/12/11 10:12 Am Page 1 Inside Official Meeting Notices See Page 4 Volume 112 Number 14 July 15, 2011 Portland Portland bus brigade travels to rallies at 8 worksites By DON McINTOSH Associate Editor On Thursday, June 30, 133 unionists packed into three buses, and protested at eight Portland-area demonstrations. The idea was conceived months ear- lier, when labor activists with Portland Jobs with Justice noticed an extraordi- nary pile-up of union contracts set to ex- pire June 30, and thought, “Why not get all the unions together?” They dubbed the project “Portland Rising,” borrow- ing from the “Hotel Workers Rising” campaign, in which UNITE HERE has fought to synchronize contract expira- tions for West Coast hotels. The June 30 day of protest began in the parking lot outside a collection of union offices at Southeast 12th and Madison. Participants boarded two charter buses and a First Student school bus driven by Amalgamated Transit Union officer Anna Tompte. What fol- lowed were a series of tightly choreo- graphed, short, noisy but polite protests, in some cases coordinated with local management. The first stop was Georgia-Pacific’s North Portland tissue paper warehouse at the Kelley Point industrial area. With their old contract on the verge of expi- ration, members of Inland Boatmen’s Union (IBU) were without a new one. Protesters sang and chanted in the park- ing lot outside, and a delegation of IBU members marched into the warehouse manager’s office and appeared to catch him off guard. As they handed him a pe- tition calling for a fair contract, the phone rang. “Actually, they’re already here,” he said into the phone. Next stop: the Hilton Vancouver Ho- tel and Convention Center. The City of Vancouver owns it. Hilton Hotels man- ages it. Neither wants to give workers a raise. Demonstrators gathered in a park across the street, and heard from work- ers that they haven’t had a raise in four years. Their expiring union contract did- n’t include raises, though it did limit housekeeper workload and contain other improvements. Earlier this year, a group of workers tried to dump UNITE HERE, but the unit voted 77 to 33 to Three buses crisscrossed the Portland area June 30, delivering 133 union members and supporters to eight protest demonstrations on a day when multiple union contracts expired. UFCW’s Brad Witt runs for Congress State Rep. Brad Witt, a union repre- sentative of United Food and Commer- cial Workers (UFCW) Local 555 and former secretary-treasurer of the Ore- gon AFL-CIO, has entered the Demo- cratic primary for Congress in Oregon’s 1st District. Witt, 59, was introduced to a small State Rep. Brad Witt meets with residents of Sauvie Island July 7 after announcing his candidacy for Congress in Oregon’s 1st District. Witt is a union rep for UFCW Local 555 and a former secretary-treasurer of the Oregon AFL-CIO. stick with the union. With a courteous assistant general manager holding open the door for group of Sauvie Island residents July 7 by Scott Beckstead, an animal welfare activist from Oakland, Oregon, and Rachael Barry-Dame, director of the Columbia County Women’s Resource Center. It was the last of five stops he made in each of the five counties that make up the 1st Congressional District. Witt said he will be a strong advo- cate for the middle class and will work tirelessly to bring back family-wage jobs. “My top priority is to put Ameri- cans back to work,” he said. “We need to repair our roads, rebuild our bridges, weatherize our schools and public buildings, and upgrade our water and sewer systems.” Additionally, Witt promised to fight for a “financially solid Social Security and Medicare system so that today’s working families can retire with dig- nity,” and to stand up to big spending, Wall Street, global banks, and special interest groups. Witt will have his work cut out for him, as he challenges seven-term in- cumbent David Wu. Also running in the Democratic primary is Oregon Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian. Wu, the first Chinese-American to serve in the House of Representatives, (Turn to Page 7) them, protesters carrying pompoms and clappers filed quietly through the Hilton lobby. Managers directed protesters into an empty conference room, where they held a short rally. Hotel workers were ushered in amid cheers. Banquet captain (and union steward) Wanda Buck told the Labor Press her base wage of $8.55 rises to $19 to $22 an hour after the hotel distributes half the 20 percent gratuity it charges cus- tomers. But the dishwashers and house- keepers and phone operators who make $8.55 to $9.25 are long overdue for a raise, she said. The bus next headed to a State of Oregon office building near Lloyd Cen- ter in Northeast Portland, where a rally by Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 503 was already under way. The biggest item of con- tention for state workers — no surprise — is paying for health insurance. Gov. John Kitzhaber is demanding that state workers have 5 percent of the cost de- (Turn to Page 5) Oregon Legislative session 2011 a mixed bag for labor SALEM — Oregon lawmakers wrapped up the 2011 Legislative ses- sion June 30. If there was anything memorable in it for working people, it was that lawmakers finally cut corporate tax breaks down to size … ex- cept when they were giving out new ones. It was also the year that the Oregon Legislature gave state agencies a new aspirational goal: Lay off managers, not just front-line state employees. In a state with 9.6 percent unemployment, the closest lawmakers got to passing a jobs bill was a pi- lot project that will employ some workers on energy efficiency retrofits of public schools, or maybe the new law removing procedural roadblocks to pipelines and other “linear” construction projects. The Oregon House was split 30-30 between Democrats and Republi- cans this year. Though Democrats controlled the Oregon Senate 16-14 and the governor’s office, they were reluctant to back any major initia- tives. It was a session of tight budgets, diminished expectations, and de- fensive battles for organized labor. As usual, many bills that organized la- bor deemed worthy of support were bottled up or watered down. In a few cases where labor allied with business, the logjam let up. Here are some highlights among new laws of interest to the labor movement: 1) School retrofits. “Cool Schools” was a centerpiece of Gov. John Kitzhaber’s 2010 election campaign, as his chief proposal to put Oregoni- ans back to work. The idea is to give public schools more energy-efficient boilers, HVAC systems, doors, windows, roofs, insulation, and lighting — creating employment in the short run and lowering schools’ utility bills in the long run. But the Legislature appropriated no new money for such work. Instead, HB 2960, which passed unanimously in both chambers, will redirect and make creative use of existing pots of money. As bill au- (Turn to Page 3)
