July 15, 2011 _NWLP 7/12/11 10:12 Am Page 1
Inside
Official
Meeting Notices
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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)