Inside
Official
Meeting Notices
See
Page 6
Volume 112
Number 15
August 5, 2011
Portland, Oregon
Oregon public employee unions reach deal with state
SALEM — In tentative agreements
with the State of Oregon, union bar-
gainers agreed — for the first time —
to give up fully-paid health coverage.
Oregon AFSCME (American Fed-
eration of State County and Municipal
Employees) reached agreement July 19
on a contract covering 3,000 state
workers, and three days later, Service
Employees International Union (SEIU)
Local 503 settled for a group of 23,000
workers. The terms are basically the
same. If approved, the two-year con-
tracts would run through June 30, 2013.
Under the agreements, workers
would pay 5 percent of the cost of
health coverage starting Jan. 1, 2012.
That would amount to $50 to $75 a
month, depending on which plan is
chosen and how many dependents are
included. The amount will rise in the
second year to between $52.91 and
$78.75.
“It’s painful, but we had to deal with
Members of Service Employees International Union Local 503 rally for a fair
contract at a state office building in Northeast Portland on June 30, the day
state workers’ contract expired.
reality,” said Oregon AFSCME Execu-
tive Director Ken Allen. “State work-
ers in Washington pay 15 percent, and
in California 18 percent. It was serving
to hold our wages down.”
“We’ve seen benefits erode over the
last 15 to 20 years in the private sector,
and that’s now coming home to roost
in the public sector as well,” said Local
503 Executive Director Heather Con-
roy.
Members earning less than $2,696 a
month will get a $30-a-month subsidy
toward their share of the cost. SEIU
had earlier pushed for the employee
health contribution to be calculated as a
percentage of salary, rather than a per-
centage of the cost, as the state pro-
posed.
The contracts also contain modest
cost-of-living raises, one partially-de-
layed salary step increase, and two
more years of periodic unpaid furlough
days.
AFSCME members get a 1.5 per-
cent across-the-board cost-of-living ad-
justment Dec. 1, 2011, and 1.45 per-
cent increase Dec. 1, 2012. SEIU
members get the same, except the sec-
ond increase comes a month later. The
previous contract contained no cost-of-
living increases, though a new top step
was added to the salary schedule which
amounted to a 5 percent raise for the
most senior workers. Nationally, the
consumer price index rose 1.6 percent
last year after falling 0.4 percent the
year before.
In normal times, state workers also
get annual step increases of about 5
percent until they reach the top step, but
those have been suspended in tight
budget times. The new agreements
grant one step increase during the two-
year period. Eligible workers will get
half the increase on July 1, 2012, and
the second half six months later.
(Turn to Page 4)
Longshore union goes ‘all in’ at Longview grain terminal
LONGVIEW — One of the most de-
termined local union struggles in recent
times is unfolding on the waterfront at
the Port of Longview. The struggle pits
members and supporters of the Interna-
tional Longshore and Warehouse Union
(ILWU) against EGT, a multinational
consortium that built a $200 million
grain terminal here, largely with
nonunion, out-of-town labor, and now
seeks to operate it without employing
ILWU members, in violation of its lease.
On July 11, up to 100 members and
supporters of Longview’s 202-member
ILWU Local 21 were arrested after
demonstrators knocked down a chain-
link fence and entered the terminal; ar-
restees included the presidents of ILWU
locals in Vancouver and Portland. Then,
after midnight on July 14, as many as
600 demonstrators gathered, and about
200 occupied train tracks to block a
mile-long Burlington Northern Santa Fe
train from delivering grain to the termi-
nal. That prompted the railroad to say it
would suspend deliveries while the dis-
pute continued.
ILWU’s cause appears to have wide-
spread support in Longview, a town of
37,000 with an economy centered on
manufacturing, forest products, and the
port. An initial print run of 800 support
placards ran out in three or four days,
said Local 21 President Dan Coffman;
more are on the way. As many as 250 lo-
cal businesses are displaying the signs,
which read: “We Support the ILWU in
the fight for a decent standard of living
in our community.” Hundreds more ap-
pear in yards and vehicles.
Pickets and placards are the latest
front in a four-year local battle with
EGT LLC, the multinational consor-
tium; the dispute is also in federal court.
EGT, which stands for Export Grain
Terminal, is a joint venture run by the gi-
ant agribusiness multinational Bunge in
partnership with Japan-based ITOCHU
Corporation and South Korea’s STX
Pan Ocean Co. Bunge, which reported
a $2.4 billion profit for 2010, has a 51
percent controlling interest in the ven-
ture.
When EGT first came to Longview,
company executives spoke of the bene-
fits their project would have for the com-
munity: 200 jobs on average during the
two-year construction phase, 50 perma-
nent jobs at the elevator; and approxi-
mately 35 additional jobs for river pilots,
tug assists, barge services, and rail oper-
ations.
“We look forward to being a good
corporate citizen in the community,”
said Bunge Grain vice president Bailey
Ragan in the initial announcement.
It was to be the first large export grain
terminal to be built in the U.S. since a
ConAgra facility opened in nearby
Kalama in 1983.
In size, efficiency, and automation,
the new terminal is said to outpace the
competition. It’s capable of handling
four 110-car trains at once, while also
taking grain up from a river barge and
loading it onto a ship. If all goes as
planned it will be able to load around 8
million tons of wheat, soybeans, corn,
oilseeds and protein meal every year
aboard bulk ships bound for Asia.
Bunge executive Carl Hausmann called
it the “crown jewel” of Bunge’s North
American operation. And at $200 mil-
lion, it was also to be the biggest local
construction project in decades.
But almost none of the work ended
up going to local workers or union
workers, says Dave Myers, president of
the Longview-Kelso Building and Con-
struction Trades Council. During the
two years that EGT negotiated the deal
with the Port of Longview, Myers, who
is also business manager of IBEW Local
970, tried to get the Port to use its lever-
age to make sure union contractors in
the area had an even shot at bidding on
the work. On more than one occasion,
that meant showing up at Port board
meetings with over 100 local building
trades workers.
Those efforts came to nothing. Not
only didn’t the lease contain any local
hire, prevailing wage, apprenticeship
June 3, more than 1,200 longshore
workers protested outside EGT’s
downtown Portland headquarters.
utilization, or other such stipulations, but
it even had a clause that specifically said
that EGT would face no requirement to
employ union labor or pay prevailing
wage during construction. The only ex-
ception, spelled out in Section 6.3 of the
lease, was the Port’s Working Agree-
ment with ILWU Local 21, which cov-
ers the operation of the ship and barge
docks, handling cargo, and operating the
facility.
No Port of Longview tenant has a
better deal than EGT, Port Executive Di-
rector Ken O’Halloran told the Labor
Press. EGT will pay the port $850 a
month per acre for 38 acres, plus dock-
age and wharfage fees. Signed June 1,
2009, the lease runs 30 years, with an
option to renew up to 80 years total.
When Myers learned the lease was to
be signed, he arranged to attend the cel-
ebration. There, he got verbal assurance
from an EGT executive that some of the
work would go to local union firms. But
Minnesota-based T.E. Ibberson Co.,
general contractor on the project, had
other ideas. As work got under way,
workers were brought in from else-
where. At shift change, the parking lot
was a sea of license plates from the mid-
west and the south, where Bunge has
most of its existing grain operations; al-
(Turn to Page 10)