Senate rejects President Obama’s
jobs bill despite plea from jobless
WASHINGTON (PAI) — Trenita
Coleman has a lot of experience in
child care — and no job to show for
it. The same thing goes for Margello
Virgil in landscaping. Coleman’s
been job hunting for two years and
Davis to chair
IBEW’s District
9 pension fund
Clif Davis, busi-
ness manager of
Portland-based In-
ternational Brother-
hood of Electrical
Workers Local 48,
has been elected
chair of the board
C LIF D AVIS
of trustees for the
IBEW District No. 9 Pension Plan.
The plan, which covers almost
30,000 members in California, Ne-
vada, Oregon, Washington, Alaska,
and Hawaii, has assets of nearly $700
million.
There are 20 IBEW locals within
the Ninth District participating.
The plan was established March 1,
1968. It is a multiemployer, collec-
tively bargained, defined contribu-
tion pension plan with participant-di-
rected investments.
OCTOBER 21, 2011
Virgil for at least a year. Both took a
day off from pounding the pavements
— Coleman gets up at 6 a.m. to start
her 12-hours-a-day door-to-door job
hunts — to come to D.C. on Oct. 11
to lobby lawmakers for President
Barack Obama’s American Jobs Act.
It didn’t work.
“I have 26 nieces and nephews” to
help care for, Coleman says, and that
doesn’t count her 18-month-old son.
“If I get a job, I can get a place to stay
and pay my bills. The American Jobs
Act would give me that hope.” The
Senate, however, took it away.
“I’ve been getting along on a little
unemployment” — since his last em-
ployer, the D.C. subway system, laid
off its landscapers, Virgil explained.
“But with taxes and child support,
there’s not much left over.” He adds
without a job, and with benefits run-
ning out, his joblessness could soon
mean jail – if he falls behind on child
support payments.
The jobs act, by pushing infra-
structure projects, would provide em-
ployment for highway landscapers,
too, Virgil hopes.
But their pleas, as well as those
from dozens of other jobless workers
who visited senators’ offices, joined
by AFL-CIO Executive Vice Presi-
dent Arlene Holt Baker, SEIU Secre-
tary-Treasurer Eliseo Medina, AF-
SCME Secretary-Treasurer Lee
Saunders and the Rev. Paul Sherry of
Interfaith Worker Justice, fell on deaf
ears.
That’s because the Senate voted
50-49 to shut off a GOP filibuster
against Obama’s bill – and it needed
60 votes to end the talkathon. That
didn’t stop the workers or the labor
leaders from campaigning for the jobs
bill, in economic terms and in
Sherry’s case, moral terms, too.
“We commit ourselves to work
and pray until justice is done, until
every person in this blessed land
wants and receives a good job,” he
said at a press conference before the
vote, and before the group headed to
lawmakers’ offices.
“We can rebuild our country by
putting people back to work,” Holt
Baker declared, citing the proposed
infrastructure projects in Obama’s
legislation, to help rebuild U.S. high-
ways, bridges, railroads and airports,
retrofit buildings to become energy-
efficient and to modernize the U.S.
power grid. Union workers would get
jobs.
“Don’t lose faith, don’t lose hope,”
Saunders warned the group before the
Senate vote. “Because your voices
are being heard all across the country
– on Wall Street as well as on Main
Street.” Added Medina: “We are here
because the pain is real…and to
protest our broken economy and our
failing political system.
“It is past time for the Senate to do
the job they were elected to do,” he
stated.
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
Local Motion
September 2011
A list of Oregon and Southwest Washington workplaces deciding
whether to be union-represented – as reported by the National
Labor Relations Board and the Oregon Employment Relations Board.
Voting in union elections
Date Workplace (Location) Union
Yes
No
No unionization elections were reported for Oregon/SW Washington in September 2011.
Requesting a union election
Workplace (Location) Union
Number of workers in unit
Fund for the Public Interest telephone outreach (Portland) CWA Local 7901
Franz Family Bakeries bakery outlet clerks (Springfield) Bakers Local 114
Coast Auto Supply (Portland) Teamsters Local 305 DECERT
Franz Family Bakeries bakery outlet clerks (Coos Bay) Bakers Local 114
Franz Family Bakeries bakery outlet clerks (Newport) Bakers Local 114
SW Washington Agency on Aging & Disabilities nurses (Springfield) OPEIU Local 11
Franz Family Bakeries bakery maintenance engineers (Eugene) Bakers Local 114
10
4
10
4
3
4
13
L EGEND
DECERT :
A decertification election occurs when some union-represented workers declare
that the union no longer has majority support. A ‘yes’ vote is a vote for the union.
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