Northwest labor press., August 17, 2012, Page 18, Image 18

Portland Jobs with Justice leader Butler stepping down
By DON McINTOSH
Associate Editor
After 16 years leading Portland Jobs
with Justice, Margaret Butler is step-
ping down as the group’s executive di-
rector on Feb. 15, 2013. Her replace-
ment is Karly Edwards, a longtime
UNITE HERE organizer, who starts
Oct. 15.
“People who do non-profit consult-
ing recommend 15 years is the max for
someone to be in a leadership position,”
Butler told the Labor Press. “You don’t
want an organization to be about one
person’s leadership.”
Jobs with Justice (JwJ) is many
things, but at its most basic, it fosters
solidarity: Workers and activists come
out to support struggles for economic
justice in the workplace, in the streets,
and at city hall. Butler was the Portland
chapter’s co-founder and first staffper-
son. Fellow activists describe her as a
uated from Franklin
patient organizer who
High School in 1975,
skillfully defused inter-
and earned a history de-
nal disagreements and
gree at Lewis & Clark
helped maintain unity.
College. Her ideas
Butler also co-chairs
were shaped by five
JwJ’s national board of
months she spent in
directors, which is com-
Kenya through the col-
posed of representatives
lege’s overseas pro-
of nine labor unions, nine
gram, but also by her
local JwJ coalitions, and
first encounter with the
nine community organi-
union movement. Her
zations.
M ARGARET B UTLER
parents were librarians,
“Margaret embodies
and Butler, too, went to
the vision and the spirit
of Jobs with Justice,” says Sarita Gupta, work for the Multnomah County Li-
brary in 1977. One month in, she joined
executive director of national JwJ.
“In many respects, Portland Jobs an effort by workers to unionize. That
with Justice has been a model in our experience led Butler to pursue other
network,” Gupta says, “taking on cam- opportunities for labor activism.
At age 23, she got a job as a direc-
paigns and sticking with them for the
long haul, and actually winning and tory assistance operator for the phone
company and got active with Commu-
making a difference in workers lives.”
Butler — a Portland native — grad- nications Workers of America (CWA)
Enjoy Labor Day WEEkEnD.
you’vE EarnED It!
Teamsters Joint Council No. 37
Honor
Labor
Executive Board
• President: Tony Andrews
Local 7901. She worked for the phone
company 10 years, becoming steward,
chief steward, and local vice president.
In 1991, she helped found Portland Jobs
with Justice. The following year she
was tapped by Larry Cohen, then or-
ganizing director for CWA, to come
work for the national union as an or-
ganizer. In 1996, she became Portland
JwJ’s first staffperson.
Sixteen years later, Portland JwJ is a
coalition with 92 member organizations
(including about 60 local unions), a
6,200-address e-mail list, and a 1,000-
strong phone tree. It’s still grassroots:
The groups annual budget of $241,000
comes from grants, fundraisers, and
voluntary contributions and supports a
staff of four, and much of the group’s
work takes place in committees, includ-
ing a well-attended monthly steering
committee meeting where union dele-
gates and allies strategize about protest
mobilizations.
“We have helped many many groups
of workers win unions, and win con-
tracts,” Butler says, looking back.
“Whether they would have done it with-
out us or not, you can’t tell. But I do
know that we made a significant differ-
ence in lots of campaigns.”
On the other hand, Butler says, nei-
ther JwJ nor the wider labor movement
have turned around the downward slide
of working people, nor have they won
back collective bargaining rights.
Butler, 55, has no specific plans yet
after her departure except to see her
daughter Lorene off to college. But
whatever she does next, it will be con-
nected to the movement, she says.
“It’s too interesting a time to seri-
ously contemplate giving up,” Butler
said. “This economic crisis is a danger-
ous time for the labor movement, but
it’s also an opportunity.”
JwJ merges with American Rights at Work
Jobs with Justice and American
Rights at Work — two union-supported
national organizations — are merging.
Jobs with Justice, founded by Com-
munications Workers of America presi-
dent Larry Cohen, is a 25-year old net-
work of local labor-community
coalitions that specializes in pickets in
support of worker struggles. American
Rights at Work, founded by Michigan
Congressman David Bonior, is a D.C.-
based research and policy advocacy
group that built a case for the Employee
Free Choice Act (a bill in Congress that
would make it easier for workers to
unionize and get a first union contract).
With the failure of Congress to pass the
Employee Free Choice Act, American
Rights at Work needed new direction.
“A lot of key labor stakeholders and
leaders of both organizations said we
share a fundamental mission: protecting
and expanding the right to organize and
collectively bargain,” said Jobs with Jus-
tice Executive Director Sarita Gupta,
who leads the merged group. “American
Rights at Work does it through research,
policy, and communications, and Jobs
with Justice does it though mobilization,
solidarity, strategic campaigns and edu-
cating the base. So the question is, ‘How
could these two capacities come to-
gether to build a more effective organi-
zation that’s committed to advance
workers rights in a new era?’”
The merged group will keep both
group names for the time being, but
with combined staff and boards of di-
rectors. Twelve employees of JwJ and
eight from ARW staff will work to-
gether in the current American Rights
at Work office in Washington, D.C.
• Secretary-Treasurer: John Silva
• Vice President: Dan Ratty
• Recording Secretary : Bob Sleight
• Trustees: Clayton Banry, Diana Franken, Tom Strickland
• Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees Division: Mike Gekas
Here IS to you
on Labor Day!
Your labor has kept the family
strong and this nation proud.
Plasterers Local 82
Calvin McKinnis
Business Manager
Oregon/SW Washington
Plasterers JATC
12812 NE Marx, Portland, OR
503-232-3257
PAGE 18
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
AUGUST 17, 20121