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About Northwest labor press. (Portland , Ore.) 1987-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 2, 2012)
Inside Meeting Notices See Page 6 Volume 113 Number 21 November 2, 2012 Portland, Oregon Clackamas County becomes an electoral battleground Labor mounts ground game after foes pour money into county races By DON McINTOSH Associate Editor Clackamas County is like Oregon in miniature: It has urban areas like Oregon City and Clacka- mas Town Center, affluent suburbs like Lake Os- wego and West Linn, and small towns like Esta- cada and Mulino. It’s Oregon’s third most populous county, with 380,000 people — one in 10 Oregonians — calling it home. And its econ- omy runs the gamut from heavy manufacturers like Precision Castparts and Oregon Ironworks to farming, logging, and tourism. So what happens in Clackamas County mat- ters a great deal to the rest of the state, says Ore- gon’s top labor union official — AFL-CIO Presi- dent Tom Chamberlain. And right now, Chamberlain says, “What’s happening in Clacka- mas County is scary.” Chamberlain said the state labor federation is backing the Northwest Oregon Labor Council on Clackamas County races — after several long- time statewide foes of labor put hundreds of thou- more like Portland. “Protect Clackamas sands of dollars into defeating a pair of in- County from Portland creep,” said bill- cumbents on the county commission. boards put up by the PAC in the spring. John Ludlow, a real estate broker and Since 2010, Clackamas County voters former mayor of Wilsonville, has raised a have rejected an auto registration fee to quarter of a million dollars for his chal- pay for an upgrade to the Sellwood Bridge; lenge to union-endorsed incumbent barred the creation of new urban renewal County Chair Charlotte Lehan. [By con- districts without a public vote; and barred trast, former Clackamas County chair spending new funds on light rail without a Lynn Peterson spent less than $37,000 on public vote. Ludlow in particular was a her successful 2008 campaign.] The ma- supporter of those campaigns (with much jority of Ludlow’s contributions — of the funding coming from Parks, Stim- $155,343 as of Oct. 29 — are from Ore- son and the Oregon Transportation Project gon Transformation Project PAC. That PAC), and that helped him come in first in group, headed by Oregon Republican a four-way primary in May. Party treasurer Rob Kremer, has so far re- But Chamberlain calls their argument a ceived $370,000 from Loren Parks, Ne- vada millionaire and longtime funder of Clackamas County Chair Charlotte Lehan (left) signed a hoax: “I think these folks are trying to bam- anti-union ballot measures; $100,000 from labor-backed resolution last January that calls on the county boozle the citizens of Clackamas County. Karl R. Miller, CEO of the Avamere nurs- to prioritize local source hiring and family wage jobs when They’re trying to instill fears of ‘Portland ing home chain; and $630,000 from Stim- letting contracts. To her left is Commissioner Jamie Damon. creep’ in areas of the county where that will son Lumber, whose CEO Andrew Miller Corporate interests, some from out of state, are pouring never happen.” hundreds of thousands of dollars into defeating Lehan and Under state land use law, development is one of the group’s leaders. in the Portland metro area is limited out- Oregon Transformation Project PAC is Damon in November. side an Urban Growth Boundary, to pre- also backing former Republican state rep- resentative Tootie Smith in her challenge to in- their launching pad to turn Oregon,” Chamberlain serve farm and forest land and prevent sprawl. cumbent Clackamas County Commissioner Jamie said. “Their goal is to make Multnomah County The boundary currently extends to Oregon City an island.” and Damascus, and it has grown only by relatively Damon. In fact, part of Ludlow’s and Smiths’ message “If the 1 percent gets a toehold there, and gets (Turn to Page 8) control of the county, they’re going to use that as is an appeal to keep the county from becoming Construction workers find jobs building ‘the cloud’ in Central Oregon By STEFAN OSTRACH Special Correspondent PRINEVILLE — Remember floppy disks and zip drives? As computer tech- nology develops, the trend is away from storing digital data on a PC or laptop. Tablets like the iPad and netbooks don’t even come with hard drives. Digital photos, e-mails, and data files — even software and backups — are more and more likely to be stored “in the cloud.” The term “cloud computing” wasn’t even coined until 2006. But the com- puter cloud is not up in the sky. It’s on the ground in massive buildings filled with computer servers. The buildings are called data centers. Oregon, east of the Cascades, is be- coming one of the world’s prime loca- tions for these data centers. And no city is experiencing a bigger data center building boom than Prineville. Located in the heart of Oregon in Crook County, Prineville has important attractions for Internet infrastructure companies: the dry climate of the high desert (sunny days, low humidity, and cool nights), cheap and reliable electric power, avail- able land, and tax breaks. Central Oregon also has a highly trained and available unionized con- struction workforce.0 Facebook was in Prineville first, buying 124 acres of sagebrush- and ju- niper-covered land in 2009. It is now completing its second 330,000-square- foot data center at the location. A third, smaller building is planned, and there is room for at least one more large data center. Facebook’s capital spending on This 330,00 square foot, union-built Facebook data center is located in Central Oregon’s Prineville. Data center construction is booming in Central Oregon, creating hundreds of good-paying union jobs. (Photo by Alan Brandt) the first building alone brought $24.4 million in direct local economic activity. Apple acquired 160 acres of land across the street from Facebook, and re- cently broke ground on a 338,000- square-foot, 100 percent green, data storage complex. A 10,000 square-foot modular server array has already been built at the location. Apple reportedly has plans to invest more than $250 mil- lion and the site and could build as many as 14 additional data halls. All of the Facebook construction, with the exception of excavation, has been done with union labor. More than 2,500 people have worked at the site, with 50 percent hired locally and the other half coming from elsewhere in Oregon. Apple also is using union contrac- tors. David Burger, executive secretary of the Central Oregon Building Trades Council, said union crafts on the high tech projects include IBEW Local 280, Plumbers and Fitters Local 290, Sheet Metal Workers Local 16, Iron Workers (Turn to Page 5)
