EE
R
F
Who’s On Our Side?
By Tom Chamberlain
O
ften this column focuses on
what is wrong with America,
corporations, and the wealthy who
focus on profits rather than what is
in the long-run best interest of our
people. Economic inequity has
plagued this nation since Ronald
Reagan instituted his trickle down
economic philosophy, and it has re-
sulted in the greatest transfer of
wealth from the poor and middle
class to the very wealthy we’ve ever
seen in such a short period of time.
In 1976, the top 1 percent of
Americans owned 7 percent of
America’s wealth. Today, they own
40 percent.
Witnessing the transfer of wealth
and its corresponding impact on
American families, and watching
the fiscal strangulation of govern-
ment services, which directly trans-
lates to loss of opportunity for
Americans, one can’t help but won-
der where the push back is —
where the voice for everyday Amer-
icans that will inspire and instill the
prospect of hope — is.
The American workers’ move-
ment has been that vehicle for
change and that voice for something
more.
In the 1930s and ’40s, our move-
ment’s ability to adapt to mecha-
nization of industries resulted in
millions of workers organizing to
build strength and power. One of
the problems we face as a union
movement today, though, is that we
are stuck on a structure and deliv-
ery system that was built on that
foundation over 80 years ago.
While our innovations were
groundbreaking and wildly suc-
cessful in the ’30s and ’40s, they’ve
proven to be slow, and their im-
provements isolated to unions and
our members, without bringing im-
provements to the millions of
nonunion workers we need to help
now in 2013.
Meeting the challenges of the
21st century will require our work-
ers’ movement to evolve into a
movement that speaks, advocates,
and fights for all workers — for the
poor, the aged, and the disadvan-
taged.
The AFL-CIO is in the midst of a
major transformation that will cul-
minate at the national AFL-CIO
convention held this September in
Los Angeles.
Over the last two years, the AFL-
CIO has implemented pilot pro-
grams in various cities and states to
evaluate new and innovative ideas
in organizing, communications, and
community partnership programs.
These pilots have mapped a path to
the future for American workers.
As a single example: We now
know that unions can coordinate or-
ganizing, sharing resources and ex-
perience to grow our movement.
Such an effort will require a greater
emphasis on organizing at the local
level. We understand that our econ-
omy has evolved and will continue
to evolve. We have more independ-
ent contractors and more businesses
with low wages that result in a more
transient workforce. Traditional or-
ganizing doesn’t fit for these work-
ers. But maybe new models — such
as the National Taxi Workers Al-
liance or the Retail Action Project,
which create a union membership
that follows the worker, providing
worker representation at a nonunion
worksite, building political power
and instilling a unionist identity —
would.
The AFL-CIO convention will
evaluate traditional and non-tradi-
tional models within the union
movement, and it will begin the
process of rebuilding from the
grassroots up. The strength and
weakness of our movement is our
state federations and central labor
councils (CLCs). Through those
bodies, national and local issues and
programs are implemented. The
stronger, more nimble and effective
state federations and CLCs are, the
stronger our movement will be.
AFL-CIO convention delegates
will vote on a range of issues that
will increase state and local bodies’
professionalism, transparency, and
accountability through require-
ments for strategic planning, in-
creased coordination with the na-
tional AFL-CIO, and standards that
will result in an increased focus of
state federation and CLCs on all
types of organizing.
Our movement will continue to
face many challenges. We have
faced them before and responded
with vigor, innovation and the un-
derstanding that failure to take chal-
lenges is not acceptable.
In Oregon, we are ready for this
new model. 2013 is our opportunity
to respond strongly to the future,
and to put the future on our side.
Tom Chamberlain is president of
the Oregon AFL-CIO.
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...Grain company locks out Vancouver Longshore
(From Page 1)
Grain and the others want a contract on
similar terms to the one that ILWU
signed with EGT in Longview, Wash-
ington, and with Kalama Export in
Kalama. Those contracts contain ma-
jor concessions in union rights and
workplace rules.
At the March 8 rally, Cager
Clabaugh, president of ILWU Local 4,
said United Grain is spending millions
of dollars bringing in an anti-union se-
curity firm and housing out-of-state re-
placement workers. “They’re spending
I don’t know how many millions of
dollars to get rid of us. Why? They
want to take our union protection, and
that’s it; eliminate our voice from the
workplace. We’re here to show them
that we’re not going to let that happen.
We don’t care how long. We’re going
to win this struggle.”
PAGE 6
ILWU International Vice President
Ray Familathe said the union is mobi-
lizing support worldwide. “If they
want to take this fight from Vancouver
to wherever, we’re ready. We are going
to battle; one day longer, one day
stronger!” he said.
Locally, leaders from the Teamsters
and the Inlandboatmen’s Union said its
members support locked-out ILWU
members at the Port of Vancouver.
Teamster drivers will not cross the
ILWU picket line, declared Tony An-
drews, president of Portland-based
Teamsters Joint Council No. 37. “We
protect your work; you protect ours,”
he said.
Alan Cote of the Inlandboatmen’s
Union said his members, too, will
honor ILWU picket lines. “It will be as
difficult as humanly possible to bring
ships in and use tugboats on this river.
(We) have your back.”
The lockout means loss of employ-
ment for members of ILWU Local 4,
which dispatches eight to 22 members
per shift for up to two eight-hour shifts
a day when ships are at the terminal.
Local 4 represents 200 men and
women who have loaded grain and
other cargo at the Port of Vancouver
since 1934.
On the lockout’s first day, ILWU
members picketed at the main gate to
the Port of Vancouver from 8 a.m. to 7
p.m. Members declined to cross the
picket line, and as a result, a ship car-
rying Subaru vehicles was not un-
loaded. The next day ILWU shifted its
picket to the east gate, and the Subaru
ship was unloaded.
To improve conditions for picketers,
the Port of Vancouver removed barri-
ers to nearby parking, laid down
gravel, and arranged to bring in a port-
a-potty.
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
At the United Grain terminal,
ILWU members continue to picket
outside the gate, while nonunion work-
ers load grain ships.
“It’s shameful that a Japanese cor-
poration that’s profiting from the
United States’ infrastructure, natural
resources and labor, has chosen to vio-
late our federal law instead of negotiat-
ing a fair labor agreement with its
American workforce,” said McEllrath,
a Vancouver-based longshoreman.
“Mitsui-United Grain should stop vio-
lating the law, end this harmful lock-
out, and follow the example set by its
American competitors who have
reached a satisfactory agreement.”
At Louis Dreyfus elevators in Seat-
tle and Portland, and at the Columbia
Grain terminal in Portland, ILWU
members continue to load grain ships
without a contract, under the em-
ployer’s terms.
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IRS PROBLEMS?
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MARCH 15, 2013