… Hope of life in the building trades for soon-to-be-released inmates
(From Page 7)
she doesn’t want to leave.
“I had a desire to do something
that fed my soul,” Netherwood tells
the Labor Press. “I love carpentry, but
it’s not as soul-feeding to remodel
somebody’s $190,000 kitchen as it is
for me to be here in a teaching role.”
Netherwood began each class with
calisthenics, from 10 minutes of sit-
ups to 45-minute workouts. Then
they’d dive into applied math — al-
gebra and geometry, the math of
measurement.
Netherwood had help from Shelly
McGinnis, an inmate teacher’s aide,
and from Billings the “safety dog” —
a participant in Coffee Creek’s pro-
gram training service dogs.
Students were also taught by visit-
ing subject matter experts from union
apprenticeship programs — carpen-
ters, electrical workers, laborers,
roofers, painters, and interior finishers.
“For some of the students, it
looked like their first time using a
power tool,” said Miguel Montaño, a
trainer at the Pacific Northwest Car-
penters Apprenticeship program.
Montaño, addressed affectionately
by students as “Mr. M” before the
ceremony, said the class faced other
obstacles. Some kinds of tools were
deemed too hazardous to allow into a
secure facility, like a 6-inch drywall
jab saw, which looks too much like a
hand-held knife. And they couldn’t
cut wood inside, because dust partic-
ulates could trigger the sprinkler sys-
tem. Instead, the program set up a
work station in a fenced area out-
doors.
Team-building, Netherwood said,
took time.
“Being in here is competitive,”
Netherwood said. “You have to watch
out for yourself. There’s a lot of
drama, and not a lot of opportunities
to work as a team.”
But Netherwood set an expecta-
tion that regardless of what happened
outside the class, inside, they were
expected to act professionally, and to
work as a team, as they would on a
construction site. Over the course of
the program, three students were
dropped for infractions that took
place outside the class, but none for
anything that happened inside. No
tools went missing. No one failed the
class. And by the end, they’d worked
as a team to construct two small
dwellings, which will be reassembled
at the Salem headquarters of Oregon
Corrections Enterprises.
At graduation, many of the stu-
dents choked up.
“Thank you for not shaming us for
the way that we talk, or the way we
are,” said inmate Jami Mims, ad-
dressing Netherwood.
Netherwood replied with her own
thanks — for students’ honesty and
loyalty, and for patiently indulging
“two-hour rants about the beauty of
an 18-gauge finish nail.”
“I’m glad I didn’t judge them up
front,” Netherwood told the Labor
Press, “because I got to know a per-
son that’s more than you see on the
outside.”
Harmonie Vandewarker, given the
nickname “Helmet” by her peers, said
she gained confidence with every
two-by-four, which, she added, “is ac-
tually 1-1/2” by 3-1/2.”
The confidence is theirs for keeps.
Students will also keep their standard
OSHA-approved hard hats, decorated
with stickers from each participating
union trade.
And the huts they built, in the fu-
ture, may end up being used as tem-
porary shelters for homeless people in
the Eugene area.
A week after the graduation, the
program had its first success story.
Charity Henshaw, who wants to be a
finish carpenter, was called into the
correctional facility’s office and told
she’d have an opportunity upon release
Valayshea Shaffer operates a power saw in a fenced-in area set up for an
experimental inmate building trades pre-apprenticeship program. (Photo by
Dave Conway, courtesy of Oregon Corrections Enterprises)
for direct entry into the Carpenters’ Ex-
terior/Interior Systems program. Mon-
taño had remembered her, and put her
name forward as a candidate.
She’s due for release May 16. Her
first plan out of the gate is to attend
the May 19 Women In Trades Fair in
Portland.
...Right-to-work
(From Page 1)
tial signatures March 15, the Oregon
Department of Justice issued a draft bal-
lot title March 25. The initiative could
be approved for full-scale signature
gathering in as little as six weeks if the
state attorney general and secretary of
state determine that it meets legal stan-
dards, and if there’s no legal challenge
to the language that would appear on
the ballot describing the initiative.
Backers would then have until July
3, 2014, to gather 87,213 valid signa-
tures from registered voters in order to
qualify for the ballot.
On March 13, the campaign reported
a $6,000 contribution from Loren
Parks, a Nevada millionaire who has
bankrolled many previous anti-union
measures.
The Oregon AFL-CIO is already
campaigning against the proposal: It’s
directing members to wrongforevery-
one.com to get educated about it, and
it’s making available a right-to-work
toolkit that includes fliers and images to
post to Facebook and Twitter.
12-31-2013.
2013
PAGE 12
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
APRIL 5, 2013