Meeting
Notices
Inside
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Page 6
Volume 114
Number 11
June 7, 2013
Portland, Oregon
Edith Green-Wendall Wyatt Federal Building in Portland
Union-rebuilt federal building: A model of green remodel
The revamped Edith Green-Wendell
Wyatt Federal Building opened up
May 30 for a public look — and re-
ceived glowing accolades from archi-
tects, project managers and federal of-
ficials at a mid-day rededication
ceremony. The $139-million project
employed union labor under a project
labor agreement, and was completed
on time and on budget two years and
four months after site work began.
By almost any standard, it’s a re-
markable makeover: The 18-story 1974
structure was stripped down to its gird-
ers and rebuilt from the ground up as a
model of cutting-edge sustainability.
“This project turned an ugly duck-
ling into a beautiful swan,” said
Dorothy Robyn, public buildings serv-
ice commissioner for the U.S. General
Services Administration (GSA), at the
ceremony. GSA managed the project,
along with SERA Architects and
Howard S. Wright construction.
It was also the largest stimulus proj-
ect in the Pacific Northwest, funded by
the 2009 American Recovery and Rein-
vestment Act — 90 companies, 760 on
site jobs, and 652,000 labor hours, not
to mention the stimulus of construction
materials and the impact of downtown
commercial leases from federal tenants
displaced during the remodel.
“It came at a critical time,” said Ore-
gon Congressman Earl Blumenauer. “It
put money in the pockets of hardwork-
ing Oregonians, and it is going to save
money for the taxpayers for years to
come.”
The building, expected to qualify for
LEED Platinum certification, will
achieve an estimated 55 percent energy
savings compared to the original build-
ing, saving $300,000 to $400,000 a
year in utility costs. It will also use 60
percent less potable water.
From the outside, the building’s
most noticeable feature is the series of
vertical aluminum “reeds” on the west
and east façades of the building —
combined with horizontal light-reflect-
ing “shelves” on the south and east. No
two sides of the building look the same,
because they were designed to maxi-
mize light entering while minimizing
heat gain during the summer.
Look up, and you can also see the
tilted 13,000-square-foot solar canopy,
which will generate 200,000 kWh a
year, or 3 percent of the building’s elec-
tricity needs — and also double as a
water collection surface. Other “green”
features:
• A state-of-the-art destination dis-
patch elevator by Otis generates power
as it descends.
• 10,000 radiant ceiling panels use
water to deliver heat and cooling — re-
quiring 32 percent less energy than a
forced-air system, and freeing up space
for higher ceilings.
• An innovative air system provides
100 percent fresh air and recovers heat
from exhaust air before it’s released.
• Water-conserving fixtures reduce
potable water use, and a 165,000 gal-
lon cistern stores rainwater to flush
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Machinists Union engaged in national
organizing drive at Oregon’s Jeld-Wen
Special delivery
Letter carrier Allison Schmuck, a member of Portland-based National
Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) Branch 82, takes part in the Stamp
Out Hunger Food Drive May 11 sponsored by the Letter Carriers union.
Roughly 4,000 urban and rural letter carriers in Oregon and Southwest
Washington collected 1,108,315 pounds of food from postal customers while
delivering their mail on May 11. Of that, 538,748 pounds were donated in the
Portland metropolitan area (Clackamas, Multnomah, Washington, and Clark
counties). “This is truly a community effort, and we thank the many unions
and community organizations who participated,” said Jean Kempe-Ware of
the Oregon Food Bank, which collects and distributes the food through its
network of regional food banks. The event is billed as the largest one-day food
drive in the nation. National results were not tabulated at presstime.
The union movement is being
reawakened in rural Oregon — Stay-
ton, Bend, Chiloquin and Klamath
Falls — where employees of Jeld-Wen,
one of the world’s largest manufactur-
ers of doors, windows, millwork, and
specialty wood products, are engaged
in a national organizing campaign with
the Machinists Union.
The campaign began in February in
response to calls for assistance from
Jeld-Wen workers. The “Justice for
Jeld-Wen Workers” campaign is active
in 15 states and two Canadian prov-
inces, where workers are engaged in
preliminary actions required to get an
election with the National Labor Rela-
tions Board.
In Oregon, Jeld-Wen employs about
3,000 workers, depending on the sea-
son and the state of the national hous-
ing market. The company was founded
in 1960 in Klamath Falls and grew to
become Oregon’s largest privately held
company (all nonunion). Its late
founder, Richard Wendt, was a long-
time supporter and funder of anti-
worker ballot measures and political
candidates in Oregon. A 1999 North-
west Labor Press article reported that
Wendt gave $25,000 to the gubernato-
rial campaign of union foe Bill Size-
more. Wendt also worked for decades
on a plan to abolish unemployment
benefits, food stamps, and welfare ben-
efits, and use the money to put recipi-
ents of those benefits to work in subsi-
dized jobs at 10 percent less than the
minimum wage.
Wendt died in 2010, and a year later
the Canadian investment firm Onex
Corp. purchased a 58 percent stake in
Jeld-Wen in a deal worth $864 million.
Onex owns many other companies,
and several of them have contracts with
the Machinists Union.
Likewise, Jeld-Wen’s profitable Eu-
ropean operations are produced by
union workers who are paid union
wages, have more social protections,
and better fringe benefits.
“Those workers know that being
union has made a positive difference in
their life,” said Chip Elliot, assistant di-
recting business representative of Ma-
chinists District W24, based in Glad-
stone.
Jeld-Wen has responded to the or-
ganizing effort in the United States by
hiring an anti-union consultant who is
holding captive audience meetings in
an effort to convince employees that
working for near poverty level wages
without a viable pension plan and with
high-cost health insurance is in their
own best interest,
Elliott said many Jeld-Wen employ-
ees work paycheck to paycheck in
physically demanding and stressful
jobs. Turnover is high and the company
relies on a large number of temporary
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