Erica Askin new business manager at Laborers #483
Appointed by E-Board
to succeed ‘Buz’
Beetle, who retired
By DON McINTOSH
Associate Editor
Laborers Local 483 has appointed
new leadership. Longtime business
manager Richard “Buz” Beetle retired
at the end of February, and on his rec-
ommendation, the Local 483 Execu-
tive Board designated organizer Erica
Askin to fill out the remainder of his
three-year term. Askin was sworn into
office March 1.
Local 483 is a public sector local
within Laborers International Union of
North America, which represents
mostly private-sector laborers in build-
ing and highway construction. Local
483 represents about 850 employees at
the City of Portland and the Metro re-
gional government, particularly at the
Oregon Zoo and in City bureaus re-
sponsible for wastewater treatment,
parks, and street maintenance.
Askin, 34, has been an employee of
the local since Nov. 10, 2009.
She grew up in St. Petersburg,
Florida, and earned a degree in social
work from Florida State University at
Tallahassee, and a law degree from
Rutgers University in New Jersey.
While in college, she canvassed for a
minimum wage increase for the group
ACORN, and then worked at Florida
Impact, an anti-poverty advocacy
group. While in law school, she
worked on workers’ compensation
cases for New Jersey law firm Liv-
ingston Siegel. She later worked for la-
bor law firm Weissman and Mintz rep-
resenting Communications Workers of
America (CWA) members employed
by Verizon and the State of New Jer-
sey. She passed the bar exam and was
admitted to practice law in New York
and New Jersey.
After graduating law school in
2008, she served a year-long clerkship
with a trial court judge. The judge en-
couraged her to apply at a land use law
firm that had Walmart for a client. But
Askin rejected that direction. After a
trip to Oregon, she started applying for
union jobs on the West Coast. She
wanted to be an organizer.
Beetle gave her the chance, bring-
ing her on to organize nonunion work-
ers and get existing members better
prepared for budget and contract bat-
tles.
Askin says she’s always felt work-
ing class. Her mom earned little as a
career office administrator in St. Pe-
tersburg, and her dad was disabled.
“Growing up in a nonunion back-
ground, like most people in this coun-
Richard “Buz” Beetle (right), longtime business manager of Portland-based
Laborers Local 483, retired last month. Erica Askin, the union’s organizer,
was appointed his successor.
try, people think they’re powerless,”
Askin told the Labor Press. “When you
go into a union environment and see
how emboldened people are, and they
take action and have a culture and his-
tory of doing that, you can see how it
makes a difference.”
Askin helped organize Local 483
members to take action opposing lay-
offs and budget cuts. About 100 Local
483 members saw their jobs on the
chopping block when the City’s budget
was first announced in early 2012. Lo-
cal 483 hired an expert to look at the
books, found funds that could be
tapped to avert the cuts, and put politi-
cal pressure on Mayor Adams to use
those funds instead of laying off staff
during the recession. In the end, no Lo-
cal 483 members were laid off.
Meanwhile, Local 483 had long
complained about City use of low-paid
contracted-out labor to do the same
work as union members. With her legal
background, Askin looked at one such
contract in City rec centers, and saw a
violation of the union contract. The
City said Local 483’s grievance was
untimely because the contracting out
had happened a decade ago. But Askin
showed that the City had never notified
the union that it was contracting out
members’ work, and based on the le-
gal theory of continuing violation, she
won at the first stage with an arbitrator.
The City settled the grievance, agree-
ing to phase out the outsourcing con-
tract.
Now she faces likely her biggest
challenge: Helping to win an accept-
able union contract for the roughly 550
members of Local 483 who are part of
the District Council of Trade Unions
(DCTU). DCTU, a seven-union coali-
tion, is in the midst of a strike vote af-
ter its members voted down a tentative
agreement in February.
Askin said she plans to run for elec-
tion when the term expires. The local
will take nominations in May, and hold
an election in June if more than one
candidate seeks the position.
Beetle, 65, retires after decades of
involvement in Local 483, and an even
longer tenure as an activist. He grew up
in Neosho, Missouri, in a household
headed by his mother, after a divorce
from his father, a captain in the U.S.
Army. While working at a lumber yard
on evenings and weekends, Beetle at-
tended Southeastern Missouri State
College in Cape Girardeau, Missouri,
for a time. He joined Students for
Democratic Society, and in 1969,
dropped out of college, moving to New
York the following year. There he got a
job working for the National Peace Ac-
tion Coalition — the group which or-
ganized a 750,000-strong anti-war
march on April 24, 1971 — the largest
rally ever held outside the U.S. Capi-
tol.
“People learn through struggle,”
Beetle told the Labor Press. “I got in-
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MARCH 21, 2014
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
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