Corvallis native
Nelson elected
president of Flight
Attendants union
WASHINGTON, D.C. (PAI) —
United Airlines flight attendant Sara
Nelson, a native of Corvallis, Ore., has
been elected president of the Associa-
tion of Flight Attendants (AFA) by the
union’s Board of Directors. AFA is an
affiliate of Communications Workers
of America (CWA).
Nelson defeated Veda Shook, who
also has ties to Oregon. Shook, a flight
attendant at Alaska Airlines, lived in
Portland for 15 years before moving to
Washington, D.C., after winning elec-
tion as an international vice president.
Shook was elected president of the in-
ternational union in January 2011.
Nelson is an 18-year United Airlines
flight attendant and has served as inter-
national vice president since Jan. 1,
2011. Prior to that she led external and
internal communications for United’s
flight attendants. She also coordinated
AFA-CWA’s “Chaos” (Create Havoc
Around Our System) campaign, con-
centrating on member mobilization.
Nelson grew up in Corvallis, and
earned a bachelor’s degree from Prin-
cipia College with majors in English
and Education before joining United
Airlines. She lives in the D.C. area.
“We can raise our voices in many
ways, and my job as a union leader is to
make sure our voices are heard,” she said.
Labor attorney Susan Stoner pens 4th book
Labor union attorney Susan Stoner
has published the fourth in a series of
historical mystery novels that tell the
story of a fictional trade union spy in
early 1900s Portland.
In Black Drop, President Theodore
Roosevelt is journeying cross-country
by train to Portland. While detective
Sage Adair investigates a white slavery
ring, he learns of a plot to assassinate
the president and frame union leaders
for the killing. Though characters and
scenarios are fictional, the settings are
real and are based on Stoner’s exten-
sive historical research into Portland’s
seedy underbelly and the trade union
politics of the era.
Timber Beasts, the first in the series,
deals with the savage exploitation of
loggers. Land Sharks, the second, has
to do with the Portland “underground,”
where men were shanghaied and
placed in service aboard ocean-going
ships bound for China. Dry Rot, the
third volume, features a losing strike
and a true-to-life story of construction
fraud that led to the collapse of a city
bridge.
Stoner, who is staff attorney at
Amalgamated Transit Union Local 757,
will read from Black Drop at Powell’s
on Hawthorne, June 12 at 7:30 p.m.
Rep. Herrera supports policies
that offshore living wage jobs
To The Editor:
For the fourth year in a row, Wash-
ington U.S. Rep. Jamie Herrera Beut-
ler has held a Southwest Washington
Jobs Fair, representing herself as a
champion of jobs and the economy.
Her record, however, speaks differ-
ently. Instead of supporting policies
that would create living wage jobs
here, Rep. Herrera continues to sup-
port policies that benefit the corpora-
tions that are off-shoring our jobs.
With regard to jobs, especially
manufacturing jobs, AWPPW cur-
rently has the lowest levels of employ-
ment in pulp, paper, sawmills and ply-
wood mills than at any time in the last
20 years. U.S. plant sites continue to
close; the equipment dismantled, then
shipped overseas and brought back on-
line producing the very same products
that were being manufactured here.
Rep. Herrera is proud of the fact
that raw log exports from the Pacific
Northwest are at record highs. This
should come as no surprise to anyone
because Rep. Herrera continues to
support a U.S. trade agenda that results
in the export of our raw materials such
as logs, coal, oil and natural gas, along
with exporting our family wage jobs.
In fact, the workforce at every pulp
and paper manufacturing plant site in
Rep. Herrera’s Third District has been
approved for the Department of La-
bor’s Trade Adjustment Assistance
(TAA) program. To be TAA certified,
workers must be directly impacted by
imports or by a shift in production of
their firm to any country with a free
trade agreement with the United
States.
The impacts reach far and wide.
When jobs are off-shored, the flood of
unemployed workers drives down
wages and benefits in all sectors.
We’ve had 20 years of NAFTA-
style free trade, and the results are in:
These so-called free trade agreements
are hurting workers. Far too many
families here in Washington have suf-
fered by having their livelihoods
shipped overseas because of bad trade
policies.
No job fair can reverse the off-
shoring; we need trade policies that
promote family wage jobs.
Yet Rep. Herrera remains trapped
O PEN
F ORUM
in an outdated vision for trade. She
continues to support the Trans-Pacific
Partnership, which is being negotiated
with a dozen Asian and Latin Ameri-
can countries. Corporations have had a
place at the negotiating table through
some 600 approved trade advisers, but
the text of what would be the largest
free trade agreement in U.S. history
has been kept secret from the rest of
society.
Rep. Herrera even supports lower-
ing Congressional oversight by pass-
ing Trade Promotion Authority, also
called fast-track legislation, which
would limit Congress to a simple up or
down vote of the finished agreement,
with limited debate or public input.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership in-
cludes countries like Vietnam and
Malaysia, where workers are paid even
less than workers in China. U.S. em-
ployers would have to compete with
products made in sweatshop working
conditions and with few environmen-
tal or safety protections.
Rep. Herrera invited Weyerhaeuser
and Georgia Pacific — two companies
notorious for offshoring jobs — to re-
cruit at the job fair. Walmart, equally
notorious for maintaining a workforce
that relies on tax dollars to support
their basic needs such as food and
health care, also was there.
Is this the best Rep. Herrera Beutler
can do for the workers in her district?
Rep. Herrera Beutler shouldn’t sup-
port the so-called “free trade” agree-
ments that off-shore our jobs. She
should be a job creator, not a pawn for
corporations like Weyerhaeuser, Kap-
stone, and the Koch-owned Georgia
Pacific Corporation.
If any Congressional rep wants to
have credibility with regard to U.S.
jobs and to reducing our national
deficit, they need to address our failed
trade and economic policies and our
trade deficit.
Greg Pallesen
Vice President
Association of Western
Pulp & PaperWorkers
Portland
IRS PROBLEMS?
• Haven’t filed for ... years?
• Lost records?
• Liens - Levies - Garnishments?
• Negotiate settlements.
• Prepare offer in Compromise.
Call Nancy D. Anderson
Enrolled Agent
NPTI Fellow/America’s Tax Expert
LTC-1807
www.nancydanderson.com
503-244-2577
JUNE 6, 2014
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
PAGE 11