Inside:
MEETING NOTICES
See
Page 6
Volume 115
Number 17
September 5, 2014
Portland, Oregon
TOP TWO, TAKE TWO
By DON McINTOSH
Associate Editor
If you’re a registered Oregon voter,
there’s a ballot measure coming to your
mailbox this November that would end
the primary as you know it. Like it or
not, it was brought to you by members
of the 1 percent.
Ballot Measure 90 would bring to
Oregon the “top two" primary that’s al-
ready law in Washington and Califor-
nia: All legislative, statewide and Con-
gressional candidates would compete
head-to-head in the primary election,
regardless of their party. The top two
vote-getters in each race would square
off in the November general election —
even if both were Democrats or both
were Republicans. In effect, the primary
election would no longer be used by
Democratic and Republican voters to
choose their parties’ candidates in the
November general election. The same
proposal was rejected two-to-one by
Oregon voters in 2008.
Measure 90 is sponsored and fi-
Centrist millionaires put a post-partisan
primary before Oregon voters, again
nanced by millionaires James Kelly and
Brett Wilcox, with backing from other
millionaires, billionaire Columbia
Sportswear CEO Tim Boyle, busi-
nesses, and the state’s largest business
groups. These are politically centrist
millionaires who are said to equally dis-
like the influence of labor liberals in the
Democratic Party and tea-party conser-
vatives in the Republican Party.
With six weeks to go before ballots
are mailed out, virtually all the labor or-
ganizations that have been the most in-
volved in electoral politics are gearing
up to oppose Measure 90. That includes
the Oregon AFL-CIO, the Oregon Edu-
cation Association, Service Employees
International Union Local 503, AF-
SCME, the American Federation of
Teachers, Oregon Nurses Association,
Oregon School Employees Association,
United Food and Commercial Workers
Local 555, Teamsters Joint Council 37,
and the Pacific Northwest Regional
Council of Carpenters.
But on the other side, the Oregon
Working Families Party and some of its
union supporters have endorsed the
measure.
For a fuller understanding of the
measure, the Labor Press talked with
supporters and opponents.
First, some clarity: Supporters have
sometimes called Measure 90 an “open
primary” measure, but there’s already
something called an open primary, and
Measure 90 isn’t it. An open primary is
one where a voter can decide on Elec-
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National building trades
sees a ‘once in a generaton’
opportunity to grow ranks
U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley (right) stops to chat with Ben Guzman (center) and Chuck Little at the Oregon State Building
and Construction Trades Council convention Aug. 22 in Bend. Guzman is a member of Laborers Local 320 and Little
is executive secretary of the Pendleton Building Trades Council and a member of Laborers Local 121.
BEND — Construction unions are
looking at “a once in a generation” op-
portunity to grow their ranks, said Brent
Booker, secretary-treasurer of North
America’s Building Trades Unions (for-
merly the Building and Construction
Trades Department, AFL-CIO).
Booker was the keynote speaker at
the 53rd annual convention of the Ore-
gon State Building and Construction
Trades Council held Aug. 20-22 in
Bend. It was the first time that a national
leader of the building trades has at-
tended a convention in Oregon.
“The one thing that has me so opti-
mistic is the boom of domestic energy
— of natural gas,” Booker said.
The low price of natural gas, he said,
has spearheaded growth in the manufac-
turing sector, where the plastics indus-
try, fertilizer industry, petro-chemical in-
dustry and others are planning to build
manufacturing plants that range in size
from $800 million to $7 billion.
“We’re talking about mega projects
as a direct result of the natural gas boom
in this country,” he said.
In Oregon, Booker pointed specifi-
cally to the $7.5 billion Jordan Cove nat-
ural gas export facility, power plant and
pipeline in Coos Bay that, if approved,
will be built under a project labor agree-
ment (PLA). Booker said a $4 billion
project at Cove Point in Maryland will
break ground this fall under a PLA, cre-
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Longshore workers ratify contract at NW grain terminals
Ending lockouts at grain
facilities in Portland
and Vancouver
Longshore workers who load grain
at export terminals in Oregon and
Washington ratified a new collective
bargaining agreement with the Pacific
Northwest Grain Handlers Association.
The vote was 1,475 to 193, and in-
cluded members of the International
Longshore and Warehouse Union
(ILWU) Local 8 in Portland, Local 4 in
Vancouver, Local 21 in Longview, Lo-
cal 19 in Seattle, and Local 23 in
Tacoma, Wash., employed at Louis
Dreyfus Commodities (LDC) in Port-
land and Seattle, United Grain Corp. in
Vancouver, and Columbia Grain Inc. in
Portland. LDC is a French-owned com-
pany, United Grain is owned by Mitsui
Corp. of Japan, and Columbia Grain is
owned by Marubeni Corp. of Japan.
Negotiations began in August of
2012 and involved 70 separate ses-
sions, including multiple marathon me-
diation sessions held under the auspices
of the Federal Mediation and Concilia-
tion Service (FMCS). The Association
imposed a concessionary contract in
December 2012 that had been rejected
by 94 percent of the ILWU. That was
followed by lockouts at United Grain in
February and Columbia Grain in May.
[A fourth grain exporter, Tacoma-based
TEMCO, left the Association in Febru-
ary 2013 and bargained its own contract
with the ILWU. TEMCO has facilities
in Kalama, Tacoma and Portland.]
Terms of the new contract include
work rule changes and wage increases
over the life of the agreement. Details
of those changes were not disclosed. In
a press release, ILWU said the contract
is a result of both sides “compromising
significantly from their original posi-
tions, resulting in a workable collective
bargaining agreement that preserves the
work of the ILWU-represented work-
force and fosters stability for the export
grain industry, the union said in a state-
ment.”
Locked out union members returned
to work Aug. 27, and the parties agreed
to drop all pending National Labor Re-
lations Board and other legal actions as-
sociated with the dispute.
The new pact will be in effect until
May 31, 2018.
A tentative deal was reached five
weeks after Washington Gov. Jay Inslee
stopped providing state police escorts
for grain inspectors entering United
Grain’s terminal. The Washington De-
partment of Agriculture requested the
escorts more than eight months ago, cit-
ing safety concerns for its employees
crossing a picket line. Inslee agreed to
the taxpayer-funded escorts in hope that
it would spur negotiations — and lead
to a quick settlement. When that didn’t
happen, he discontinued the service, ef-
fective July 6.
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