SERVING ORGANIZED LABOR IN OREGON AND SOUTHWEST WASHINGTON SINCE 1900
NORTHWEST
LABOR
PRESS
VOLUME 116, NUMBER 5
INSIDE
PDX shipyards
Union meetings
Free classifieds
In Memoriam
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4
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PORTLAND, OREGON
MARCH 6, 2015
NAFTA ON STEROIDS
Fast track fight begins
Executives from TNT Development sign an iron beam as members of Iron Workers Local 29 look on.
Portland skyline changes with
topping out of 30-story high-rise
Union workers get high praise
from contractors, developer of
Park Avenue West
By Michael Gutwig
Editor & Manager
Members of Iron Workers Lo-
cal 29 were surrounded by
media and local dignitaries
Feb. 19 for a topping out cere-
mony at Park Avenue West, a
546,000-square-foot building
that features 13 floors of office
space, 15 floors of apartments,
and two floors of retail space.
At 504 feet, the 30-story
union-built tower is the tallest
structure erected in downtown
Portland since the 1980s, said
Mark Parsons, superintendent
for general contractor Hoff-
man Construction. “This is the
kind of thing that makes our
country strong,” Parsons said.
The high rise will reach
peak employment of 300 con-
struction workers later this
month.
The project also supported
over 50,000 work-hours at
Fought & Co., a steel fabrica-
tor signatory with Iron Work-
ers Shopmen’s Local 516. Ac-
cording to Larry Dykier of
Fought, workers fabricated
roughly 3,527 tons of struc-
tural steel and delivered
23,000 pieces to the proj-
ect in 400 loads.
Seventy-eight union
ironworkers had a hand in
putting those pieces to-
gether — using 63,000
bolts. They placed the last
beam Feb. 19 at the top-
ping out ceremony.
“The Iron Worker Lo-
cal 29 guys did a brilliant
The final beam at Park Avenue West is
job on this thing,” said hoisted into place during a topping out
Kevin Patterson of REFA ceremony Feb. 19.
Erection. “Everybody
went home safe.”
and an evergreen tree, before
As is tradition, workers
hoisting it to the top of the
signed the beam, which is
adorned with an American flag
Turn to Page 6
Local 29 ironworkers James Marble and Doug Green attach the final
steel beam to a cable from a tower crane operated by Anson Barrow of
Operating Engineers Local 701.
By Don McIntosh
Associate Editor
The AFL-CIO has begun an all-
out campaign to defeat “fast
track” in Congress, and a vote
on it is expected within days or
weeks.
Fast track, also referred to as
trade promotion authority, is
legislation that would make it
easier for Congress to pass more
NAFTA-style trade agreements
— including the Trans-Pacific
Partnership (TPP), a super-se-
cret agreement being negotiated
with 11 other Pacific Rim na-
tions. Under fast track, when the
president presents a trade agree-
ment, Congress must hold an
up-or-down vote within 90 days,
with limited debate and no
amendments.
If Congress passes fast track
this time, the consequences
could be enormous. TPP has
been called “NAFTA on
steroids” by its critics. It would
cover almost 40 percent of the
world’s economy, including
Australia, Brunei, Canada,
Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico,
New Zealand, Peru, Singapore,
the United States, and Vietnam.
The Obama Administration
has never publicly disclosed
what it’s proposing to other na-
tions in the closed-door TPP ne-
gotiations. Even members of
Congress were prevented from
seeing it initially. After U.S.
Sen.Ron Wyden (D-Oregon)
campaigned for TPP negotia-
tions to be more transparent, the
Administration let members of
Congress see its proposals — in
a special room, by appointment,
with no cameras, smart phones,
or paper allowed in. Yet as many
as 600 corporate trade lawyers
have full access to the negotiat-
ing texts.
Much of what the public does
know about the TPP has come
from leaked texts made available
by the web site WikiLeaks. Those
Turn to Page 3
Gannett pushes an exotic
proposal at KGW, KING-TV
Three unions — IATSE, IBEW, and
SAG/AFTRA gear up for conflict
By Don McIntosh
Associate Editor
There’s labor trouble brewing at
Portland’s KGW-TV and Seat-
tle’s KING-TV. The two NBC
affiliates are among 46 local tel-
evision stations owned by media
company Gannett, which also
owns USA Today and the States-
man-Journal in Salem, Oregon.
In bargaining with the Interna-
tional Alliance of Theatrical
Stage Employees (IATSE), the
International Brotherhood of
Electrical Workers (IBEW), and
the Screen Actors Guild-Ameri-
can Federation of Television and
Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA)
over new union contracts at
KGW and KING, Gannett is
pushing an exotic proposal: Get-
ting rid of the clause on union ju-
risdiction.
Union negotiators are trying
to make sense of what that
means. Exclusive jurisdiction is
a core principle in American la-
bor relations. It takes the form of
a clause in nearly every union
contract that says the union rep-
resents all workers in a given oc-
cupation or workplace, and
therefore the terms of the union
contract apply to all those work-
ers. Without exclusive jurisdic-
tion, the employer could hire
people to do the same work as
union members, but who aren’t
union members, and aren’t cov-
ered by the contract or its terms.
“They would be able to bring
Turn to Page 7