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About Northwest labor press. (Portland , Ore.) 1987-current | View Entire Issue (March 6, 2015)
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS | March 6, 2015 | PAGE 3 Labor attorney Susan Stoner retires ...Fast track fight begins after decades defending bus drivers From Page 1 Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 757 general coun- sel Susan Stoner retired effective Feb. 28. Over the 24 years she was an in-house attorney, she was an important figure behind the scenes in the life of the union. Stoner’s legal work helped win arbitrations and defend con- tracts, and won reinstatement for dozens of transit workers. She also advised union leaders dur- ing years of battles with public transit agencies like TriMet and private contractors like multina- tional First Student. Stoner, 65, is a Portland na- tive and the daughter of Cal Stoner, an ardently pro-union electrical contractor. Stoner Electric Group, which he founded in 1960, continues to 140 employ members of States. She studied law at IBEW Local 48 to University of Houston, this day. and met videographer “My dad loved George Slanina, whom IBEW,” Stoner says. she later married. “I grew up thinking Moving back to Port- unions were wonder- land in 1988, she passed ful.” the Oregon bar and did And she still thinks outside legal work for Lo- that. Despite their de- cal 757 and other clients cline, unions are still Susan Stoner until joining the union as workers’ best de- staff attorney in 1991. Stoner says she’s grateful to fense, Stoner says, and the most democratic institutions they’ll have represented bus drivers and mechanics: “They are oriented encounter. “Our job in the union,” Stoner toward service to others, and says, “is to resist exploitation they’re always on time,” Stoner and the greed of the people who said. If she has one bit of parting are running our working lives.” Before settling down as a la- advice, it’s a call for unity: bor lawyer, Stoner says she was “Members need to realize that a hippie and an activist. Gradu- dissension within the union em- ating from Wilson High School powers the employer.” In retirement, Stoner will in 1967, she joined up with spend time at home in Southeast causes from anti-war to anti- Portland finishing the fifth book poverty to historical preserva- in her series of self-published tion. She worked for the home- historical mystery novels set less youth clinic Outside In, amid the labor union ferment of started a women’s health clinic, 1900s Portland. Titled Deadline, and volunteered with a prisoner it deals with a real-life conflict support group. She enrolled at between cattle and sheep ranch- Marylhurst College in 1975, and ers in Central Oregon. earned independent study credit Stoner’s successor as ATU interviewing activists in the Local 757’s general counsel is Eastern and Southern United Lane Toensmeier. You need a lawyer who understands how your union disability benefits and your Social Security disability benefits will fit together. leaks show U.S. negotiators push- ing the other countries to: • Agree to an “Investor-State Dispute Resolution” process in which foreign investors can sue governments in special tribunals of trade lawyers — if new regu- lations reduce expected profits; • Agree to extraordinarily long monopolies for copyrighted works — 70 years after the death of a copyright holder; and • Expand drug company prof- its by giving them the right to ex- tend drug patents for new uses, requiring generic manufacturers to re-run expensive tests to prove drug safety, and outlawing sys- tems that price medicine accord- ing to clinical benefits. For the AFL-CIO, TPP comes in a larger context of 20-plus years of trade agreements that have coincided with record trade deficits and the loss of millions of American manufacturing jobs. “Today, the trade policies of the United States are undermin- ing the interests of working peo- ple,” the national AFL-CIO Ex- ecutive Council declared in an official statement adopted Feb. 23 in Atlanta. “When decisions about economic policy are made behind closed doors, those deci- sions tend to advance the policy preferences of political and eco- nomic elites, not the broad inter- ests of the populace at large.… U.S. trade deals — from NAFTA and CAFTA to Korea and Colombia — form a moun- tain of broken promises made to workers. With NAFTA and Ko- rea, we were promised more jobs and higher wages because the deals would make it easier to export U.S. products. Instead, the deals made it easier to export U.S. jobs.” Both supporters and oppo- nents of the TPP have stepped up their campaigns. Obama cabinet officials are criss-crossing the country to stump for the TPP. Obama’s Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker — the billionaire Hyatt heiress — flew to Portland Feb. 17 to talk up the TPP with local execs at a nonunion Leatherman Group factory. And Obama trade czar Michael Froman — in magazine articles, TV inter- views, and meetings with elected officials — has been selling the idea that the TPP will bring jobs back to America. [It’s already brought his predecessor a job: Ron Kirk, who started the TPP negotiations in 2009, left in 2013 to take a job as an interna- tional trade lawyer providing “strategic advice to companies with global interests.”] On Feb. 26, US. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon) and seven other senators took to the Senate floor to speak in opposition to fast track and the TPP. The same day, President Obama met in person with members of Congress, including Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore- gon), to seek support. Obama even invited a reporter from Portland’s KGW-TV to the White House for a two-minute interview in which he implied the TPP will have “tough pro- tections for labor rights and the environment.” Congressman Peter DeFazio (D-Oregon), who voted against NAFTA and every agreement since, just laughed at that claim. “These things can change at any time,” DeFazio told the La- bor Press by phone, “but the last time I checked, the environmen- tal provisions were meaningless and the labor provisions were non-binding, yet the ‘investor- state’ provisions are stronger than ever: Corporations can sue the United States of America for a loss of anticipated profits — to undermine environmental, labor or consumer protection laws.” Elizabeth Swager, director of the Oregon Fair Trade Cam- paign, says DeFazio and Merkley are certain “no” votes on fast track. But other members of Congress from Oregon and Southwest Washington aren’t signaling how they’ll vote. And fast track’s fate may depend on Wyden, the most senior Demo- crat on the Senate Finance Com- mittee. Wyden voted for NAFTA in 1993, and most other trade agreements since then. But a disagreement between Wyden and Senate Finance Chair Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) over the details is causing a delay in the fast track bill. On March 4, Oregon AFL- CIO President Tom Chamber- lain flew to Washington, D.C., to lobby members of the Oregon delegation. “I think we have a shot at stopping this one,” Chamberlain said. “But it’s going to take peo- ple calling their elected repre- sentatives.” The Oregon AFL-CIO is holding a “Push Back the Fast Track” rally Monday, March 9, at 5:30 p.m. at Director Park, 815 SW Park Ave., Portland.
