NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS | March 18, 2016 | PAGE 7
Clark County Sheriff seeks help
from Portland shipyard workers
Guest Column
By Norm Diamond, Pacific Northwest Labor History Association
Cold Case Unit asks for help to
solve a 1974 murder
Return of the Loyal Legion?
A SE Portland beer hall takes its name from an
early 20th century union-busting group
Members of the Pacific Northwest Labor History
Association were astonished last year to discover
a new Portland bar named after the notorious
Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumbermen (4Ls).
The bar’s website characterized the 4Ls as a labor
union and seemed to identify with its dubious her-
itage.
The 4Ls was far from a union in any meaningful
sense. It was a World War I-era organization
specifically created by the U.S. War Department
to undermine labor organizing in the woods (In-
dustrial Workers of the World — IWW) and mills
(American Federation of Labor — AFL). Its initial
leadership consisted of 100 assigned military offi-
cers. Its membership included approximately
25,000 soldiers under military discipline as the
Army Spruce Production Division. The 4Ls en-
rolled employers as well as workers.
It was founded in 1917 in response to a strike
wave in the Pacific Northwest. Especially in the
timber camps, living and working conditions were
abominable: no showers, no latrines, no laundries
and no way to dry clothes after 10 to 16 hours of
sweaty work.
The loggers called themselves “bindle-stiffs” af-
ter the bedding they were forced to carry in the ab-
sence of any mattresses or springs. The over-
crowded, fetid shacks where they slept were
designed to be moved every year or two and had
no windows. Bedbugs and lice were rampant.
Wages were paid irregularly and hiring hap-
pened through agencies the loggers called
“sharks,” located in towns far from the camps. It
was common for workers to pay agency fees, then
discover days later that the promised jobs didn’t
exist.
Key demands in the strike were for an eight-hour
day, regular paydays, furnished bedding, access to
showers, and hiring to occur through a union hall.
Lumber mill workers joined the strike, also de-
manding an eight-hour workday, making the IWW
and AFL de facto allies.
The strike was effective in cutting profits and
slowing production. The military needed lumber
for building barracks and ships. They especially
needed Northwest spruce for the new Army Air
Force planes. After meeting with employers, they
intervened.
The Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumbermen
broke the strike. They recruited through pressure
and intimidation, forcing workers to sign pledges
of allegiance both to the war effort and to the duty
they owed employers. Their constitution explicitly
banned strikes.
To keep their workforce, the 4Ls also intro-
duced reforms. One year after the strike wave, they
granted the eight-hour day. Later they mandated
that employers in the timber camps would have to
provide bedding. The reforms didn’t always last,
however, as the organization had no means of en-
forcing them once the war ended other than by ex-
pelling employers who didn’t comply.
The 4Ls pretty much petered out in the 1920s.
One of its legacies, though, was a large sign left in
its Chinatown offices, the sign the bar owner
moved across the river, giving its name to the new
Loyal Legion bar.
Hyung Nam, a teacher at Portland’s Wilson
High School, initially contacted the bar about
mounting a plaque that would set the story straight.
After conversations with the author of this article,
the owner agreed on specific wording to give a
more accurate website account. That was in Janu-
ary, however, and the website has yet to change.
Perhaps an accurate version would undermine the
bar’s flannel-shirt, Portland Timbers “branding.”
It is important to hold onto our heritage and not
let it be distorted. That history is all around us. As
a coincidental example, the building in which the
bar is located hosted Ku Klux Klan rallies when
the KKK was a Portland political power in the
1920s. Our buildings, parks and streets all have
working class stories to tell. For a labor historian,
the past never entirely disappears.
Norm Diamond is a former president of Pacific Northwest La-
bor College and co-author of The Power In Our Hands: A Cur-
riculum on the History of Work and Workers in the United
States. He serves as Oregon trustee to the Pacific Northwest
Labor History Association, which will hold its annual confer-
ence at Portland State University May 20-22. Check pnlha.org
for more details.
Portland-area ADT workers stay nonunion
At group of workers who install
and service home and business
security systems at ADT Secu-
rity Systems in Beaverton voted
14 to 10 on March 4 to remain
nonunion — rejecting a call to
join International Brotherhood
of Electrical Workers (IBEW)
Local 48.
Nearly half the workforce
there had signed a petition in fa-
vor of unionizing when ADT
workers first contacted Local 48
to talk about unionizing, and
Local 48 asked the National La-
bor Relations on Jan. 21 to
schedule an election. But in the
weeks leading up to the vote, an
in-house attorney who special-
izes in union avoidance was
brought in to lead four anti-
union meetings.
The attorney told them about
a group of 19 ADT workers in
Winston-Salem, North Carolina,
who voted to join IBEW Local
342 in 2013. ADT dragged out
negotiations over a first contract
for nearly two years. It then
locked the workers out in Feb-
ruary 2015, and replaced them
with outside contractors.
Local 48 lead organizer Tim
Foster says that spooked some
of the workers in Beaverton —
despite the fact that IBEW has
collective bargaining agree-
ments covering about 1,000
ADT workers at 38 locations,
including Seattle and Tacoma.
ADT, based in Boca Raton,
Florida, has 17,000 employees.
In 2014, its CEO Naren Gursa-
haney received $5.5 million in
compensation. In February,
ADT announced it’s being ac-
quired by the private equity firm
Apollo Global Management in a
$6.9 billion leveraged buyout.
Apollo intends to merge ADT
with Protection 1 and ASG Se-
curity, two other security com-
panies it owns.
VANCOUVER, WA – The
Clark County Sheriff’s Office
Cold Case Unit is seeking the
public’s help in locating a man
who was the boyfriend of a 17-
year-old Portland girl whose
body was found in rural Clark
County in late 1974.
In particular, the department
hopes that someone from the
Metal Trades Council of Portland
and Vicinity who worked at the
Portland shipyards during that
time might be able to help.
Detectives looking into the 41-
year-old murder think the man
could have information that
could help them piece together
the last days and hours of Martha
Marie Morrison’s life. The man
is not a suspect, said Special
Deputy Dennis Hunter. Morrison
family members told authorities
the young man visited them in
Eugene, Ore., hoping to find
Martha just after she disap-
peared.
Detectives are asking for the
public’s help because Martha’s
family members cannot remem-
ber the young man’s name; they
met him only briefly in the sum-
mer of 1974 and several weeks
later when he was looking for
her. They say he was slender, be-
tween 5’7” and 5’10” tall, and
might have been African Ameri-
can. He said he was going to
work as a welder in a Portland
shipyard or dock.
Martha met the young man at
a job-training program in or near
Phoenix, Ariz., when she was liv-
ing with relatives there. The two
drove through Eugene on their
way to Portland that summer, but
family members did not know
where they lived in Portland.
The couple had an argument,
and after he went to work,
Martha was seen leaving their
apartment with some belongings.
Her body was found about two
months later in a shallow grave
in the Dole Valley area of east
Clark County.
Martha was about 5’4” tall
and weighed about 140 pounds.
She had thick, long brown hair
and bad psoriasis everywhere ex-
cept her face. She frequented cof-
fee houses, where she would sing
or play guitar. She was proficient
in American Sign Language.
If you have any information
about the former boyfriend or
couple, contact Detective Craig
Marler at 360-397-2108 or
craig.marler@clark.wa.gov, or
the Cold Case Tip Line at 360-
397-2036.
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