SERVING ORGANIZED LABOR IN OREGON AND SOUTHWEST WASHINGTON SINCE 1900
NORTHWEST
LABOR
PRESS
VOLUME 117, NUMBER 12
IN THIS ISSUE
SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL CONTRACT Comes a year
after stagehands vote to join IATSE . | Page 3
LABOR 100 YEARS AGO A look back at the front page
stories of the Labor Press a century ago. | Page 5
Meetings p.4
Labor Appreciation Night p.8
PORTLAND, OREGON
JUNE 17, 2016
Big union win at PeaceHealth Vancouver
By Don McIntosh
Associate editor
In ballots tallied June 2, hospital
technicians at PeaceHealth
Southwest Medical Center in
Vancouver voted 211 to 77 to
unionize.
They’ll now be members of
PeaceHealth Southwest Care-
givers United, a unit of Oregon
Federation of Nurses and Health
Professionals (OFNHP), which
is itself an affiliate of the Amer-
ican Federation of Teachers
(AFT).
Turnout was extraordinarily
high: 93 percent of workers in
the unit cast ballots. And the
overwhelmingly pro-union mar-
gin — almost 3-to-1 — came
despite an active anti-union
campaign by hospital manage-
ment. Union supporters report
that leading up to the vote, hos-
pital managers and executives
tore union fliers down from bul-
letin boards, and interrogated
Photo by Alexander Reusing, courtesy of AFT
Hospital techs voted nearly 3-to-
1 in favor of unionizing
TEARS OF JOY: Union supporters hug June 2 as their win is announced.
workers — asking them if they
like working there and how they
planned to vote in the union
election. If true, some of those
tactics are illegal under federal
labor law; AFT filed charges
May 27 with the National Labor
Relations Board detailing illegal
surveillance and coercive state-
ments and actions by Peace-
Health managers.
PeaceHealth Southwest car-
diovascular technologist Danene
Flower says the management of-
fensive began after May 6, when
AFT requested an election.
“Most of these people I’d
never seen before in my life,”
Flower said. “They were wear-
ing buttons saying ‘Give us a
Lead crisis in schools
The pattern seems so familiar:
Top brass at Portland Public
Schools (PPS) didn’t attend to
the issue of lead in drinking
water, failed to act on several
lead test results in a timely
way, then ran for cover as
panic spread among parents.
At that point they took hasty
and costly damage control
measures — putting two
managers on paid leave, hir-
ing an outside law firm to fig-
Turn to Page 6
ure out what happened, buy-
ing a million plastic bottles of
water, and covering up every
water source (not just those
that tested high for lead). The
district’s own skilled mainte-
nance workers, who could be
installing lead-free fixtures,
were instead tasked with de-
livering cases of plastic water
bottles and picking up emp-
ties.
Turn to Page 7
City union ‘breakup’ – Laborers Local 483 leaves DCTU union coalition
Laborers Local 483 — which
represents parks, street mainte-
nance, water and sewer workers
at the City of Portland — is
leaving the District Council of
Trade Unions (DCTU). DCTU
is a coalition of city unions that
jointly negotiates a single con-
tract. In ballots counted June 1,
Local 483 members voted by
greater than a 70 percent margin
to withdraw from the DCTU.
The vote follows internal ten-
sions within the DCTU during
the most recent contract negoti-
ations, chiefly over differences
in strategy and priorities. Local
483 has tended to favor more
vocal and adversarial tactics,
and hasn’t been as involved as
other DCTU unions in mayor
and city council races. With
about 600 members, Local 483
is the second largest union in the
DCTU; AFSCME Local 189,
with about 840 members is the
largest. The others are IBEW
smaller bargaining team might
make for shorter negotiations.
On the other hand, staying might
better leverage the strength of
greater numbers.
The current DCTU contract
covers 1,656 members of all
seven unions, and expires July
1, 2017. Negotiations are ex-
pected to begin later this year.
Leaving the DCTU means Lo-
cal 483 will bargain separately
going forward.
Buchholz said one potential
drawback
of leaving is that city
CITY UNIONS UNITED: In August 2013, members of DCTU unions rallied for
negotiators
would play unions
a fair contract outside Portland City Hall.
against each other; to counter
Local 48, Machinists District see if they can get a better agree- that, he said the unions will have
to remain in close communica-
Lodge 24, Operating Engineers ment on their own.”
“It’s like a break up,” Buch- tion.
Local 701, Plumbers and Fitters
“It might be easier to talk if
Local 290, and Painters and Al- holz said. “If it doesn’t work out,
lied Trades District Council 5.
we can always get back to- we’re neighbors than if we’re
living in the same house,” Buch-
“This [withdrawal] isn’t a re- gether.”
flection on what the other DCTU
Local 483’s Executive Board holz said.
The city’s fire and police
members do,” said Local 483 recommended leaving, but pre-
Business Manager Wesley Buch- sented both pros and cons to unions also bargain on their
holz. “Our members wanted to members. On the plus side, a own. So does Professional &
“This isn’t a reflection on
what the other DCTU
members do. Our mem-
bers wanted to see if
they can get a better
agreement on their
own.”
—Local 483 business man-
ager Wesley Buchholz
Technical Employees Local 17,
the union formerly known as
City of Portland Professional
Employees Association.
Local 189 President Mark
Gipson didn’t downplay that the
DCTU unions have had differ-
ent cultures and strategies, but
said he wishes Local 483 the
best of luck going forward.
“I really want this breakup to
be amicable,” Gipson said. “It
has to be.”