SERVING ORGANIZED LABOR IN OREGON AND SOUTHWEST WASHINGTON SINCE 1900
NORTHWEST
LABOR
PRESS
VOLUME 117, NUMBER 15
IN THIS ISSUE
WYDEN CHALLENGER Labor-backed Working Families
Party fields candidate for U.S. Senate. | Page 2
UNIONS REJOIN WASHINGTON BUILDING TRADES
Carpenters and Operating Engineers are back in. | Page 7
Postal Rally p.2
Meetings p.4
Staff Changes p.8
PORTLAND, OREGON
AUGUST 5, 2016
Bakers close Wells Fargo account
for its link to an anti-union group
For business leaders, actions
sometimes have consequences.
Portland’s OTHER school lead exposure problem?
By Don McIntosh
Associate editor
Given the uproar this Spring
over lead in the drinking water
at Portland Public Schools,
you’d think there’d be height-
ened vigilance against further
lead exposure. But at Franklin
High School in Southeast Port-
land, a massive remodel may be
creating a worse lead problem
than the minute concentrations
that were found in the water of
some classroom sinks.
Franklin, built in 1917, is
mid-way through a $104 million
renovation thanks to a voter-ap-
proved bond. Its fenced-off
grounds have been a gigantic
construction site for over a year.
Because lead paint is present
in virtually all structures built
before 1978, construction con-
tractors are typically required to
carefully contain and dispose of
lead-contaminated materials
when they disturb painted sur-
faces. But accompanied by a
field rep for Painters and Allied
Trades District Council 5, I vis-
ited the construction site and
saw firsthand that that’s not hap-
pening everywhere at Franklin.
General contractor Skanska
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On core union issues, conventions
showcase a growing partisan divide
Democrats approve a strongly
pro-union platform. Republicans
call for a prevailing wage ban,
and laws to weaken unions.
Once upon a time, both Democ-
rats and Republicans competed
for union support and gave at
least lip service to the value of a
strong labor movement. No
more. Increasingly, Democrats
are adopting official positions
right out of organized labor’s po-
litical agenda, while Republi-
cans adopt positions directly at-
tacking labor. Nowhere is that
more clearly demonstrated than
in the party platforms adopted at
the national conventions.
Take Davis-Bacon, for exam-
ple. That’s the name of the 1931
law that requires that on federal
government projects, construc-
tion workers be paid the local
Oregon and Washington
unions are under attack by the
Freedom Foundation, a busi-
ness-funded non-profit whose
mission, as its spokesperson
put it last August, is “making
life miserable for government
employee unions.” The group
has filed numerous lawsuits
against unions, and has cam-
paigned with mailings and
house visits to get workers to
drop union membership. It
even produces a weekly anti-
union radio show. So to sup-
port the Freedom Foundation
is to make a statement: You’re
an enemy of organized labor.
One of the group’s largest
funders is Vancouver-based M.
J. Murdock Charitable Trust,
set up by Tektronix founder
Melvin J. Murdock. The Mur-
dock Trust is led by three
trustees, one of whom is Wells
Fargo senior executive Jeffrey
T. Grubb, executive vice pres-
ident for private client services
in the Pacific Northwest.
To fight back against the
Freedom Foundation, unions
set up their own non-profit last
year called the Northwest Ac-
countability Project. The group
has publicly targeted Mur-
dock, noting that the Trust is
also a big funder of other right-
wing groups, such as the anti-
gay-rights legal group Alliance
Defending Freedom. Now the
Northwest Accountability
Project is targeting Wells
Fargo too.
Bakers Local 114 Secretary-
Treasurer Terry Lansing heard
of the campaign in February,
and wrote to Wells Fargo: “We
feel strongly that Mr. Grubb’s
support for these groups,
through his paid role as one of
three trustees … undermines
many of the values we hold
dear as labor activists in the
Pacific Northwest.”
Local 114 has had an ac-
count at Wells Fargo since
1963. But in July, it transferred
its account balance of about
$40,000 to IBEW and United
Workers Federal Credit Union,
and closed its Wells Fargo ac-
count.
“We cannot in good con-
science continue doing busi-
ness with a company where
there is an executive officer
such as Jeffrey Grubbs who
supports philosophies that are
the exact opposite of what we
stand for,” Lansing wrote July
30 in a final letter to Well
Fargo.
WORKERS RIGHTS
Oregon Democrat Kurt Schrader
takes aim at Obama’s overtime rule
At the 2016 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, labor union
members and officers made up a sizable fraction of delegates. Oregon dele-
gates with ties to organized labor, above, included supporters of both Bernie
Sanders and Hillary Clinton, the ultimate nominee.
“prevailing wage” for each craft
specialty. It’s a big deal to build-
ing trades unions. Davis-Bacon
prevents federal spending from
driving down construction
wages — because contractors
can’t gain competitive advan-
tage from lowering wages. It’s
named after Republican Sen.
James Davis and Republican
Rep. Robert Bacon, and was
signed into law by Republican
President Herbert Hoover. To-
day, the official Republican po-
sition, ratified in 2012 and 2016,
is to repeal it, saying, “it drives
Turn to Page 6
Democratic Congress-
workers must be paid
man Kurt Schrader
time-and-a-half for
can’t seem to stop tak-
every hour they work
ing stands that are di-
over 40 in a week, but
rectly opposed to the
“executive, adminis-
well-being of working
trative and profes-
people. The latest:
sional” employees can
He’s sponsored a bill
be considered exempt
to delay and limit a
from the overtime pay
long-overdue over- Kurt Schrader requirement. Increas-
time update that is set
ingly, employers have
to take effect Dec. 1.
been paying low-level man-
The update has to do with agers on a salaried basis and
which employees are eligible claiming they’re exempt from
for overtime pay. Under the overtime. They get away with
Fair Labor Standards Act,
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