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September 2, 2016 | NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
Ed Barnes tapped
Second VP of NOLC
Ed Barnes, a
retired busi-
ness manager
of IBEW Lo-
cal 48, was
elected sec-
ond vice pres-
ident of the
Northwest
Oregon La-
Ed Barnes
bor Council.
The vote, held Aug. 22, was by
acclamation.
Barnes succeeds Everice
Moro of Oregon School Em-
ployees Association Local 6732.
Moro vacated the second vice
president’s seat after winning
election as first vice president.
Barnes has been on the North-
west Oregon Labor Council Ex-
ecutive Board for 37 years.
JOBS
Google Fiber pulls
the plug on Portland
So much for that idea. Google
was all set to begin installing a
high-speed fiber-optic network
in Portland this year, but the
company is shelving those
plans. According to an Aug. 15
article in the Wall Street Journal,
Google Fiber is exploring the
use of wireless technology —
instead of fiber — to connect
homes, and is putting planned
fiber roll-outs in Portland and
other cities on hold.
Several Portland-area general
contractors that employ union
members had submitted bids to
manage the work for Google,
but they never got to the stage of
signing a contract, says Tracy
Harness, manager of the union-
signatory Northwest Line Con-
structors Chapter of the National
Electrical Contractors Associa-
tion (NECA).
Google Fiber has installed
fiber networks in six metro areas
around the United States, offer-
ing Internet at 40 times the
speed of broadband for $70 a
month and cable TV for an extra
$60.
COLLECTIVE BARGAINING
At Malarkey Roofing Products, talk of a strike
By Don McIntosh
Associate editor
Labor relations have taken a
turn for the worse at a North
Portland roof shingle maker.
Leaders of United Steelworkers
Local 330 say family-owned
Malarkey Roofing Products has
hired a known union-buster to
lead negotiations over a new
contract for the plant’s 115
union workers.
Consultant Jim Frazer of
United Employers Association
has proposed a near complete
rewrite of the previous three-year
contract, which expired May 31.
Frazer is proposing to strip out
key union provisions, and union
bargaining team members think
he may be trying to drag out ne-
gotiations until production slows
after September.
Past negotiations were simple
and short, says union Vice Pres-
ident Shawn Graham, a mill-
wright at Malarkey. This time,
managers began the negotia-
tions saying they’d been too
busy to come up with proposals.
“I said, ‘How could you be
too busy? You had three years to
get ready for this,’” Graham re-
calls. “‘I have another job be-
sides this, and I came up with a
proposal. And you have a lawyer
and all these managers and you
can’t come up with it?’”
“That was a pretty good indi-
cation right off the get-go that
we were going to have prob-
lems,” says Local 330 President
Bob Tackett, who’s also execu-
tive secretary-treasurer of the
Northwest Oregon Labor Coun-
cil. Tackett said he observed
several bargaining sessions
where part-owner Greg
Malarkey seemed to want to be
reasonable, but was silenced by
Frazer, the consultant.
“To hear the guy tell the
grandson of the founder to sit
down and shut up was a little
weird, to say the least,” Tackett
said.
Malarkey Roofing has been
family owned since Herbert
Malarkey founded it in 1956.
His son Michael Malarkey,
president since 1975, died in
2012. The company has done
extremely well in the last five
years, Graham said. For about
eight months of the year, the
plant is in operation 24 hours a
day. Workers have achieved
productivity increases of 10 per-
cent a year, and are now putting
out 1.9 million shingles a week
at the Portland plant, with no
lost-time accident in the last
three years. The company has
also expanded, adding produc-
tion facilities in South Gate,
California, and Oklahoma City,
Oklahoma. Both are nonunion.
Under the union contract in
...Volunteers of America workers ready for a union
From Page 3
ment improve, the client out-
come improves,” Lauer said. “If
we become successful, it’s ulti-
mately going to benefit our
clients.”
So far, management hasn’t
actively campaigned against the
union. Nicholson said she hopes
they’ll remain neutral and re-
spect employees’ right to decide
for themselves.
The vote will be held in per-
son Sept. 14 and also by mail,
with ballots due Sept. 28.
AFSCME represents Volun-
teers of America employees in
New York and New Jersey, as
well as workers in Portland at
Central City Concern, Transi-
tion Projects, and Janus Youth
Programs who do similar work.
Portland, wages range from
$16.50 to $25.96, depending on
job classification. But workers
also get lots of overtime, includ-
ing double-time for some week-
end work: During high season,
employees work eight-hour
shifts 13 days in a row, followed
by one Sunday off.
But now the company is pro-
posing changes to 28 pages of a
32-page contract. It wants to add
21 causes for immediate termi-
nation (the current policy is
standard union “just cause” lan-
guage requiring progressive dis-
cipline.) And the profitable
company is proposing annual
raises of just 1 percent (the
union proposes 5 percent).
Malarkey also proposes to pay
$6.1 million to withdraw from
the union’s multi-employer pen-
sion plan. Instead, the company
proposes to match employee
contributions to a 401(k). [The
union counterproposes that
Malarkey put its current $1.37-
an-hour pension contribution
into a 401(k).]
Malarkey also is proposing to
get rid of two key union provi-
sions: its obligation to deduct
union dues from paychecks, and
any requirement that employees
become union members. The
provisions are known as “dues
checkoff” and “union security.”
“Trying to get rid of union se-
curity is the first step toward
breaking down our union,” ex-
plains bargaining team member
Tom Souther. “People could
come and have all the benefits
and not have to pay for it.”
As a consultant, Frazer has a
decades-old history of involve-
ment in bitter union disputes, in-
cluding a 22-month strike at
Voith Sulzer in 1996 in which
65 Machinists were perma-
nently replaced; an 11-month
strike by 65 members of United
Auto Workers at Williams Con-
trols in 2002; and a four-month
strike at Cummins Northwest in
1999, where the strategy of per-
manent replacement contributed
to the suicide of one striking
Machinist.
Workers want a fair contract,
not a labor dispute, Souther said.
Except for a strike in the 1970s,
Malarkey and the union have
gotten along for 50 years.
“They’re setting us up for a
strike,” Souther says. “They’ve
turned down everything we’ve
asked for. We’re diehard em-
ployees for these guys, and it’s
just sick the way they want to
take us out.”
Glass contractor remains nonunion,
and pro-union workers skedaddle
In a 9-to-6 vote on Aug. 24,
workers at Heritage Glass said
no to unionizing with Glaziers,
Architectural Metal & Glass
Workers Local 740.
Workers at the Northeast
Portland company do high-end
glass installations like glass
doors and custom shower enclo-
sures, for wages that range from
$12 to $25 an hour. That’s well
below the union scale for the
same work ($37 an hour plus
$16 an hour in fringe benefits).
That’s chiefly why Heritage
employees contacted the union
in July to see about unionizing.
Local 740 is part of Painters and
Allied Trades District Council 5.
The council assigned organizer
Mike James to assist the union
campaign.
On July 24, when Local 740
asked the National Labor Rela-
tions Board to schedule an elec-
tion, the union had support from
a majority of the company’s 15
employees. But an anti-union
campaign by the owner per-
suaded several workers to re-
consider support for the union.
James alleges some of Her-
itage’s tactics broke federal la-
bor law, including threats that
the company would close its
doors if workers voted to union-
ize.
Still, James says he’s not
mourning the election loss, in
part because it would have been
challenging for the union to ne-
gotiate a single-employer first
contract with an employer who
is hostile to the union. Local
740’s 21 union-signatory con-
tractors operate under the same
master agreement, and James
said the union would never un-
dercut them by offering better
terms to a newly unionized em-
ployer.
After the vote, three pro-
union workers left Heritage for
better-paying jobs with union-
signatory glass contractors.
James said more may do the
same as union jobs become
available.