PAGE 10 | December 16, 2016 | NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
...Standing Rock
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OREGON STATE
B UILDING & C ONSTRUCTION T RADES C OUNCIL
Executive Secretary Tim Frew
Portland, Oregon, 503-788-7153
www.oregonbuildingtrades.com
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jobs to tens of thousands of
skilled workers,” Trumka said.
Community involvement is im-
portant, Trumka said, particu-
larly in situations involving
places of significance to Native
Americans, but, he added, “once
these processes have been com-
pleted, it is fundamentally unfair
to hold union members’ liveli-
hoods and their families’ finan-
cial security hostage to endless
delay.… Furthermore, trying to
make climate policy by attack-
ing individual construction proj-
ects is neither effective nor fair
to the workers involved.”
Reacting to Trumka’s state-
ment, White, the former Painters
Local 10 president, picketed
with half a dozen other local
unionists outside the Sept. 23
annual awards banquet of the
AFL-CIO’s Southwest Wash-
ington Labor Roundtable.
“I’m all labor. I live and
breathe it,” White said. “I’m not
questioning the fact that they
want those jobs. I made my liv-
ing in the building trades too.
But there is a point that we need
to take responsibility. … How
‘bout fixing the pipelines that
are busting all over the place?
How ‘bout changing the infra-
structure so we don’t have to use
so much oil and gas?”
For the Standing Rock tribe,
protest banners say, “water is
life.” But for many union con-
struction workers, pipelines are
how they earn their living. After
the federal agencies requested a
halt to construction, five national
union presidents wrote to Presi-
dent Obama. “The [Dakota Ac-
cess pipeline] project is being
built with an all-union workforce
and workers are earning family-
sustaining wages, with family
health care and retirement con-
tributions,” wrote the presidents
of Operating Engineers, Electri-
cal Workers, Teamsters, United
Association and Laborers.
“However, the project delays are
already putting members out of
work and causing hardships for
thousands of families.”
The pipeline is providing
work for an estimated 4,500
members of building trades
unions.
But a number of labor organ-
izations not directly involved
with the project issued state-
ments supportive of the protests,
including Amalgamated Transit
Union, American Postal Work-
ers Union, Communications
Workers of America, National
Nurses United, and Service Em-
ployees International Union
(SEIU).
Calling them out by name,
Laborers union President Terry
O’Sullivan said in a letter to his
members that those statements
would be remembered: “Some
of our so-called brothers and sis-
ters in the trade union move-
ment have abandoned solidarity
with the working class and are
instead throwing in with envi-
ronmentalists who have co-
opted the tribes in their effort to
fight pipelines,” O’Sullivan
wrote.
In Oregon, the board of SEIU
Local 503 approved a Standing
Rock support resolution Sept.
12 and contributed $1,503, after
member Laura John spent time
at the protest camp.
And in October, White drove
1,300 miles to Standing Rock
with his friend Carolee Morris,
a Cowlitz Tribal Council mem-
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