NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS | June 16, 2017 | PAGE 3
Labor’s future in the age of Trump
Corporate interests dominate
Congress and state houses.
Unions are in retreat. Americans
are agitated about immigrants
and in a panic about followers of
an unfamiliar religion. Is it the
1890s, the 1920s, or the 2010s?
All of the above, says Mark
McDermott.
On the evening of June 1,
McDermott, 67, is at the IBEW
Local 48 hall at the invitation of
Washington State Building
Trades Council — speaking to
17 local union activists and staff
members. It’s his 296th work-
shop in the last five years. [It
was Iron Workers Local 29 the
day before.]
At union conventions, ap-
prenticeship classes, and public
forums, McDermott delivers a
message: Working people need
to understand and learn from
history, both the good and the
bad, if they want to rebuild the
labor movement and take the
country back.
There’s no question the labor
movement is at a low point to-
day. As a percent of the work-
force, unionized workers overall
are at their lowest level in 80
years, and if you look just the
private sector, they’re at levels
not seen since about 1902 —
115 years ago. In 1955, building
trades union members did 80
percent of construction work in
Trump is America’s first billionaire president, but immigrant-bashing is noth-
ing new in American history, says labor educator Mark McDermott.
the United States; today they do
less than 15 percent.
As unions decline, divisions
grow. America is more divided
and polarized today than it has
been in more than a generation.
Now, the nation’s first billion-
aire president got to office fan-
ning the flames of fear about im-
migration and Islam. That’s not
new, McDermott says: In the
1890s, hostility to Asian immi-
grants was rampant. Later it was
Catholics, and immigrants from
Southern and Eastern Europe. In
1925, the Ku Klux Klan had
more members than the union
movement.
And looking back, unions
weren’t blameless. When
Samuel Gompers was president
of the American Federation of
Labor (AFL) — from its found-
ing in 1886 to his death in 1924
— no fewer than 11 unions affil-
iated with his AFL denied mem-
bership altogether to Black
workers, McDermott says.
“None of us in this room are
responsible for this,” McDer-
mott said, “but this is what hap-
pened.”
And yet, as Martin Luther
King Jr. later observed, the labor
movement went on to become
“the principal force that trans-
formed misery and despair into
hope and progress.” It lifted up
millions and made America
more just.
McDermott says labor’s
power to do good began to de-
cline in the early 1970s, when a
renewed corporate counter-attack
got under way at the same time
union leadership was exhibiting
a disastrous complacency.
“I used to worry about the
size of the membership,” said
AFL-CIO president George
Meany in 1972. “I stopped wor-
rying, because it doesn’t make
any difference. The organized
fellow is the only fellow who
matters.”
McDermott experienced Rea-
gan-era corporate savagery up
close and personal. In May
1982, he was working as a
union machinist in Seattle when
guys in suits announced the
company had been sold and all
employees would be laid off at
the end of the day. They could
reapply for their jobs with the
new owner, but without their
union contract. McDermott
wasn’t rehired, and says his in-
terviewing managers told him
why: because he was a union of-
ficer in Machinists Local 79.
McDermott ended up unem-
ployed for 15 months, lost his
health insurance, had to move in
with friends, and took a 50 per-
cent pay cut in his next job.
“I swore that day I’d never
shut up, never stop fighting for
working people and organized
labor, until I’m dead.”
Three decades later, McDer-
mott retired after a career in lo-
cal, state and federal govern-
ments as a labor advisor and
advocate for working people.
[Along the way, his wife Diane
Zahn became secretary treasurer
of Seattle-based UFCW Local
21, and his brother Jim McDer-
mott became a Seattle Con-
gressman and stalwart union
ally.] Now he’s hitting the road
in hopes of rekindling the move-
ment.
“We have to figure out how to
turn this around, and what we
can learn from the past that will
help us do that,” McDermott
said.
NEXT UP
McDermott’s next Portland-area
workshop will take place June 19 for
apprentices at the Sheet Metal Local
16 training center.
...Unions ready ballot initiatives
From Page 1
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have to publish employee work schedules
two weeks in advance, and compensate
employees with one hour of pay for changing
the schedule after that (except in cases where
employees mutually agree to swap shifts),
and pay half-time for any hours lost from
shortened or cancelled shifts, as well as for
any on-call shifts if the employee isn’t asked
to work. And they’d be barred from requiring
employees to work a shift less than 10 hours
after the end of the previous day’s shift.
Employees who agreed to those so-called
“clopening” shifts would get time-and-a-half
pay for hours they work that are less than 10
hours after the previous shift. Chief petitioner:
UFCW Local 555 Secretary-Treasurer Jeff
Anderson.
IP 25: Corporate Accountability and
Transparency
Each year, publicly traded corporations would
have to publicly disclose information including
how much they pay in state taxes, as well as
their total Oregon sales, and the total Oregon
wages and compensation they pay. Chief
petitioners: SEIU Local 503 President Steve
Demarest, and Oregon AFSCME Executive
Director Stacy Chamberlain.
IP 26: Oregon’s Kids Deserve Quality
Schools
Amends the Constitution to require the
Oregon Legislature to appropriate sufficient
funds to ensure that the state’s system of
public education meets quality goals
established by law. And in order to comply
with that obligation, it would allow the
Legislature to raise taxes on corporations via a
simple majority vote, not the supermajority
required by a previous constitutional change
approved narrowly by voters in 1996. Chief
petitioners: OEA Director Jennifer Scurlock
and board member Benjamin Gorman.
IP 27: Invest in Oregon's Future
Legislates a slight decrease in personal
income taxes, and a new corporate minimum
income tax equal to 0.95 percent of gross
sales. The new business tax would go into a
special account: 80 percent would go to K-12
schools, and 20 percent to community
colleges and state universities. Chief
petitioners: OEA Director Jennifer Scurlock
and board member John Larson
As a constitutional change, IP
26 would require 117,578 valid
signatures from Oregon voters
to get on the ballot; all the others
would need 88,184 signatures.