NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS |
August 4, 2017 | PAGE 3
Message for WSLC Convention delegates:
“Have we been here before? Has it ever been easy to be in the labor move-
ment?” asked AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler in her keynote address.
“Now is the time to remember why we are in the labor movement in the first
place. It‘s because we care about people. People we love. People we will
never meet.”
“At 3 in the morning, when they put a tax increase on Washington families
and tried to pass a tax cut for business with no accountability or assurance
of good jobs, I vetoed it, and that was the right thing to do,” Gov. Jay Inslee
told Washington State Labor Council convention delegates.
Resist. Persist. Repeat.
VANCOUVER — Washington
State Labor Council, AFL-CIO,
held its biennial convention at
the Vancouver Hilton July 18-20
— at a time when the union
movement faces serious threats
at the national level, including
the specter of national “right-to-
work” legislation to weaken
unions. But the mood was in-
spired, even jubilant at times, as
union delegates from across
Washington state gathered to
talk about efforts to resist that
agenda.
National AFL-CIO secretary-
treasurer Liz Shuler pointed to a
list of successes in Washington
state, including the recent pas-
sage of what she called “the
most generous paid family leave
law in the country” and last
fall’s labor-led Initiative 1433
that is raising the state minimum
wage to $13.50 and guarantee-
ing that all workers earn paid
sick leave.
Another guest speaker, Wash-
ington Attorney General Bob
Ferguson, got a hero’s welcome
for his successful lawsuit to
block Trump’s Muslim travel
ban. He was presented the 2017
Power to the People award by
the WSLC.
Delegates also set policy with
the passage of 26 resolutions, in-
cluding:
■ Opposition to the entry of nonunion New
Seasons Market into Washington
■ Commitment to host a “Race & Labor”
summit in 2018 to identify key stress
points around race, class, and labor within
the Washington labor movement and
create a “best practices tool kit”
■ Commitment by member unions to employ
union members in all electronically-
generated or recorded media projects for
broadcast or internal use
■ Support for efforts to form a new AFL-CIO
constituency group, Council FIRE, for
Native American union members
■ Commitment to work with affiliated
unions to plan rapid response to
immigration raids, and share contract
provisions that can help protect workers
from raids.
ATTENTION: If you worked for CBT, Inc.
Raymond Thomas
Cynthia Newton
Melissa Haggerty
in Oregon in the 1970s and 1980s
performing demolition and construction work,
please contact Asbestos Investigator
Sherry Day at
(734) 878-5236 or
email Sherry@SLDinvestigations.com
James Coon
Chris Frost
Sydney Montanaro
If you were hurt on
the job by someone
from another
company, you have
rights to sue that
company, in
addition to having
your workers’
compensation claim.
820 SW Second Ave., Suite 200,
Portland, OR 97204
Scott Sell
Chris Thomas
www.tcnf.legal
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