PAGE 6 | August 18, 2017 | NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
PEOPLE
We Honor All The Hard Working
Men and Women on Labor Day
Iron Workers Local 14, Spokane
Iron Workers Local 29, Portland
Iron Workers Local 86, Seattle
Iron Workers Local 506, Seattle
Iron Workers Local 516, Portland
Iron Workers Local 751, Anchorage
5 questions for Stacy Chamberlain
Stacy Chamberlain is
Oregon AFSCME’s new
executive director —
confirmed by the union
Executive Board July 29
after four months serving
as interim executive
director. Overseeing a staff
of 62, Chamberlain is re-
sponsible for the interests
of 27,000 public sector
union members. She’s 42.
She’s also vice president of
the national union. A
graduate of Portland State
University and Willamette
University College of Law,
she lives in Southwest
Portland with her eight-
year old son. The Labor
Press spoke with her Aug.
11 at Oregon AFSCME’s
Portland headquarters.
What’s a union for?
It’s a vehicle to bring
workers together to find
their voice and power in the
workplace.
What do you think private
sector union members ought
to know about public sector
union members? That we have
more in common than we don’t.
I think there’s a tendency some-
times to try to pit the public and
private against each other or fo-
cus on areas where we don’t see
eye to eye, and there are those
issues, but in the grand scheme
of things their fight is our fight
and ours is theirs.
Your father, Tom Cham-
berlain, was an officer in
the Portland Fire Fight-
ers union. Today he’s
president of the Oregon
AFL-CIO. What did
you learn about unions
going up? That the union
isn’t a hobby; it’s a way of
life. These were conversa-
tions we had at the dinner
table. For my brother and
I, going out marching or
putting up lawn signs was
just something that we
did, and my dad would
talk about bargaining and
issues that he was dealing
with at the workplace or
in Salem. I remember in
high school, my dad had
one of those alpha-nu-
meric pagers, and he got a
page at dinner, which was
not uncommon. He took
the call. My dad is a very
passionate man. He could
be really intense at times.
But I just remember him
being very calm on the
phone. It was a firefighter
who had gotten himself into
trouble and was probably going
to lose his job. That firefighter
was having the worst day of his
life. A job is more than just a job.
People have a lot of themselves
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