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About Northwest labor press. (Portland , Ore.) 1987-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 20, 2017)
PAGE 2 | October 20, 2017 | NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS ...Union volunteers mobilize for Puerto Rico From Page 1 Established in 1900 in Portland, Oregon as a voice of the la- bor movement. Published on a semi-monthly basis on the first and third Fridays of each month by the Oregon Labor Press Publishing Co. Inc., a non-profit mutual benefit corpo- ration owned by 20 unions and councils including the Ore- gon AFL-CIO. Serving more than 120 union organizations in Oregon and Southwest Washington. Office location: 4275 NE Halsey St., Portland, Oregon Mailing address: P.O. Box 13150, Portland, OR 97213 Phone: (503) 288-3311 Web address: http://nwlaborpress.org Editor & Manager: Michael Gutwig Associate editor: Don McIntosh Office manager: Cheri Rice Printed on recycled paper, using soy-based inks, by members of Teamsters Local 747-M. SUBSCRIPTIONS: Individual subscriptions are $14 a year for union members, $22 a year for all others. Pay by credit card online at nwlaborpress.org/subscribe, or send a check to our mailing address (above) along with your name, address and union affiliation, if any. Group rates of $10.08 a year per person are available for 25 or more subscriptions; call 503-288-3311 for details. CORRECTIONS: See an error? Please let us know at editor@nwlaborpress.org or by phone at 503-288-3311. PERIODICALS POSTAGE PAID AT PORTLAND, OREGON. CHANGE OF ADDRESS: If you move, let us know at nwlaborpress.org/subscriber-services or by mail at our mailing address (above). Be sure to provide your old and new addresses and the name/number of your local union. Please allow three weeks for the change to take effect. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS P.O. BOX 13150 PORTLAND, OR 97213-0150 out a deal: If AFL-CIO unions could recruit 300 skilled union volunteers, United would fly them to San Juan and back. Within days, unions found about 100 health care workers, 100 building trades workers, and 100 Teamsters who were willing to drop everything and leave home for two weeks. Two weeks after Maria hit, a Boeing 777-300 flew them from Newark to San Juan. The charter flight was crewed and loaded by union volunteers, and it carried 17 tons of donated supplies. On board were volunteers from 20 unions, including nurses, doc- tors, electricians, operating en- gineers, carpenters and truck drivers. Among them were four nurse practitioners and two registered nurses from Oregon Federation of Nurses and Health Profes- sionals (OFNHP) Local 5017, an affiliate of American Federa- tion of Teachers. At the union’s request, Kaiser Permanente agreed to release them from duty for the duration, but it was unpaid service: Moved to action by the enormity of the disaster, some gave up two weeks pay; Photo by Misty Richards (International Standard Serial Number 0894-444X) HERE IS WHERE THE WATER CAME … ON THE SECOND FLOOR. A woman points to a line of black mold, the aftermath of flood waters reached the sec- ond story of her home in Barrio Ingenio, half an hour west of San Juan. others used vacation time. Arriving in San Juan, they boarded buses and got a police escort to the sports complex that served as command central. For the next two weeks, women union volunteers slept in locker rooms in the Hiram Bithorn baseball stadium, while men slept in hallways in the adjacent Roberto Clemente Coliseum. In a covered area of the baseball stadium, they bonded over shared meals eaten together as a group: beans and rice for dinner, and ham and cheese sandwiches for breakfast and lunch. Frills included running water, show- ers, and intermittent electricity and air conditioning. But that was more creature comfort than most Puerto Ricans were expe- riencing. “It’s like a war zone,” said RN Susan Gillispie, a former army medic who works at an ur- gent care facility in Beaverton. “We have people with homes to- tally destroyed, living under tarps.” Union medical volunteers di- vided up into eight teams of as many as a dozen, each headed by a doctor, nurse practitioner, or physician assistant. Each day, each team would travel to an area in need, in vans loaded with supplies. Arriving at their desti- nation, they’d set up pop-up clinics or split up and go door to door doing “welfare checks,” sometimes with the aid of local volunteers as translators. Each would see as many as 20 pa- tients a day, dispensing medi- cine or changing dressings, re- ferring the worst cases to doctors, or helping them get ad- mitted to hospitals. Often, they encountered medically fragile individuals who had exhausted their supplies of oxygen, insulin, or other life-sustaining drugs. They also educated those they met about how to treat wa- ter to make it safe for drinking. Seeing the need, nurses used their own funds, and personal appeals on their Facebook net- works, to buy and distribute supplies including medicine, food, and hand sanitizer. Turn to Page 5 JOBS Permit denied for proposed Longview coal terminal The Washington Department of Ecology on Sept. 26 denied a water quality permit needed for the Millennium Bulk Terminal in Longview to move forward. If built, it would be North Amer- ica’s largest coal-export termi- nal. The agency said it denied the permit because the terminal would have caused significant and unavoidable harm to air quality, vehicle traffic, vessel traffic, rail capacity, rail safety, noise pollution, social and com- munity resources, cultural re- sources, and tribal resources. The permit was needed in order for the company to fill 24 acres of wetlands and dredge 41.5 acres of riverbed. Millennium says it will ap- peal the permit denial. The $680 million project — backed by 15 labor unions and/or councils — would create 1,000 union con- struction jobs under a project la- bor agreement, and 135 perma- nent jobs when complete. Millennium, owned by Ambre Energy and Arch Coal Inc., first began its permitting process in February 2012.
