NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS |
COLLECTIVE BARGAINING
...What they witnessed in Puerto Rico
Portland City workers take
strike authorization vote
CORRECTION
Machinists Lodge 1005 repre-
sents workers at the City of
Portland, and is an affiliate of
the District Council of Trade
Unions. An article in the Oct. 6
edition, “DCTU declares im-
passe at the City of Portland,”
reported the incorrect Machin-
ists local.
Photo by Misty Richards
COMMUNITY ON THE EDGE: Three weeks after the hurricane, much of
Puerto Rico looks like this, with washed out roads, fallen trees, broken win-
dows, damaged roofs, and downed power lines and cell phone towers.
It’s down to crunch time at the
City of Portland, where nearly
1,000 union workers — affiliates
of the District Council of Trades
Unions (DCTU) — are voting
on the City’s “last, best and fi-
nal” offer for a new contract.
The DCTU declared impasse
Sept. 27. As required by law,
both sides exchanged last, best
and final offers. The City
showed some movement, union
officials said, but not nearly
enough, and they linked it to
many unacceptable takeaways.
DCTU referred the offer, and
a strike authorization, to the
membership for a vote. Voting
was held Oct. 12-19 (after this
issue went to press), with a rec-
ommendation to reject the City’s
offer and to authorize a strike.
The sides are scheduled to
meet again with a mediator on
Oct. 24.
The Northwest Oregon Labor
Council at its Oct. 9 Executive
Board meeting said if requested
by DCTU, it will cite Portland
City Council to show cause why
it shouldn’t be placed on the of-
ficial Unfair/Do Not Partronize
List.
Photo by Ryan Lund, courtesy UO LERC
Photo by Tammie Tally-Ingrao
From Page 2
Sometimes they’d be met by
local community leaders. But
seldom did they come in con-
tact with other rescue workers.
In fact, residents often told
them they were the first help to
arrive — two or three weeks
after the storm.
“What’s being said about
Puerto Rico doing just fine is
not true,” says Tammie Tally-
Ingrao, a registered nurse who
works at Kaiser Sunnybrook
Medical Office. “People need
to know what’s going on so it
does not get forgotten in De-
cember when people are still in
the dark in Puerto Rico.”
All over the island, OFNHP
volunteers described traveling
on roads strewn with downed
trees, utility poles, and power
lines. They saw houses without
windows or roofs. Outside the
houses there would be piles of
ruined furniture and belong-
ings. Inside the houses, walls
and furnishings would be cov-
ered in black mold. [Moist con-
ditions and tropical heat are
ideal for mold, especially when
cleanup is made more difficult
by the lack of running water.]
Different areas were dam-
aged in different ways. In Hu-
macao, on the southeastern side
of the island, Tally-Ingrao said
more roofs were blown off. In
the north around San Juan,
most of the damage was caused
by flooding. In the mountain-
ous interior, houses of concrete
construction remained stand-
ing, but community water
sources were badly damaged.
Misty Richards, a registered
nurse at Kaiser Sunnyside
Medical Center, says her team
visited one of the most dam-
aged areas, Barrio Ingenio, half
an hour west of San Juan. Bar-
rio Ingenio was flooded when
the government opened five
gates of the La Plata Lake Dam
to prevent it from collapsing
from the weight of Maria’s
rains.
“These people, their homes
are unlivable, but people are
living there anyway, because
what else can you do?”
Richards said.
What disturbed volunteers
most was that people didn’t
seem to be getting the help they
need. The response of the Fed-
eral Emergency Management
Administration (FEMA) was at
times laughable, or worse.
Nowhere did they see
FEMA distributing supplies,
October 20, 2017 | PAGE 5
HURRICANE LEFT YOU WITHOUT POWER AND CELL SERVICE? BE
SURE TO CALL OR EMAIL FEMA. Oregon nurse union volunteers in
Puerto Rico say they saw no evidence of FEMA distributing water, food,
or other supplies on the hurricane-stricken island. But the agency did
manage to put up signs like this one — listing the web address and phone
number where you can get help filling out a 14-page form to request as-
sistance.
but they did see FEMA fliers
posted here and there, exhort-
ing disaster victims to contact
the agency by phone or online
— on an island largely without
phone service or electricity.
FEMA did set up intake sta-
tions to help disaster victims
fill out a 14-page application
for assistance. Tally-Ingrao
said her team came upon one
such center — set up in a park-
ing lot in the town of Rio
Grande. There they saw hun-
dreds of people standing in line
in the tropic heat, some for up
to six hours. Several passed out
from dehydration; FEMA was-
n’t providing food or water.
They also met and helped a
woman who had dislocated her
shoulder two weeks before and
had no medical care since then.
AFL-CIO volunteers cleared
out of the sports complex and
returned home Oct. 18. But the
need continues. Witnessing the
things she did, Richards said
she feels an obligation to shout
from the rooftops that no,
everything is not fine.
Nurses saw outbreaks of
scabies and pinkeye while they
were on the island. But worse
may be still to come: With 1.8
million residents still drinking
untreated water a month after
the storm, waterborne illnesses
could break out. Without elec-
tricity to power pumps, stand-
ing water will remain, breeding
mosquitos. And continued dif-
ficulty accessing medicine will
put others at risk.
“This is a health care crisis
that did not need to happen,”
Richards said. “It’s a man-
made disaster. Maria came and
went, but our government is
making the situation worse by
not putting enough resources
into it.…This is a token effort.
It’s like a kid who hands in a D-
minus paper just so he can tell
his parents he tried.”
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO LERC Current and former staff, above, gathered
Oct. 11 along with several hundred donors to celebrate 40 years since the
founding of the Labor Education and Research Center (LERC). A program
of the University of Oregon, LERC helps unions with training and research.
UNION DEMOCRACY
New union officers at
Musicians Local 99
Members of American Federa-
tion of Musicians Local 99 ap-
proved new officers by accla-
mation at their Oct. 2 general
membership meeting:
Executive Board (two-year terms)
■ Mary Ann Kaza, a retired Oregon
Symphony violinist and
board member at the
Metropolitan Youth
Symphony
■ John Nastos, a
saxophonist who performs
at jazz clubs and the Oregon
Symphony
■ Lars Campbell, a jazz and
classical trombonist and music director at
Clackamas Community College
■ Jason Schooler, a bassist in the Oregon
Symphony
Secretary-treasurer (three-year term)
■ Mont Chris Hubbard, a club and
theater musician who performs piano and
keyboard
Secretary-treasurer is one of
the local’s three top elected of-
fices, one of which comes up for
re-election each year.
The 565-member local repre-
sents orchestra musicians at
Oregon Symphony, Portland
Opera, and Oregon Ballet The-
atre, as well as the Portland
Symphonic Choir,
Portland Gay Men’s
Chorus, and the
Portland Festival
Symphony. It also
has members who
work under national
contracts, such as
local musicians
playing touring Broadway
shows at Keller Auditorium,
musicians working on national
television productions like
Grimm, and musicians who do
contract work for ad agency
Wieden and Kennedy.