NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS |
February 2, 2018 | PAGE 9
... The ‘anti-union’ organizers
From Page 1
functioned as a “think tank” —
part of a national network of or-
ganizations funded by far-right
millionaires and billionaires that
seek to influence public policy
by producing research papers
and generating op-eds. But in
2013, the group hired a new di-
rector, Tom McCabe, and turned
to a more exclusive focus on op-
posing unions.
McCabe had for two decades
led an anti-union construction
lobby group, the Building Indus-
try Association of Washington,
which spent considerable money
on Republican candidates for
governor and state Legislature.
BIAW also succeeded in a ballot
measure campaign that repealed
a state ergonomics rule that
aimed to protect workers from
repetitive motion injuries. And it
flirted with the idea of placing an
anti-union “right to work” initia-
tive on the Washington state bal-
lot.
Under McCabe’s direction,
the Freedom Foundation be-
came an all-purpose anti-union
shop:
■ In sync with groups around the country, it
encouraged anti-union county
commissioners in Washington to pass
local “right-to-work” ordinances
making dues voluntary. [Facing legal and
political challenges, each of those efforts
failed.]
■ It also began to act like a local version of
the National Right To Work Legal Defense
Foundation, helping anti-union
workers campaign to decertify
unions in their workplace, or vote to make
dues optional. [The group has
campaigned, so far without success, to turn
Polk County workers against AFSCME, City
of Portland workers against Laborers Local
483, and Washington childcare workers
against SEIU Local 925.]
■ It set up a full-time anti-union media
operation, with videos, TV ads,
podcast/radio spots, and a blog providing a
daily barrage of anti-union venom. [There
too, the operation is well-funded but it’s
not clear it’s been a big hit. Its YouTube
channel has just 1,300 subscribers, and its
slickly produced two-minute anti-union
rants typically get 350 views. But its
messaging has earned placements in right-
wing media outlets.]
■ It hired a crew of attorneys, who keep
busy (and tie up union resources) with
public records requests, lawsuits, and
campaign finance complaints for even
minor rule violations.
■ And it hired canvassers and set up a mail
operation directly targeting public
employee union members, trying to get
them to drop their union membership.
At first, the pitch was for
union-represented public em-
ployees to become “fair share”
payers — non-members who
don’t pay union dues but instead
pay a reduced amount to the
union to cover costs of negotiat-
ing and enforcing the contract.
That “convert-to-fair share”
message continues for regular
public employees the group tar-
gets.
But a 2014 U.S. Supreme
Court decision opened a new
frontier for the Freedom Foun-
dation: In Harris v Quinn, a 5-4
Republican-apponted court ma-
jority said that state-paid home
care workers had too tenous a re-
lationship to the state to count as
public employees, and that
therefore it violated First
Amendment rights for them to
be obligated to pay anything at
all to the union that represents
them. In theory, that should
make Freedom Foundation’s
sales pitch stronger: Drop your
union membership, and instead
of paying a discounted “fair
share” rate, you pay nothing at
all to the union.
Northwest unions meanwhile,
took evasive action to prevent
the Freedom Foundation from
accessing their members’ private
information.
That included changing their
charters. In Oregon, SEIU Local
503 and Oregon AFSCME had
Turn to Page 11
... Hammond
From Page 4
intended to harm her and
Shabazz.
After that, she says, everyone
on the job site knew something
had happened, but nothing was
spoken.
“There are several ways of
getting to your truth. You can be
Martin or you can be Malcolm.
I’ve always found it’s good to
pick your battles,” Hammond
says. “We chose not to say any-
thing.”
At the same job site, she was
assigned to work with another
journeyman, a white man. He
made no secret of the fact he did-
n’t like her race.
“I don’t know why the fore-
man assigned you to work with
me,” Hammond remembers him
saying. “He knows I hate black
people. The foreman is f---ing
with me by assigning you to
work with me.”
As they went around the job
site, he told her to walk five
paces behind him. She did as she
was told.
But by the time the project
was done, Hammond says that
same journeyman invited her to
his home for dinner, and gave
her the best progress report she’d
ever had.
People change. And Ham-
mond could be a catalyst.
Hammond made journeyman
in due time, but didn’t imagine
she could ever be a foreman on
a job site. Then in 1989, she was
working under Kit Fox, a Local
48 member who was superin-
tendent on a Swan Island project
making skids for Arco’s Alaskan
oil pipeline. Fox is white.
“He said, ‘You’re the most
qualified. I need you to be a fore-
man.’”
“I told him I didn’t think
white guys would work for me,”
she recalls.
“He goes, ‘If they don’t work
for you, they don’t work here.
And if they have a problem with
you being the foreman, they’re
going to have to talk to the union
steward.”
At the time, the steward on
the job was Keith Edwards, who
later became Local 48’s first
black business manager.
Hammond became foreman,
and found her fears were
overblown.
Growing up black in white
Portland
Hammond says if one thing
prepared her to work in an over-
whelmingly-white industry, it
was growing up in overwhelm-
ingly-white Portland. She began
at the all-black Highland school
near her family’s home in the Al-
bina neighborhood, but in 1966
when she was in fourth grade,
the district made a decision to in-
tegrate schools, and she and
other black kids were bused to
Rigler, a majority-white primary
school at NE 55th and Prescott.
There, she was isolated, but
excelled academically, and she
learned that though her class-
mates were different, she could
be as smart as they were.
But she and the other black
students weren’t welcomed by
all. She was called the ‘n’ word,
and remembers white kids rock-
ing her bus as she and the other
black kids waited to go home.
Once a white boy threw an egg
through the bus window, which
got all over her nice dress.
In 1968, when she was 12
years old, a white family she was
friends with brought her with
them to the pool at the YWCA.
The attendant told her she could-
n’t enter, but her white class-
mate’s grandmother demanded
that she be allowed in. Then she
got in the pool.
“I felt like Moses, because I’d
get in the water, and the pool
would empty. Then I’d get out of
the pool, and people would get
in.”
After high school, Hammond
studied international business
and French at the University of
Oregon, then transferred to Port-
land State, where she dropped
out without completing a degree.
Entering the workforce, there
was never any question but that
she would work union. Her
mother worked at the Tradewell
grocery store on North Williams
and Fremont as a member of Re-
tail Clerks Local 1092. Her fa-
ther was a union machinist at
Zidell Tube Forgings of Amer-
ica. They had only two require-
ments for her: That she love her
work, and that she work union.
“He would say, ‘The protec-
tion that you’re going to need at
work will only be afforded if you
have union representation.’”
For a time, Hammond worked
at Nordstrom (which was then
union). She got a garage job at
the phone company, also union.
Applying for an apprenticeship
as an installer, she was told she
lacked the “personality” for it,
but was offered a job in directory
assistance.
It was the union electrical ap-
prenticeship — which she ob-
tained with some coaching from
the Urban League — that
changed her life.
A union career
For a time, she hit the road as a
union “traveler” in Miami, At-
lanta, and New York City. Then
in 1991, after a decade of work
as a construction electrician, she
took a temporary dispatch at the
City of Portland’s wastewater
treatment plant. She stayed 21
years, leaving twice for stints
working with the Columbia-Pa-
cific Building Trades Council
and Oregon Tradeswomen Inc.
Meanwhile, in the union, she
found kindred spirits and got ac-
tive in the union’s Electrical
Workers Minority Caucus. She
ran for union office, and was
elected recording secretary, re-
ceiving encouragement from
then-business manager Ed
Barnes.
In 2007, she ran for Local
48’s top office, business man-
ager. She came in fourth place,
out of four. But not long after,
the winner, Clif Davis, hired her
as a rep to negotiate and enforce
union contracts.
That’s where Hammond spent
the last 10 years, a sister spread-
ing the gospel of brotherhood.
Unlike in construction, the work
is never done.
But she’s not as alone as she
used to be. Hammond has gone
to the Electrical Workers Minor-
ity Caucus conference nearly
every year since 1991. At first
there were a few dozen atten-
dees. Last month at the group’s
28th Annual Conference in De-
troit, there were over 600.
At the meeting, Hammond
was honored with the group’s
“Robbie Sparks North Star
Award,” named after the group’s
first president. The award is
given each year to someone who
has committed their life’s work
to organized labor and has ad-
vanced equity, equality and qual-
ity of life for union members and
the greater community.
GUMBO FEED
IBEW Local 48 is hosting a
fundraiser to help send members to
the next national conference of the
Electrical Workers Minority Caucus.
The event is open to all, and will be
followed by a union karaoke outing
at McGillacuddy's Bar & Grill.
When:Wednesday, Feb. 17 from 4
p.m. until the gumbo runs out.
Where: Local 48
Cost: $20 per person.