SERVING ORGANIZED LABOR IN OREGON AND SOUTHWEST WASHINGTON SINCE 1900
NORTHWEST
LABOR
PRESS
VOLUME 119, NUMBER 17
IN THIS ISSUE
INDUSTRIAL ATHLETES A new program will combat
heart disease among construction workers. | Page 3
FREEDOM FOUNDATION’S SPAM ASSAULT What to
do when anti-union email arrives in your box | Page 6
In Memoriam p. 3
Meeting Notices p. 4
PORTLAND, OREGON
SEPTEMBER 21, 2018
JOBS
COLLECTIVE BARGAINING
Private monopolies failed to deliver fiber.
Washington teacher strikes end
with double digit raises
Now it’s time for municipal broadband.
By Don McIntosh
In the Willamette Valley, you
have two choices if you want
high-speed Internet access: cable
monopoly Comcast or telephone
landline monopoly CenturyLink.
For decades, without ever invest-
ing in fiber-optic cables to resi-
dents’ homes, the two monopo-
lies have ratcheted up the rent on
their legacy coaxial cables and
twisted copper wires, all while
confusing customers with com-
plicated package deals and tem-
porary introductory rates — and
maintaining legendarily poor cus-
tomer service. It’s no wonder gi-
ant cable and telephone providers
are consistently ranked among
the most hated companies in-
AFSCME officer Michael Hanna pitched Troutdale City Council a plan to study
providing high-speed Internet as a public utility. It passed 5-0.
America. But what are you gonna
do about it?
Now, coming soon to Portland
City Council, is a union-backed
plan for public-owned Internet
access that would be cheaper than
Comcast and 40 times as fast. Not
only that, but it would pay for it-
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PEOPLE
The new face of Oregon’s building trades
Robert Camarillo, the new leader
of Oregon’s construction unions, is
a 41-year-old first generation
American with the heart of an or-
ganizer.
By Don McIntosh
Twelve years ago, Robert Camar-
illo was a full-time structural iron
worker active in Iron Workers
Local 29. This August, union del-
egates elected him to the top of-
fice of the Oregon State Building
and Construction Trades Council,
which represents the interests of
25,000 construction workers in
21 building trades unions.
Camarillo, 41, is its new full-
time executive secretary, respon-
sible for advancing the Council’s
wide-ranging agenda — from
promoting all-union project labor
agreements to fostering more op-
portunities for women, minori-
ties, and veterans to enter the
trades, and cracking down on em-
ployer theft of wages. Camarillo
can speak with authority about
wage theft, because he himself
experienced it as a young con-
struction worker.
The son of immigrants from
The last of seven Southwest
Washington teacher strikes
ended Sept. 17 when teachers
in Battle Ground began
classes. Their
strike settlement
was reached one
day after they
voted by 89 per-
cent to defy a
judge’s order to
return to work.
The strike in
Battle Ground
lasted 13 school days, making
it the longest of 15 teacher
strikes that took place in Wash-
ington this year. Teachers at
East Vancouver’s Evergreen
School District ended their
strike Sept. 10, and teachers at
Longview ended theirs Sept. 11.
At the height of the strike
wave, as many as 8,000 Wash-
ington teachers were walking
picket lines — 5,000 of them in
Southwest Washington. Teach-
ers struck in districts where su-
perintendents tried to hold on to
funds the Legislature had
granted for long-overdue
teacher raises:
Battle Ground,
Longview, Van-
couver, Washou-
gal, Ridgefield,
Hockinson, and
Evergreen. In
the end, all the
struck South-
west Washing-
ton districts agreed to raises of
over 10 percent.
Teacher unity was over-
whelming in every district.
Strike votes, and later contract
ratification votes, passed with
over 90 percent support, even
unanimously in some cases.
And teachers found massive
public support on picket lines
and rallies like the one that
filled Vancouver’s Esther Short
park Sept. 7.
A HUNDRED YEARS OF BUILDING OREGON
Operating Engineers Local 701
celebrates its centennial
Mexico, Camarillo was born and
spent his early childhood in
Southern California. He moved
to Oregon in the early 1990s. Af-
ter becoming a father at a young
age, he went to work in construc-
tion to provide for his family.
Drawn to the idea of working
on bridges, he wanted to be an
iron worker. In 1997, he reached
out to Iron Workers Local 29
about their apprenticeship pro-
gram, but became discouraged
when he was told they weren’t
taking applications.
Building trades unions can
sometimes be like a big family;
many have proud traditions of
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Oregon was a very different
place when the International
Union of Steam Operating En-
gineers chartered a new local
Sept. 18, 1918, to represent
“hoisting, portable and ship-
yard engineers” in Portland —
Local 701. A Spanish Flu epi-
demic forced founding mem-
bers to wait months to elect of-
ficers. [It took the lives of half
a million Americans, 1 in
every 200.] The gas powered
shovel had only just been in-
vented in 1914. Steam power
ran the engines of the day. It
wouldn’t be until 1920 that
caterpillar tracks were added
to tractors, made at first of
wood and tin plate. And in
those days, no women or
blacks were permitted to be-
come members. To become a
member of Local 701, you had
to know someone: Four mem-
bers had to sign for you.
In fact, six years before Lo-
cal 701 was chartered, dele-
gates to the international union
convention had hotly debated
whether to grant membership
to firemen — the workers who
fed the fires that heated the
boilers that powered the steam
engines. They let them in, but
grudgingly. In 701 as in other
Operating Engineers locals,
firemen and oilers — workers
who greased the equipment
and changed oil in gear heads
or conveyors — were given
entry but assigned to “branch
locals” with no voting rights.
[They wouldn’t get full voting
rights until 1960.]
Local 701 has come along
way in 100 years. Diesel en-
gines replaced steam boilers,
and hydraulics replaced cable
machinery. The international
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