SERVING ORGANIZED LABOR IN OREGON AND SOUTHWEST WASHINGTON SINCE 1900
NORTHWEST
LABOR
PRESS
VOLUME 120, NUMBER 3
IN THIS ISSUE
BIG AGENDAS IN THE 2019 OREGON LEGISLATURE
Carbon, housing and revenue are on the table. | Page 6
UNION HALL ATTACKED Local labor unions pledge
solidarity after IWW hall is vandalized. | Page 7
Meeting Notices p.4 New stats on union membership p.2
PORTLAND, OREGON
FEBRUARY 1, 2019
Ready to walk: Vancouver School District settled with 700 school secre-
taries and special ed teachers just hours before their strike was to begin.
Teacher strike wave continues
Los Angeles
without these fedeRal woRkeRs, no planes can take off oR land Portland members of National
Air Traffic Controllers Association were among several dozen union members at a Jan. 18 airport protest against work
without pay. From left: Amanda Crumbly, Richard Kennington, Chris Gamelgaard, Jenn Domoslawski, Malcolm Lat-
vala, Corrie Conrad, Chris Delaney, Elizabeth Hoke, and Josh Hoke.
Shutting down the shutdown
In the end, it was action by
aviation workers that led
Trump to end the shutdown.
By Don McIntosh
It’s illegal for federal workers
to strike. That’s why you’ll
never hear federal worker
union leaders publicly calling
for one. The last group of fed-
eral workers to strike was air
traffic controllers in 1981, and
President Ronald Reagan fired
all 11,000 of them. But as days
stretched to weeks in the partial
government shutdown, “essen-
tial” federal workers got so sick
of working without pay that
they began to call out “sick” in
increasing numbers. Atten-
dance was down among Trans-
portation Security Administra-
tion (TSA) officers, air traffic
controllers, and others. Of the
30,000 Internal Revenue Serv-
ice (IRS) workers President
Donald Trump ordered back to
work without pay three weeks
into the shutdown, only 16,000
showed up.
At a Jan. 20 Martin Luther
King Jr. event, Association of
Flight Attendants President
Sara Nelson called for union
leaders to organize a “general
not chaRity — solidaRity
The boxes said it all: “An injury to
one is an injury to all.” Portland-
based Labor’s Community Serv-
ice Agency worked with the food
bank nonprofit Sunshine Divi-
sion to assemble relief boxes for
union members affected by the
shutdown. All told, about two
dozen volunteers from a dozen
unions boxed up and distributed
10,000 pounds of food in the last
two weeks of the shutdown.
strike” to end the shutdown.
“We need to follow Dr.
King’s lead and think big,”
Nelson said. “Almost a million
workers are locked out or being
forced to work without pay.
Others are going to work when
our workspace is increasingly
unsafe. What is the Labor
Movement waiting for?”
The turning point came on
Day 34, Jan. 25 — the second
missed payday — when at
New York’s LaGuardia Air-
port, so few air traffic con-
trollers showed up to work that
the Federal Aviation Adminis-
tration had to temporarily halt
flights. The closure led to a rip-
ple effect of flight delays at air-
ports throughout the East
Coast. Within hours, Trump
agreed to sign a spending bill
to end the longest government
shutdown in U.S. history.
The 800,000 federal workers
who returned to work Jan. 28
may have those “sick” air traf-
fic controllers to thank. Such is
the power of the strike, by
whatever name. And it’s not
just federal workers and con-
tractors who owe them grati-
tude, but farmers applying for
loans, national park visitors,
taxpayers needing IRS advice,
Americans who rely on food
stamps … the list goes on.
Los Angeles teachers could
have accepted management’s
offer and spent the next few
years complaining about it. In-
stead, they went on strike, all
32,000 of them. After six days
of packed picketlines and mid-
day marches to City Hall, they
returned to work Jan. 30 having
won a stunning series of conces-
sions, including:
■ 6 percent retroactive pay increases
■ lower class sizes
■ commitments to hire 300 more full-time
school nurses, 82 more full-time teacher
librarians, and 17 more counselors
■ a joint committee to come up with a plan
to reduce the number of standardized
tests by 50 percent
■ a joint task force to look for ways to turn
asphalt lots and unused school buildings
into community green spaces
■ an end to random drug and weapon
searches in 28 middle and high schools
The strike, at America’s sec-
ond largest school district, was
the result of years of preparation,
during which LA teachers built
community relationships, got or-
ganized internally, and approved
a 30 percent dues increase to
strengthen their union. For inspi-
ration they brought teacher strike
leaders from Arizona and West
Virginia to speak at rallies.
Trained by their union to talk to
parents, teachers educated their
communities about how charter
schools are now draining almost
$600 million a year from LA
public schools, and how Califor-
nia came to have the nation’s
third largest class sizes, seventh
lowest per-pupil spending, and
just one school counselor for
every 945 students. They also in-
corporated community input on
student searches and green
spaces into their bargaining de-
mands. So when they struck,
public support was overwhelm-
ing: Roughly four out of five stu-
dents stayed out of school, and
many, with their parents, joined
teachers on pickets and marches.
And that’s how—after two years
of bargaining with a hostile char-
ter-school-friendly school board
and a millionaire former invest-
ment banker superintendent —
six days of striking got the
goods.
Vancouver
In Vancouver, Washington,
paraeducators and school secre-
taries were the latest to don red
T-shirts, take up picket signs,
and march on school district
headquarters. Just hours before
the Jan. 25 scheduled start of a
strike by 700 paraeducators,
secretaries, clerks and other
classified staff, Vancouver Pub-
lic Schools changed its offer and
reached a deal with the Vancou-
ver Association of Educational
Support Professionals. Their
new three-year contract raises
wages 17.5 percent: 11.4 per-
cent in year one (retroactive to
September 2018), followed by
raises of 3 and 3.1 percent.
—DM