PAGE 6 | April 5, 2019 | NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
Merkley, Bonamici
want to ban asbestos
Oregon Democratic U.S. Sen.
Jeff Merkley and Congress-
woman Suzanne Bonamici met
at a Bethany fire station March
21 to talk about the continuing
dangers of asbestos with an in-
vited panel of Oregon labor
leaders. The two are reintroduc-
ing a bill that would ban the
manufacturing, processing, use,
and distribution of asbestos,
which is a known human car-
cinogen with no safe level of ex-
posure. Some uses of asbestos
are already banned, but the sub-
stance still occasionally shows
up in baby powder and cosmet-
ics, and the Centers for Disease
Control reports that asbestos-re-
lated deaths are on the rise. Fire
fighters and roofers are among
those exposed when asbestos-
containing products are dis-
turbed or removed.
“Most people are mystified
by this bill,” Merkley said. “It’s
really still legal to import and
distribute asbestos?”
The House version of the bill
has 31 co-sponsors, and the Sen-
ate version has 13, all Democ-
rats, including Oregon’s Earl
Blumenauter, Peter DeFazio,
and Ron Wyden.
UNION ORGANIZING
WORKER SAFETY
Clackamas pet hospital goes union
Honored for safety
by Oregon’s governor
IBEW safety expert Barry
Moreland got one of the top
honors at this year’s Oregon
Governor’s Occupational
Safety and Health (GOSH)
Conference. As safety direc-
tor at the NECA/IBEW Local
48 Electrical Training Center
(NIETC), Moreland trains
IBEW Local 48 members in
accident prevention and
safety and helps the union
electrical contractors of
NECA maintain safe work-
places.
The GOSH conference is
the largest workplace safety
conference in the Northwest,
and one of the largest in the
United States. A panel of in-
dustry professionals chose
Moreland to receive GOSH’s
Labor Representative Award,
which was presented during a
ceremony March 6 at the Ore-
gon Convention Center in
Portland.
Moreland has been a mem-
ber of IBEW since 1993, has
taught apprentices since
Barry Moreland
2002, and studied safety and
health at the AFL-CIO’s Na-
tional Labor College. Since
then, he’s served on numer-
ous Oregon OSHA commit-
tees, helping craft the state’s
confined space regulations,
review training grant applica-
tions, and disperse scholar-
ship funding to children of
workers fatally injured on the
job.
Also honored at the GOSH
event was Snyder Roofing of
Oregon LLC, a union-signa-
tory commercial roofing con-
tractor that employs members
of Roofers Local 49.
One thing you can say for sure
about the process America’s
workers use to unionize: It’s not
fast. At a Clackamas, Oregon,
pet hospital affiliated with the
VCA chain, a group of 113
workers voted July 5, 2018, on
whether or not to join Interna-
tional Longshore and Warehouse
Union (ILWU) Local 5. The
union won by one vote — 54 to
53 — but the company chal-
lenged the right of four workers
to cast ballots, and it took the Na-
tional Labor Relations Board
(NLRB) eight and a half months
to rule on those challenges.
The result, certified March 19:
Local 5 won by one vote.
That means the pet hospital
— VCA Northwest Veterinary
Specialists — must now recog-
nize the union and engage in
“good faith” bargaining over a
first union contract.
The Clackamas pet hospital,
located at 16756 S.E. 82nd
Drive, is part of the massive 800-
hospital VCA chain, which was
bought in 2017 by Mars, Inc. —
a privately held behemoth
owned by America’s third rich-
est family. Mars is by far the
largest of several giant national
veterinary companies that are
taking over an industry that used
to be full of mom-and-pop oper-
ations.
The Clackamas unit is one of
three where workers joined
ILWU in the last year year.
Workers at a VCA unit in San
Francisco joined ILWU Local 6,
and workers at Mars’ BluePearl
subsidiary in Seattle joined
ILWU Local 9. Both are in the
process of negotiating a first con-
tract.