Northwest labor press., May 17, 2019, Page 5, Image 5

NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS | May 17, 2019 | PAGE 5
NATIONAL
Democrats: Which side are you on?
Forty Senate Democrats and 114
House Democrats are committing
to a dramatic re-write of
America’s broken labor law
They won’t be able to pass it un-
til they retake the U.S. Senate,
but Democrats in Congress have
begun lining up behind a dra-
matic reform of the National La-
bor Relations Act, America’s ba-
sic (and very weak) labor law.
Known as the Protecting the
Right to Organize Act, or PRO
Act, the bill would:
■ Repeal state ‘right-to-work’ laws;
■ End prohibitions on secondary “solidarity“
strikes; protect workers’ right to strike
intermittently; and bar the permanent
replacement of striking workers;
■ Threaten meaningful monetary penalties
when employers terminate workers for
union involvement, and require the
government to immediately seek an
injunction to reinstate the fired employee;
impose liability on corporate directors and
officers for such violations; and let workers
sue in court when employers retaliate
against them for supporting a union;
■ Require mediation and arbitration if union
and employer can’t agree on a first contract;
■ Ban employers from forcing workers to
attend anti-union meetings, and from
“misclassifying” employees as independent
contractors.
HR 2474, the House version
of the bill, has 114 cosponsors,
including Suzanne Bonamici and
Peter DeFazio of Oregon. The
Senate version, S.1306, is spon-
sored by Patty Murray of Wash-
ington and cosponsored by
Washington’s Maria Cantwell,
Oregon’s Jeff Merkley and Ron
Wyden, and 37 others. AFL-CIO
President Richard Trumka testi-
fied in favor of the bill at a House
subcommittee hearing May 8.
PEOPLE
IAM’s Britt Cornman retires
Britt Cornman, assistant direct- yard master, assembling train
ing business representative of cars full of the industrial chemi-
Machinists District
cal soda ash from
Lodge W24, is retiring
Wyoming’s Green River
May 17 after decades in
mines. At the railroad,
the union movement.
he became an active
District Lodge W24 is
member of United
the coordinating body
Transportation Union.
for local Machinists
“Reaganomics got
union lodges in Oregon
me in 1982,” says Corn-
and Southwest Wash-
man, referring to Presi-
ington. It negotiates and
dent Ronald Reagan’s
enforces contracts for Britt Cornman economic policies,
about 9,120 workers at
which led to a severe re-
lumber mills, machine shops, cession — and his layoff from the
and manufacturers including railroad. Cornman found work in
Boeing and Daimler.
an open pit coal mine in
Cornman, 61, worked in Wyoming, first as a mechanic’s
mines, oil fields, mills, for a rail- helper, then as an oiler and oper-
road carrier, in construction, and ator on gigantic Bucyrus-Erie
on the assembly line. His commit mining machines. That job, too,
to the labor movement nearly got ended in layoff after a Reagan-era
him killed.
deregulation of the coal industry.
Cornman spent his childhood
In 1987, Britt, his wife Stacey,
in La Grande and Cascade and their three children moved to
Locks, Oregon, where his father Elko, Nevada, where he went to
worked for Union Pacific rail- work as a heavy equipment op-
road as a freight agent. After erator in an open pit gold mine.
graduating from high school in Approached by the United Steel-
1976, Cornman went to work at workers (USW), Cornman took
the local sawmill, pulling dry the lead as a volunteer union or-
chain and loading trains with ganizer at the mine. But manage-
lumber. He also worked in a ment’s anti-union campaign was
Wyoming oil field, did construc- vicious. One day, his manager as-
tion, got married, and joined his signed him to use a piece of min-
father at Union Pacific in 1979, ing equipment that had faulty
where he worked as a switch- brakes. On a steep road leading
man, brakeman, and footboard into the pit, the brakes gave out.
Thinking quickly, he lowered the
machine’s blade to save himself
from going over the edge and
plummeting hundreds of feet. He
later learned from a mechanic
co-worker that the manager had
known the brakes were faulty.
Cornman is convinced the man-
ager wanted him dead. Later on,
another known union supporter
had a hole shot through his bed-
room window.
Not long after the brakes
failed on his machine, at a
mandatory company meeting,
the mine manager provoked and
berated Cornman about the
union in front of his co-workers.
When Cornman spoke up for the
union, his foreman grabbed him
by the arm and ordered him to
leave.
“We think you’re on drugs, to
speak up like that in front of the
manager,” Cornman remembers
the foreman said. Cornman was
ordered to go to a lab for a drug
test. Suspecting foul play, the
USW staff organizer arranged for
Cornman to get an independent
drug test. The union test came
back clean. A month later, the
company said its test had showed
the presence of marijuana, and
fired him.
The USW filed charges with
the National Labor Relations
Board (NLRB), and the agency
determined that Cornman had
been fired illegally for his union
Turn to Page 6