norTHWEST lAbor PrESS |
culTurE
oregon’s logger union fighters come alive
in a novel reply to Ken Kesey’s scab heros
by marcus Widenor
For years I’ve told people that Ken Kesey’s
Sometimes a Great Notion is “The Great Oregon
Novel.” But that recommendation came with a
caveat: Remember that the heroes of Notion (the
Stamper family) are scabs, who try to break a log-
ger’s strike on the Oregon coast!
Karl Marlantes historical novel Deep River
provides a welcome counterpoint to this. Instead
of Kesey’s libertarian treatise on tough, logger
individualism, we are offered a story of the col-
lective efforts of immigrant workers to improve
their lives.
Marlantes grew up on the Oregon Coast and
is of Finnish ancestry. Deep River is his 3rd
book, after the widely acclaimed Matterhorn, a
novel that chronicled his experience as a Marine
in Vietnam.
The novel traces the story of Aino Koski, who
emigrates with her two brothers from Finland to
the mouth of the Columbia River in the early
days of the 20th century. They are loggers and
fisherman, sometimes bootleggers and small en-
trepreneurs.
Many historians have noted Finnish Ameri-
can’s proclivity for radicalism and Aino is no ex-
ception. She is a firebrand of a Wobbly. “Our Pa-
cific Northwest Rebel Girl,” as one character
describes here.
Deep River is set on the Nasalle, just north of
the mouth of the Columbia on the Washington
side. Readers will find many familiar Washington
and Oregon locations, including the burgeoning
Finnish immigrant community of Astoria, some
small towns that no longer exist, and others that
Marlantes has renamed.
Aino arrives in Washington as a skilled mid-
wife, but soon takes a job as a cook in a logging
camp, giving her wide access to the workers she
seeks to organize. She struggles to maintain a
semblance of a family life while traveling be-
tween logging camps and mills throughout Wash-
ington and Oregon, organizing for the IWW. The
narrative includes accounts of numerous famous
labor events, including the massacre at Everett in
1916, the 1919 lynching of Wesley Everett in
Centralia, and the Palmer Raids that decimated
the IWW following World War II. Aino even has
a brief dalliance with Joe Hillström (Hill), the leg-
endary IWW activist and songwriter.
Marlantes has done his historical homework
here. He offers a nuanced view of the develop-
ment of the Astoria workers cooperative move-
ment, and the political divisions within the
Finnish community, between “reds” and
“whites.”
Deep River is suffused in the details of the cul-
tural the Finns brought with them to the Pacific
Northwest—the folk tunes that fuel the weekend
dances in the logging communities, even the dis-
tinctive baked goods the women turn out for the
loggers in the camps. Our heroine Aino epito-
mizes what the Finns call Sisu—an almost meta-
physical concept of strength, self-determination
and endurance. She stands up to the brutal envi-
ronment of life in a logging camp, she stands up
to the bosses, and she stands up to her husband
who wants her to stay home rather than traipse
around the northwest organizing. Another inter-
March 6, 2020 | PAgE 9
unionizATion ] jAn-fEb 2019
The following are Oregon and Southwest Washington workplaces where workers have decided
whether to be represented by a union. The thumbs-up symbol means workers will be union-
represented. Thumbs-down means they’ll be on their own. The information comes from the
National Labor Relations Board and the Oregon Employment Relations Board.
union election results
Employer (Location) Union
Yes-No
cascadia behavioral Healthcare (Gresham/Tigard) Oregon AFSCME 8-1 ^
■ 20 registered nurses, counselors and others at two mental health crisis facilities
Swire coca-cola (Wilsonville) Teamsters Local 162
22-32 %
■ 55 production line employees at a Coca-Cola distribution facility
cascadia behavioral Healthcare (Portland area) Oregon AFSCME 56-10 ^
■ 183 RNs, counselors, cooks, treatment specialists and others at 18 residential care facilities
Safeway.com (Portland area) Teamsters Local 58
30-18 ^
■ 53 eCommerce home delivery drivers operating out of six Portland-area Safeway stores
labor council endorses Wheeler
for mayor on second attempt
esting character in the novel is Vasutäti, a Chinook
shaman who seems to combine the philosophy of
Sisu with her own cultures spiritual traditions.
The book also focuses on the human costs of
logging and fishing, two of the most dangerous
jobs in our country in any historical era: the
choker setter’s body cut by the whip of a snapped
cable, the fisherman lost at the mouth of the Co-
lumbia trying to bring in his last gill nets as the
storm closes in. These are the injustices Aino
fights against as she tries to organize workers into
the One Big Union.
Marlantes carefully chronicles how work
changed in logging and fishing during the first
third of the century. When Aino arrives in Wash-
ington logging is done by steam donkey’s, hauling
logs up the steep terrain of the Washington and
Oregon coast. By the end of the story there is
more mechanization— gas engines have replaced
steam power, and new gas-powered chain saws
are displacing the huge handsaws that loggers
used to fell old growth fir.
The novel’s narrative takes our heroine from
her arrival in the Pacific Northwest in 1904, until
1932, when the 42-year old Aino and her hus-
band have just prevailed in a fisherman’s strike,
using their cooperative to leverage the cannery
owners into raising wages. By the end of our
story Aino’s “direct action” syndicalism has mel-
lowed somewhat, and she is more accepting of
the cooperative socialism espoused by some of
her more conservative Finnish socialists. And
she seems to have recovered her family, with her
Sisu still intact.
Deep River stands right beside Sometimes a
Great Notion as a work infused with the history
and spirit of the Pacific Northwest. In an era when
foreign born workers are under attack in our coun-
try it is a powerful reminder of what our labor
movement owes to all our immigrant generations.
Marcus Widenor is Associate Professor Emeritus at the University
of Oregon’s Labor Education and Research Center.
In a roll call vote at a packed
Feb. 24 meeting of the North-
west Oregon Labor Council
(NOLC), delegates from affili-
ated unions voted overwhelm-
ingly to endorse Ted Wheeler
for re-election as Portland
mayor. Endorsement requires a
two-thirds majority. The
mayor’s union supporters had
been unable to get endorsement
at the previous meeting Jan. 27
because some delegates dis-
agreed, and officials didn’t have
affiliate membership numbers
needed to conduct a roll call
vote. Once they did, it wasn’t
unanimous, but it wasn’t close
either: delegates representing
26,118 union members voted in
favor, with 4,183 against.
“We’re endorsing Ted be-
cause we're proud to support his
record on labor so far, and we
want continuity,” said NOLC
Executive Secretary Treasurer
Bob Tackett in a press state-
ment.
Wheeler has also been en-
dorsed for re-election by Team-
sters Joint Council 37 and
United Food and Commercial
Workers Local 555.
Wheeler faces 14 challengers
in the May 19 primary.
oHSu admits to trolling AfScmE,
agrees to full investigation
AFSCME Local 328 and Ore-
gon Health and Science Univer-
sity (OHSU) have reached a set-
tlement resolving an unfair labor
practice charge the union filed
over an outrageous social media
trolling incident.
During contentious contract
negotiations last year, two mem-
bers of OHSU’s management
bargaining team created fake so-
cial media profiles, two of them
with obscene names, and posed
as union members while posting
things they thought would put
the union on the defensive.
Union social media volunteers
sleuthed out the guilty parties:
OHSU HR director Dan Forbes
and financial analyst Patrick
Frengle. Forbes resigned. Fren-
gle was removed from the bar-
gaining team but remains em-
ployed by OHSU.
But the rancor lived on in the
form of a case that was investi-
gated by the Oregon Employ-
ment Relations Board. Decep-
tive anti-union conduct like that
violates the law’s requirement
that public employers negotiate
“in good faith.”
As part of a settlement to the
charges signed Feb. 20, OHSU
agreed to have outside attorney
Cathryn Dammel investigate
whether any other member of
the management bargaining
team took part in the deceptive
trolling. She’ll interview 22 in-
dividuals in management and at
least 11 union witnesses. In the
settlement, OHSU also admits
that the two managers engaged
in social media trolling, and that
it interfered with the rights of
employees to engage in union
activity. And OHSU will reim-
burse Local 328 the $900 legal
filing fees and take other meas-
ures. Both sides will issue state-
ments announcing that they’re
now working together to create
a collaborative relationship.