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July 3, 2020 | NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
NORTHWEST
LABOR
PRESS
(International Standard Serial Number 0894-444X)
Established in 1900 in Portland, Oregon as a voice of the la-
bor movement. Published on a semi-monthly basis on the
first and third Fridays of each month by the Oregon Labor
Press Publishing Co. Inc., a non-profit mutual benefit corpo-
ration owned by 20 unions and councils including the Ore-
gon AFL-CIO. Serving more than 120 union organizations in
Oregon and Southwest Washington.
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Mailing address:
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Editor & Manager: Michael Gutwig
Senior staff reporter: Don McIntosh
Office manager: Jill Lukens
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CORRECTIONS
Oregon law says you must notify oth-
ers if you record in-person.A story in our
June 19 issue about audio recordings of Co-
lumbia Sportswear managers plotting to
fire union supporters didn’t explain Oregon
law very well. Oregon law says you can
record a telephone call that you’re part of
without telling the other party, but if you
record an in-person conversation, you must
notify others. They don’t have to agree, you
just have to inform them.
LIFE GOES ONLINE
In the era of COVID-19, the union hall is going virtual
By Don McIntosh
In the internal life of local
unions, it’s been lonely few
months since COVID-19 turned
life upside down in mid-March.
Meetings, fundraisers and con-
ferences have been canceled.
Union organizing house calls
are off limits. But unions are
adapting by moving nearly
everything online. They’re find-
ing that Zoom and other tele-
conference apps have their lim-
its, but the new methods also
have advantages.
A number of unions are find-
ing that holding meetings online
is actually increasing atten-
dance. Members are spared the
drive to and from the meeting,
and they can attend from home
without having to find child
care.
Protec17, a 900-strong City
of Portland technical employees
union, polled its members and
found that many prefer the new
meeting format. Some meetings
have had over 100 attendees.
AFSCME Local 189 switch-
ed to holding all manner of
meetings on Zoom, including
regular membership meetings
and sessions explaining contract
language. As many as 80 mem-
bers are attending, more than
LIVESTREAMED CONVENTION: Presidential candidate Joe Biden was a
keynote speaker at the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO convention April 6-7, the first
to be held online.
were regularly attending before.
Meetings also increased to as
frequent as once a week. One
meeting was joined by Mayor
Ted Wheeler for half an hour.
American Federation of
Teachers (AFT) Local 111 Pres-
ident Belinda Reagan says her
union of Portland Public
Schools support staff had over
300 members at one online in-
formational meeting about fur-
loughs, and the format also
makes it easy for the union to
hold meetings at different times
to accommodate varying de-
mands on members’ schedules.
From July 28-30, AFT will
become the first to hold a na-
tional union convention entirely
online. Local 111’s Reagan said
she immediately saw one ad-
vantage to that: Local chapters
like hers often don’t have the
funds to send their full allotment
of delegates to the convention.
Now that won’t be an issue.
Of course, live meetings are
without a doubt more exciting,
And Zoom can’t replace a cru-
cial function of such gatherings:
The fellowship of informal
meetings in which union mem-
bers from around a state or na-
tion get to know each other one-
on-one.
The Pennsylvania AFL-CIO
was actually the first to hold a
union convention online on
April 6 and 7, after the Pitts-
burgh hotel where they planned
to meet announced it would
close. To be sure, it was a
greatly pared down convention.
Many affiliated unions had ex-
pected to elect their delegates in
March, but those meetings were
canceled as the epidemic shut
down gatherings. The Pennsyl-
vania AFL-CIO convention nor-
mally draws over 600 delegates
and lasts three days. Instead, it
took place over two days, with
305 delegates registered and as
many as 270 online at any one
time. Being online did make it
possible for AFL-CIO leaders
from 10 other state federations
to take part without having to
travel. And unions were also
spared the expense of hotel stays
and other meeting costs, at a
time when many members are
out of work. Still, Zoom was no
substitute for the personal con-
nections that would have been
forged in person, and Blooming-
dale said the 2022 convention
would return to tradition.
“We certainly missed the
face-to-face interaction,” Penn-
sylvania AFL-CIO President
Rick Bloomingdale told the La-
bor Press.