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July 3, 2020 | NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
...Noose discovered on a Portland construction job site
color are too sensitive about it.
But it’s my ancestors, and it’s
not that long ago.”
It’s estimated that over 4,000
African-Americans were lynch-
ed between 1877 and 1950.
Mobs of white people would turn
out to observe and take part, with
lynchings sometimes advertised
in advance in local newspapers.
That’s why the noose is seen as a
potent threat and a symbol of
racial terror.
O’Neal said he’s seen two of
them on job sites in his 14 years
in the union.
Since the perpetrators don’t
come forward to explain their
motives, it’s not clear whether
they intend it as a hostile act or
a practical joke. But as a joke, a
noose is about as funny as a
burning cross on a front lawn or
swastika painted on a syna-
gogue.
From Page 1
Local 290 members and other
union craft workers employed
by general contractor Andersen
Construction.
So what was she to make of
the noose?
She took pictures, but didn’t
know what else to do. She asked
the elevator operator, who told
her she should report it. She told
her foreman, as well as a fore-
man employed by Andersen.
But when an hour passed and
neither took action, she took the
noose down herself and put it in
the trash, not wanting several
Black workers working on the
second floor to come across it.
The Andersen foreman said
he’d bring it up at a meeting of
foremen, but when she asked
him about it days later, she said
he’d forgotten.
She waited a week. Still noth-
ing happened. She told her
union rep about it, and he re-
ported back that Andersen Con-
struction was investigating. But
nobody had contacted her about
it. Almost three weeks after the
noose appeared, she approached
a biracial female apprentice
electrician to ask if she’d heard
anything about a noose investi-
gation. The electrician said that
was the first she’d heard of the
noose, much less an investiga-
tion.
“It didn’t appear that anybody
I’d informed of it was very in-
vested,” she says. She shared
her photos of the noose with the
electrician.
Not knowing who else to turn
to, she decided to reach out to
Kelly Kupcak, the former heavy
equipment operator who now
leads Oregon Tradeswomen Inc.
Oregon Tradeswomen Inc. is a
non-profit that recruits and pre-
pares women to enter skilled
trades, and she had graduated
from its pre-apprenticeship
training program.
“She was clear what was
most important was that action
be taken and that there be ac-
countability,” Kupcak says.
Kupcak got busy making phone
calls.
Within days, union business
agents from the Carpenters,
IBEW, and Local 290 were on
the job site talking to workers
about the incident. The electri-
cian reported it to higher-ups at
Cherry City Electric, and its par-
ent company Morrow Meadows
flew up diversity specialist “Big
John” Harriel Jr. from Los An-
Word of the incident spreads
The Fourth and Montgomery Building, when it’s complete, will house a new
School of Public Health jointly managed by Oregon Health and Science Uni-
versity and Portland State University (PSU), dental programs for Portland
Community College, and space for PSU’s College of Education and the City
of Portland’s Bureau of Planning and Sustainability. When the public agency
project owners were notified about the noose incident, all four issued state-
ments condemning the act.
geles to meet with the IBEW
members.
The Pacific Northwest Re-
gional Council of Carpenters
addressed the incident in a June
17 Facebook post.
“Putting a noose on the job is
a disgusting homage to slavery,
violence against Black people,
control, and murder,” the coun-
cil said. “It is a violent act that
has no place on a union job, or
anywhere else in our industry or
society. That noose was not a vi-
olent act by one person. Vio-
lence was perpetrated and main-
tained and encouraged by every
person who walked by without
taking it down or reporting it.”
On June 19, Kupcak and Pa-
tricia Daniels of the pre-appren-
ticeship training group Con-
structing Hope sent a letter to
Andersen Construction—signed
by 25 local unions and councils
and 17 other organizations—
asking the general contractor to
take multiple steps to address
the noose incident, including a
zero-tolerance anti-bias policy,
a protocol for responding to fu-
ture incidents, and anti-racism
training for supervisors.
A symbol of racial terror
Oregon workplaces have had
problems with nooses. In 2017,
Daimler Trucks North America
was ordered to pay a $750,000
jury award for failing to respond
effectively when a Black worker
at its North Portland truck plant
was twice confronted with
nooses, among other instances
of racial hostility. And that came
two years after Daimler paid
$2.4 million to settle complaints
by six workers who faced re-
peated on-the-job harassment,
including yet another noose in-
cident. Oregon Health and Sci-
ence University has had three
noose incidents in the last three
years, the most recent of which
involved an OHSU employee
posting an image of a noose in
an online work chatroom.
Anthony O’Neal, a Black
journeyman pipefitter who
helped found a union diversity
committee at Local 290, thinks
many white workers don’t un-
derstand how psychologically
damaging it can be for a Black
worker to see a noose on the job
site.
“Some people think people of
Kupcak and Daniels’ letter to
Andersen Construction, signed
by 25 unions, got an immediate
response.
Unknown to the signers of
the letter, CEO Joel Andersen
had first heard about the noose
in a June 8 email from a com-
pany attorney—after an image
of the noose was posted to social
media by a construction worker.
That was already 19 days after
the incident, but
at the CEO’s di-
rection the com-
pany took imme-
diate action, shut-
ting down the job
for work site
meetings.
A dozen post-
ers went up de-
claring the project
to be a respectful
workplace, and
asking workers to report any
concerns to senior project man-
ager Jeff Slinger. A group text
went out asking for tips. After
company managers turned up
no suspects, the company also
filed a police report, and hired a
private investigator. And Ander-
sen himself came to meet sev-
eral women of color apprentices
on the job site— including the
apprentice who found and re-
ported the noose.
“She did what she was sup-
posed to,” Andersen told the La-
bor Press. “She relied on the
system. The system failed. It
wasn’t acted on. It wasn’t taken
seriously. It didn’t make it up
the chain of command.”
Andersen says he wants to
make sure the company reacts
differently if it happens again.
After getting the letter, An-
dersen had long conversations
with Kupcak and others, includ-
ing union officials and other
leaders of the Metropolitan Al-
liance for Workforce Equity
(MAWE).
Andersen also notified the
construction project’s public
agency owners about the inci-
dent, and they sent out work-
place-wide emails June 22 and
23 saying they were treating it
with the utmost seriousness.
Those statements led to a slew
of news media reports about the
noose incident.
Kupcak was interviewed by
an agent from the Civil Rights
division of the FBI.
“Our industry needs to
change,” Kupcak says. “It’s
long overdue.”
MAWE put forward its own
proposal to Metro and regional
public owners in a June 24 let-
ter, asking that general contrac-
tors be required to have clearly
written disciplinary procedures
and a zero tolerance policy that
includes holding supervisors
and foremen accountable if they
fail to act on reported incidents.
The letter also calls for training
for foremen, stewards and su-
perintendents, and a daily scan
and removal of
offensive graffiti.
At the Fourth
and Montgomery
work site, Ander-
son Construction
will be holding a
series of manda-
tory “respectful
workplace” meet-
ings July 9 and 10
for all construc-
tion workers on
the site.
“We work really hard to
make people safe from harm, so
they don’t have to feel like a
hero hanging off a scaffold. We
have not given anywhere near
the attention to emotional
harm,” Andersen said. “I want a
day to come when it doesn’t
take courage to come to work.”
Andersen said he plans to talk
to other general contractors. He
wants the industry to start taking
responsibility for improving
construction workplace culture.
“We may have been slow out
of the box, but we will be sprint-
ing out the finish,” Andersen
said.