PAGE 8 | May 21, 2021 | NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
UNION ORGANIZING
CULTURE
Union logos get a little love
A new Twitter account dedicated
to sharing union logos has quickly
developed a fan base.
Medical interpreters, now in Oregon AFSCME, celebrate their union win.
Medical interpreters unite
As part of AFSCME they’ll push
for better pay and standards.
The State of Oregon on April
23 recognized a union for as
many as 500 medical inter-
preters who translate for Medi-
caid patients who don’t speak
English.
Because the interpreters are
independent contractors, they
wouldn’t normally have a legal
process to unionize, except that
Oregon AFSCME helped pass
a bill in 2019, HB 2231, that
made unionization possible.
Under the law, interpreters who
are hired through a registry
maintained by the Oregon
Health Authority can unionize.
About 250 interpreters
signed cards to join Oregon
AFSCME, but the exact num-
ber in the new bargaining unit
isn’t known. Alma Raya, an or-
ganizer with Oregon AF-
SCME, said that’s because the
list of roughly 800 names on
the registry includes several
hundred who are no longer
working as interpreters. Raya
estimates 300 to 500 people on
the list are actively working.
Efforts to contact interpreters
on the list began in January
2020, but slowed because of the
pandemic.
Maria Fiallos, who works as
a medical interpreter for Span-
ish speakers, says she and other
interpreters started talking
about unionizing more than
three years ago, before the law
was passed. Medical inter-
preters in Washington had won
big improvements through a
similar process. Today the
Washington interpreters make
$42 an hour for their work,
while the Oregon interpreters
make $18 to $25 an hour. And
because they’re independent
contractors, that’s it —no ben-
efits of any kind. Fiallos figures
they have nowhere to go but up.
“The hardest part is yet to
come,” Alma says—contract
negotiations.
—DM
Want
to run for office?
Oregon Labor Candidate School is taking applications
Would you or one of your
union co-workers make a good
elected representative? Oregon
Labor Candidate School
(OLCS) was founded to get
union members elected to pub-
lic office—in order to push for
policies that benefit working
people and reflect the values of
the labor movement. Trainees
spend one Saturday a month
for six months learning the
mechanics of political cam-
paigns.
Applications are currently
open for upcoming sessions.
The next one—aimed at candi-
dates in rural Oregon—starts
June 19. It’s exclusively for
union members and staff in
Central, Eastern, Southern,
and Coastal Oregon. The dead-
line to apply is June 1.
After that, for union mem-
bers in the Portland metro area
and Willamette Valley who
are interested in running for of-
fice, the next training will start
in October; the deadline to ap-
ply is August 1.
Questions? Contact Kevin
at 971-241-6990 or kevin@
oregonlaborcandidateschool.
APPLY ONLINE
oregonlaborcandidateschool.org/
application
By Don McIntosh
Twitter can be a constant con-
flict zone. But it can also be a
place of whimsy, where people
pursue their passions and spread
joy. Created March 15, the Twit-
ter account @UnionLogos
tweets little doses of joy three or
four times each weekday, each
one a shout-out to the beauty
and symbolism of a union logo.
Tweets can feature union logos
from anywhere in the world,
any point in time, and even fic-
tional unions.
The account is the project of
Sam Nelson, an officer in the
Washington-Baltimore News-
Guild (CWA) who works as an
organizer for the national office
of Jobs With Justice. A collector
of union buttons and stickers, he
created the account because he
kept seeing great union logos.
“These are beautiful things
that workers are creating for
their own unions,” Nelson told
the Labor Press by phone. “In
the past 10 years there’s been a
revitalization of good graphic
design.”
IBEW locals seem to be espe-
cially creative with their logos,
like the electric pirate of Local
915 in Tampa, or the spark-spit-
ting gator of Local 606 in Or-
lando. [On Facebook there’s ac-
tually a 5,200-member group,
IBEW Sticker Swap, where
members trade the stickers of
their locals.]
Members of Nelson’s own
union, the NewsGuild, have also
been having fun with logos.
Amid a historic surge of news-
room unionizing, new locals are
being formed around the country,
with logos like a crab with pin-
cers shaped like pen tips for the
Chesapeake NewsGuild, or a
logo featuring flying bats for the
Austin NewsGuild.
Augmenting Nelson’s own
collection, Twitter followers are
sending him their unions’ logos.
He schedules them to post,
sometimes as part of “theme”
days. For April Fools, the theme
was fictional unions, like the In-
ternational Brotherhood of Jazz
Dancers, Pastry Chefs and Nu-
clear Technicians, which made
an appearance on a 1993 episode
of The Simpsons. On April 20
(4/20) he’ll tweet logos of re-
cently formed cannabis workers
unions.
It turns out the Twitterverse is
teeming with labor nerds and
collectors. Nelson’s @UnionLo-
gos account immediately made a
splash, and within two months
had over 2,900 followers.
Says Nelson: “I’ve been get-
ting a lot of feedback from peo-
ple saying, ‘I’ve wanted some-
one to do this!'"