PAGE 2 | October 1, 2021 | NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
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2021 OREGON BUILDING TRADES CONVENTION REPORT
Safe
From
Hate
Culture change is coming in
construction. Contractors in-
creasingly say they will sanction
hostile and harassing on-the-job
behaviors that used to be over-
looked or laughed off. That’s the
takeaway from one of the livelier
sessions in the three-day conven-
tion of the Oregon Building
Trades Council: a Sept. 15 panel
and audience discussion about
an initiative called Safe From
Hate. Safe From Hate is a local
industry partnership formed last
summer after someone hung a
noose on a construction job in
Portland in May—something
that’s not that unheard of on con-
struction job sites.
Since then, 65 organizations,
including contractors, develop-
ers and many local unions, have
signed the Safe From Hate
pledge: to enforce a zero toler-
ance policy against racial and
sexual harassment, and to pro-
mote positive job site culture. A
united For a hate-Free workplace “Safe from Hate” panelists, from left: Lisa Palermo of Oregon
Tradeswomen; Lou Christian of Plumbers & Fitters Local 290; Sheldon Wormley of Laborers Local 737; Kelly Haines
of Worksystems Inc.; Scott Zadow and Garth Bachman of IBEW Local 48, and Zach Culver of Laborers Local 737.
campaign web site is expected
to launch in October. Safe From
Hate is also rolling out a work-
place training offered by Oregon
Tradeswomen Inc., called RISE
Up Oregon. Developed in Seat-
tle, the training encourages by-
standers to take a stand, to speak
up. It’s not a training that seeks
to foist guilt on white men or to
antagonize or divide. Instead, it
calls on union members to be
their best selves, and have the
guts to intervene when they see
one co-worker target another.
Addressing harassment isn’t
just the right thing to do,
Plumbers & Fitters Local 290
Business Manager Lou Chris-
tian told delegates; it’s also a
priority for union employers,
who can suffer economic losses
when workers sue after encoun-
tering repeated harassment in
workplaces.
Local 290, together with its
contractor association, is adopt-
ing an approach aimed at change
and reform, not punishment, but
that also ends the practice of
booting perpetrators off one job
only to dispatch them to another.
When a member commits egre-
gious behavior, the union and
employer will refer them for a
training, and the union won’t
dispatch them for further work
until they’ve completed it.
The issue is urgent, panelists
said, in part because harassment
undermines unions’ efforts to di-
versify and grow their ranks.
On the convention’s final day,
delegates voted to make Oregon
State Building and Construction
Trades Council the latest to sign
the Safe From Hate pledge.
–DM