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About Northwest labor press. (Portland , Ore.) 1987-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 3, 2021)
SERVING ORGANIZED LABOR IN OREGON AND SOUTHWEST WASHINGTON SINCE 1900 NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS VOLUME 122, NUMBER 23 NEW LEADERSHIP AT MACHINISTS DISTRICT W24 Brandon Bryant and Will Lukens take office. | Page 2 UNION MADE GIFT IDEAS Buying union supports good jobs in the community. | Page 3 Meeting Notices p.4 LERC’s Bob Bussel retires p.6 PORTLAND, OREGON COLLECTIVE BARGAINING UFCW Local 555 to hold strike votes at Fred Meyer, QFC Workers at many Fred Meyer and QFC stores in Oregon will soon be voting on whether to authorize a strike. United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 555 is holding meetings in Portland, Tigard, Bend, and Klamath Falls start- ing Dec. 10 to discuss and vote on that question. Both grocery chains are owned by Kroger. Many of its contracts with the union ex- pired in August, and workers under those expired contracts are the ones voting. The agree- ments were reached two years ago, six days into a union boy- cott of Fred Meyer. Kroger representatives last met with the Local 555 negoti- ating team Nov. 10-11, the fourth time the two sides had met. Local 555 is proposing to restore time-and-a-half holiday pay for all employees, elimi- IN THIS ISSUE nating an existing two-tier arrangement. It’s also propos- ing that Kroger guarantee that a minimum proportion of posi- tions be full time, above the current ratio. The two sides did reach ten- tative agreement on one item, the right of store-level safety committees to escalate issues to a new master safety commit- tee between Kroger and the union. Local 555 says recent violent acts near some stores— including an active shooter in- cident—have highlighted the need for better safety policies. The two sides are next scheduled to meet Dec. 6 and 7. In past contracts, Kroger has bargained together with the other big grocery chain, Safe- way/Albertsons, but this year the employers chose to bargain separately. –DM DECEMBER 5, 2021 Shakeup in Teamsters leadership Hoffa Jr. is retiring at age 80, and his chosen successor just lost a leadership vote in a landslide. By Don McIntosh One of America’s most storied unions may be heading for a left turn. Teamsters General Presi- dent Jimmy Hoffa, Jr., is step- ping down at age 80, and on Nov. 18, final votes were counted to determine who will next lead the 1.2-million mem- ber union. It wasn’t close. Long- time Boston Local 25 president Sean O’Brien beat Hoffa’s pre- ferred candidate Steve Vairma by more than two-to-one. O’Brien ran at the head of a national leadership reform slate called Teamsters United, while Vairma topped a slate called Teamster Power. All 24 candi- dates in Teamsters United won, including Portland Local 162 president Mark Davison and O’Brien’s running mate Fred Zuckerman, who was elected Sean O’Brien, a fourth-generation Teamster and head of Boston Local 25, will begin as general president of the 1.2-million-member Teamsters in March. secretary-treasurer. Zuckerman is president of Teamsters Local 89 in Louisville, Kentucky, chal- lenged Hoffa, Jr., in 2016, and came just 6,024 votes short of defeating him. All told, 173,585 Teamsters voted this time. O’Brien and Zuckerman say the status quo has failed, and they want to rebuild the Team- sters as a militant, fighting union from bottom to top. International Brotherhood of Teamsters is one of just a few U.S. unions that elect top lead- ership by direct member vote. Most top union leaders are elected at conventions by dele- gates who are elected at each lo- cal. Turn to Page 6 ILWU launches union campaign at NORPAC paper mill in Longview Since a private equity firm bought it, the mill has cut wages and halted retirement contributions. By Don McIntosh The sun hadn’t yet come up Monday Nov. 29 when a group of workers entered the NORPAC paper mill in Longview, Washington, to deliver an announcement to management: We’re unionizing. Later that day, International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 21 filed a peti- tion asking the National Labor Relations Board to hold an election for about 160 papermakers at the mill. Weyerhaeuser sold the NORPAC mill in 2016 to One Rock Capital Partners, a private equity firm headquartered in New York. Workers at NORPAC operate three gigantic paper machines 24 hours a day to produce over 750,000 tons of paper a year, including newsprint, brown paper used in cardboard and paper bags, and white book and copy paper. Business ap- pears to be solid. ILWU organizer Ryan Takas, on leave from Powell’s Books, says the union or- WE WANT A UNION At dawn Nov. 29, a delegation of Norpac paper mill workers gathered to tell management they’re joining a union. ganizing committee set up at the nearby Regent Chinese Restaurant and over the course of three days, a majority of the pa- permakers dropped by to sign union cards. The committee had been laying the groundwork since April. ILWU is also working to organize roughly 220 other workers at the mill who work in mainte- nance, warehouse, fiberline and flexpool. A member of the organizing commitee who spoke with the Northwest Labor Press said he and others want to unionize in order to protect what they have. After NORPAC took over the plant, it reduced staff, cut wages 10%, and halted the em- ployer match to the 401(k) retirement plan. Because they had no union, work- ers had no say in those changes. They’ve also had no cost-of-living increases lately … except that on Nov. 26, just as the union signature blitz got under way, the company announced forthoming 2.5% raise. Local 21 represents workers at nearby export terminals in the Port of Longview, but ILWU hasn’t represented paper mill workers up to now. Most of the union- ized paper mill workers in the region are represented by Association of Western Pulp and Paper Worker (AWPPW) or by the United Steel Workers. AWPPW has attempted several times to organize the Norpac mill, but the efforts never got to the vote stage.
