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.