At the March general membership meeitng, many members received Carhartt jackets, either for attending 11 of 12 Union meetings last year, participating in the Mentor program, or attending the meeting for their Journeyman certificate presentation.

March meeting report

By Bruce Bennis 
President

We had 82 members in attendance for our March Regular Meeting. Carhartt jackets were presented to members who attended 11 of 12 Union meetings last year, participated in the Mentor program or attended the meeting for their Journeyman certificate presentation. We had quite a group of members who received jackets. Members who already had a jacket, could receive a Home Depot gift card in lieu of their jackets.

Under Good of the Order, there was an extensive discussion about the Portland Public Schools proposal to lay off their custodians in favor of contracting out to firms who pay much less in wages and provide minimal benefits. This proposal was overwhelmingly disapproved by Local 247 members. A motion was made to send a letter, expressing our disapproval, to the School Superintendent and the School Board.

Under New Business, a motion was made to send Christy Kern to the upcoming UBC Women’s Conference in October. There also was a motion to donate $247 to Idaho Falls Local 808’s fundraising effort. Terry Hannon, candidate for Multnomah County Circuit Court Judge, Position 5 and son of a Union carpenter, was endorsed for that position. Doug Jones will be visiting a Local in South Dakota. A motion was made to send 10 Local 247 T-shirts with Doug to swap with them for some of their union goods. The meeting was interesting and informative.

Executive Secretary John Steffans was in attendance. He gave a report on council activities and trust fund issues. The meeting adjourned at 9:35 pm. We gave out door prizes which included more NY City T-shirts, two $50 Outback Steak House gift certificates donated by American Income Life Insurance and a Dewalt cordless drill for strictly home use. For further info…. Call me or ATTEND YOUR MEETINGS!!

Meeting Notices

General membership
Meets the second Tuesday, April 9, at 7 p.m. at the Carpenters Hall, 2205 N. Lombard, Portland. Jackie Dingfelder, who is running for State Representative, and State Representative Kathy Lowe, who is running for State Senate, will be in attendance to address members.

Executive Board
Executive Board meets the fourth Tuesday, April 23, 7 p.m. at the Carpenters Hall, 2205 N. Lombard, Portland. 

Retirees
Retirees meet for lunch the second Monday, April 8, at 11 a.m. at JJ North’s, 10520 NE Halsey, Portland.

April 27, 2002, hundreds of good-willed volunteers will help elderly, disabled or low-income residents with home repairs, maintenance or clean-up. Carpenters Local 247 has been involved in this worthy event for several years. Many of you have helped in prior years. We will be helping again and if you or anyone you know is interested in helping, please contact us ASAP at the 247 office. It gives you a special feeling inside to know that you played a part in putting a big smile on a less fortunate persons face.

Union membership has its rewards

Left, 247 Trustee Darell Duffy gives a jacket to Regional Council Contract Administrator Bob Zappone. Darell won the jacket at a 247 regular meeting. Bob, who is a member of Seattle Local 131, had commented on how well he liked our jackets. Darell already had a 247 jacket and decided to give this one to Bob.

Right, Local 247 member John Metts won this cordless drill as a door prize at the March meeting.

Public relations and mass murder: The Ludlow Massacre

By Gene Lawhorn
247 delegate and labor historian

“The greatest struggle is not against Ignorance, but against illusion. Ignorance is the absence of knowledge, but illusion is the assumption of knowledge even in its absence.” — Malcolm X

April 20, 1914 — It’s Easter Sunday, and the striking coal miners of the Ludlow tent colony are up early to perform a daily ritual, the raising and saluting of the American flag. The miners, their wives, and children are composed mostly of immigrants … Italians, Croatians, Russians, Serbs, Poles, Bulgarians, and Greeks. Twenty-four different languages were spoken in the colony. Every meeting began by the singing of the National Anthem. The Ludlow tent colony was the largest of the 13 tent colonies of striking coal miners, with a little over 1,200 men, women, and children. This is the 14th month of the strike. The miners are fighting long hours, the most unsafe work conditions in the entire coal industry, the abolition of the mine guard system, and for union recognition.

As the leaders of the tent colony raised the flag, three loud explosions went off, then shots rang out from the rocky ridge above the colony, where Company A and Company B of the Colorado National Guard were stationed. Composed of former mine guards and current Baldwin Felts Detective agents, and paid by both the state and the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company (a John D. Rockefeller Company), these guardsmen were nothing less than coal company strikebreakers, thugs, and murderers.

Bullets from the guardsmen’s rifles and machine guns tore into the tents, and all about the men performing the flag-raising. Some ran to the tents, others to the breasts works built to fight such attacks. This was not the first time the thugs had opened fire on the tent colony. In the long, cold winter months of the strike it seemed like a weekly experience. They even had a special armored car with a machine gun mounted on it called the “Death Special” that they fired on the miner’s camps with. For that reason the miners dug pits under the tents to protect their children and wives from the sniper fire. It is here they would run to hide from the deadly fire, only this time it was different … this time the firing never ceased. Strike leader Louis Tikas and Pearl Jolly (the wife of a striking miner) ran from tent to tent pulling women and children from the pits and sending them into the hills away from the battle. Around 4:30, the miners in the breast works ran out of ammunition.

By the evening, with reinforcements arriving, the soldiers had overrun the tent colony, shooting everything that moved, even the dogs and chickens. They looted the colony, taking what they wanted, then set the tents on fire with coal oil and danced around the fire doing war hoops. Strike leader Louis Tikas was captured and taken to Lieutenant Karl Linderfelt, who broke a Springfield rifle stock over his head, then had Tikas shot three times in the back as he lay unconscious.

The next day a telephone lineman walking through the burned ruins of the tent colony discovers the grisly remains of 11 children and two pregnant women in one of the pits.

“The news flashed to the world, and tragedy was given a name, ‘Ludlow Massacre.’ All told 21 people, including the children, lost their lives in one of the most shameful episodes in all of American history.” (Philip Foner, Volume 5 History of The Labor Movement in the United States.)

Upon hearing of the massacre, the miners of the United Mine Workers, the Colorado Labor Council, and the Western Federation of Miners issued a call for rebellion, sought donations for weapons and ammunition, and openly handed out guns. They retaliated by destroying mine tipples and killing mine guards, and attacking mining camps through out the state. Governor Ammons, a willing tool of the mine owners, ordered more National Guardsmen into the strike zone, but less than 30 percent responded. Company C openly refused to take part in the attacks. On May 2, United States Army troops arrived under orders of President Wilson, the mine guards and State Guardsmen were withdrawn, and all strikers were disarmed, as well as the sheriff deputies.

The fighting ended, but the strike continued. Washington sent in investigators, and conducted hearings in which John D. Rockefeller testified. Muckraker magazines and newspaper editorials roasted Rockefeller, giving him a bad image publicly. To counter his bad public image, Rockefeller hired public relations pioneer Ivy Ledbetter Lee, who did research by visiting the coalfields, then put together a plan: (1) To reward the loyal company men who crossed picket lines. (2) Appeal to the miners’ wives by leafleting their homes. (3) Propaganda campaign directed toward the general public, building on Rockefeller’s patriotic and entrepreneur image. This would include having Rockefeller tour the mines, and visit miners homes dressed in miners’ work clothes, as well as dancing with miners’ wives during company-organized parties. (4) Discredit the dynamic “Miner’s Angel” Mother Mary Harris Jones, who was 84 years old, by painting her as a former prostitute. (5) The formation of a company-controlled union, which became known as the Industrial Representation Plan.

So we have the birth of modern-day public relations to whitewash the bloody hands of Rockefeller, born out of the massacre of and two pregnant women, Cedelina Costa and Patria Valdez, and 11 children: Elvira Valdez, Mary Valdez, Eluala Valdez, Rudolph Valdez, Frank Petrucci, Joe Petrucci, Lucy Petrucci, Cloriva Redragon, Rogerlo Pedragon, Lucy Costa and Ornafio Costa.

Lt. Linderfelt would be court-marshaled for his part in the murder of Tikas, but was found not guilty. Ivy Lee would, under the direction of Rockefeller, go to work as a press agent for Adolf Hitler. He died a disgraced man in 1934, while Standard Oil Corp. raked in millions from its cartel with German petrochemical giant I.G. Farben, which operated with slave labor. Not unlike the Colorado Coal mines of 1914.

The source material for this story came from the following books:
Where The Sun Never Shines, by Priscilla Long
The History of the Labor Movement in the United States, by Philip Foner
Buried Unsung, Louis Tikas and The Ludlow Massacre, by Zeese Papanikolas
Mother Jones Speaks: Collected Speeches & Writings, edited by Philip Foner
Men & Coal, by McAlister Coleman

The myriad benefits of union work

By Hallie Kendall
Local 247 apprentice carpenter

Ladies, gentlemen, fellow carpenters, countrymen, lend me your ear. As we have toiled in the depths of non-union carpentry despair, so shall we prosper from the benefits of its abandonment. Carpentry is an art, a noble pursuit, and a craft befitting its revered status as one of the world’s oldest professions. As the Lord’s own son, himself a carpenter, once walked among his detractors, so must we be prepared to defend the benefits of honest work and fair pay, to defend the Union of our carpenter brothers and sisters to associate among ourselves and eat sandwiches at monthly meetings and pay attention to some very boring business talk while we await our shot at free T-shirts, to indeed embroil ourselves in the very business of being associated with the labor movement and all that comes with it. Though, God help us, may we avoid Crucifixion.

And what, indeed, comes with the labor movement, aside from sandwiches and soda pop at monthly meetings and spirited debate on matters important to the Brotherhood and the occasional free T-shirt? Occasionally, my friends, there are Carhartt jackets to be had. But that is not all! There is fellowship, there are your fellow union carpenter comrades with whom to kvetch and celebrate, and always, there is kick-butt health coverage — so good is it that your providers will remark on it, over and over, saying things like, “Usually, this is not covered, but your coverage is excellent,” to which you will say, beaming pridefully, “Yes, the Carpenters take care of me,” knowing that you mean your fellow union buddies and their solidarity with the union cause are what make it possible to demand Fair Wages for Honest Work. Dig it, Brothers and Sisters of the Honorable Trade of Carpentry. Dig. It.

And what, aside from the occasional free T-shirt, Carhartt jacket, commiseration, and excellent health care coverage, is there, benefit-wise, to being in the union? My friends, we have not even begun the list! There is the vacation pay (currently paid at $1.25 per hour), arriving each December when it is most appreciated. There is grievance protection from your employers. There are certain comforts assured, like drinkable water, a warming shack, access to facilities, and overtime pay that are your guaranteed rights, under contract, as union workers — and merely privileges for our non-union brothers. May we help those brothers, those sisters, see the light of union work, and organize them to join us and share in the treasure of organized labor. For through organization, my friends, is our strongest path to fair treatment, fair wages, and safe working conditions.

Remember, always, that these things were never guaranteed before organized labor. They existed, when they did, only at the whim of the few employers who would afford them.

Our benefits, these benefits, do not end with our working days, my fellow carpenters. When our working days are done, when there are mai tais to be mixed and drunk in the warm sands of Mexico, or when some other, lighter pursuit draws us from the days of our honorable toil in the trade, there is an excellent pension to draw through our retirement. A pension so attractive, fellow Carpenters, that our benefit administrators speak of joining the trade so that they may partake in it.*

Provisions for our comfort in the here and now, as good workers of the trade, and more of the same in our retirement, Carpenter friends. What more might we hope for, in trade for our honest best work? What more inspiration could we need, to do the best job possible? What a gift to our families, this brotherhood, this sisterhood, that ensures us through our efforts a living wage, excellent family health benefits, and a secure retirement?

This is what why we work hard. This is why, when the going gets tough, the union workers kick ass to get the job done. This is why. Because in exchange for our best efforts, we are fairly rewarded. We share in the good fortune that our hard work brings to our union shop employers. And because of this, it is a joy to get up to go to work in the mornings, and there is the pride of a job well done glowing in us on the trip home each night. All this, because of our hard work, our solidarity with our union fellowship, and a little beer drinking and/or commiseration with our compatriots now and then. The union, fellow carpenters. It sells itself. Dig it.

* based on an actual quote, Associated Administrators, Local 247 Orientation Meeting, October, 2001.