Carpenters Local 247 May 2005 meeting report By Bruce Dennis President Our May Special Called Meeting was held on May 10, 2005, and 75 members were in attendance. Two representatives from AFLAC insurance gave a short presentation about products offered throughout their company. Nominations for offices were held, and the following nominations were: President: Bruce Dennis Vice President: Gene Lawhorn Financial Secretary: Joe Baron Recording Secretary: Steve Wright Treasurer: Shaun Cushman Conductor: John Hahn Trustee: Kevin Stokes Warden: Mike Couch, Brian Carson The only contested race was for the position of Warden. A motion was made and passed calling for a white ballot on all uncontested races. We will elect our Warden at our June 14 Special Called Meeting. Under Reports of Sickness & Death, we heard about Brother Steve Boone’s recent fall off of a roof. He was seriously injured, but expects to recover — hopefully a 100 percent recovery. We had work reports, organizer reports and a negotiations report from Pete Savage. We have had pickets and rallies lately at the U.S. Bank Tower and at the Benson Tower because of low wage, non-union exploitive wages in use at both places. Under Good of the Order, we had May Day reports, Out of Work list ideas and discussions of dispatching. Under New Jobs, it was reported that Walsh has been hiring on its new job under the Marquam Bridge at First & Hooker. Under New Business, we had motions passed to send a letter to Mayor Tom Potter regarding withdrawing from FBI Taskforce and to the Council regarding setting up a strike fund. As per usual, if you want more complete, detailed information, attend your meetings!

Meeting Notices

When you come to meetings, please remember to bring donations for the food bank.

Note: Membership meetings will now begin at 6 p.m. This was voted on by the membership at January’s Special Called Meeting.

General membership
Meets the second Tuesday, June 14, at 6 p.m. at the Carpenters Hall, 2215 N. Lombard, Portland.

Retirees
Retirees meet for lunch the second Monday, June 13, at 11 a.m. at JJ North’s, 10520 NE Halsey, Portland.

Executive Board
Executive Board meets the fourth Tuesday, June 28, at 6:30 p.m. at the Carpenters Hall, 2215 N. Lombard, Portland.

AFL-CIO All-Union Product Show

By Joe Baron
Financial Secretary & Delegate

Recently, the AFL-CIO held a show which showcased all the union products made by our union brothers and sisters. Some of the stuff was really surprising. Among the companies that were represented were Colt Pistols, Winchester Rifles, Kohler sinks and Kohler engines which are in John Deere tractors, Amana Refrigerators, Red Wing Boots. There really was an amazing array of things that we see in the stores and maybe don’t realize are made union but are made in the USA by union members.

One of the most surprising things to me was that the Toyota Tacoma was there on display. I had to express my surprise that they were union made. The lady said that all Tacoma’s regular and extra cab and crew cab are union made in Fremont, Calif. There was some doubt that this show would ever go on because of the labor strife between DWA and the Carpenters, but we made the right decision in not picketing the show, which brought in over $7 million to the Portland economy.

For all the union brothers and sisters that I saw there, I want to thank you for coming and supporting the show. It was truly incredible to see the array of stuff that was made and handed out to anyone that wanted them. Some of the things were given away were a Winchester Rifle, a Gator all-terrain vehicle, and the one that everyone wanted — the Harley Davidson Motorcycle, which was won by one of our union members from Local 247. I will do some research and have a list of union products, which are widely available at our local stores represented by the UFCW (Fred Meyers, QFC, some Safeway’s & Albertson’s - no not Wal-Mart.) This will make it easier for you to choose the products when you are shopping that you know are made to high standards by our hard-working union brothers and sisters.

Schwab challenged for stand on Social Security

Some 26 percent of the shareholders withheld their votes for the board at the Charles Schwab Corp.’s annual shareholder meeting in San Francisco May 19. The shareholders also voted to elect directors annually. The votes—in effect, votes of no confidence in the financial firm’s leaders—came after hundreds of Schwab clients, retirees, union members and community activists rallied outside the meeting, delivered 1,100 letters from Schwab clients and called on the company to “Stop the Double Talk” and drop its support for privatization of Social Security. The company claims it does not take a position on Social Security privatization, but it maintains membership in several groups leading the attack on Social Security. The AFL-CIO is leading the campaign to hold Wall Street firms accountable for their subterfuge efforts to win Social Security privatization. For more information, visit www.schwabgreed.org.

Time to boost minimum wage

New minimum wage legislation would increase the federal minimum wage to $7.25 an hour in three steps over 26 months. The minimum wage has been $5.15 an hour since 1997. The legislation (no bill numbers have been assigned) was introduced May 18 by Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.). Republican leaders and the Bush administration have blocked meaningful minimum wage increases repeatedly in the past several years, most recently in March.

Working harder for less

Even though worker productivity in the United States jumped 4.1 percent in the past four years, worker pay grew only 1.5 percent, according to a new report by EPI. While wages remain stagnant—or fall, in the case of blue-collar and service workers—corporate profits are heading through the roof, EPI reported. For a copy of the report, visit www.epinet.org.

Competition or Cooperation?

By Gene Lawhorn

“This is ‘rat eat rat, dog eat dog, I’ll kill ’em, and I’m going to kill ’em before they kill me.’”
— Ray Kroc, founder of McDonalds, speaking of competition in the fast-food industry

Competition is a double-edged sword that cuts both ways. It can make people strive to be better athletes, and drive them to take performance-enhancing drugs which can harm or kill them. It drives companies (like Wal-Mart) to lower prices, giving consumers a better deal for their money, yet driving wages and benefits so low workers must hold two or more jobs to make ends meet, as well as rely on food stamps and subsidized health care, or worse yet have no health care.

“Competition is the spice of sports, but if you make spice the whole meal you’ll be sick.”
— George Leonard

Competition in and of itself is not evil. It is like everything else: It depends on your viewpoint. There are several different ways to define the concept of competition. One is the corporate cultural viewpoint as summed up in the words of Andrew Carnegie, who owned the Homestead Steel Plant in the 1880s:

And while the law [of competition] may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it ensures the survival of the fittest in every department.

Bear in mind that it was Carnegie that sent a boatload of Pinkerton detective agents to attack striking workers at the Homestead Steel plant in 1882, killing seven workers. For the corporate cculture, competition is a “rat eat rat, dog eat dog, kill’em before they kill me” “survival of the fittest” ideology that workers like you and I struggle to survive in every day. The goal of the bottom line is to make us work faster, more dangerously, for less money and benefits. That’s how corporations stay competitive. The only time corporations cooperate with each other is when they are working together to keep us working dangerously faster for less money and benefits.

From the time we enter school, we are taught the actions and language of the corporate culture in regards to competition, never realizing the full social implications on our future work and relationships in a competitive verses cooperative lifestyle. Take for example the lessons of the following example.

In an experiment with five- and six-year olds, Janice Nelson and her associates found that “success as well as failure in competition produced consistent increases in aggression, as compared with the effects of non-competitive play,” although failure made the children more aggressive. Another study discovered that boys who won a subsequent competition were more aggressive than those who failed. Even winning is not enough to eradicate the frustrating elements of competition. The hostile act of competition, on the playing field and in other contexts, for both participants and spectators, leads us to become more aggressive.

— Alfie Kohn No Contest: The Case against Competition
The main reason I am writing this article is to expose the competitive corporate cultural influences with our union leadership as exampled by a meeting last April 28. In discussing the need for our bargaining team to maintain a strong position on the subject of 50/50 (the hiring of one person off the OWL for every one from personal contact), our regional manager defended the contractor’s position by saying we have to be competitive with each other to get and maintain jobs. When I pointed out that many others and I cannot compete with many guys half our age, he then pointed to his head and said we have to work smart.

Our current hiring system is based on a model that closely resembles the old Longshore Shape-up system. A group of guys show up to go to work; the boss looks them over and chooses the biggest, youngest, and strongest looking. Many others then had to give a kick back to the boss to get hired. The West coast Longshore strike of 1935 ended this practice with the longshoremen’s union (ILWU) gaining complete control of their hiring hall.

Many of the Brothers and Sisters know of times when you show up sporting gray hair, beard and goatee at a job, then get turned away, only to hear of a younger Brother getting hired on the same job the same day. Or how about being let go for a younger faster worker. The 50/50 may not solve these problems, but they’ll go a ways in leveling the playing field. Our union must get some control of the hiring practices to make the OWL work for the good of all members.

In subsequent e-mail discussions with the Regional Manager, he maintained that unions were formed to “establish rules of competition,” while I maintain that unions were formed in the spirit of cooperation, TO TAKE CARE OF EACH OTHER! That is what a Brotherhood does. If we are sent out on a job, or “shape up” on the job to compete with each other, we are not a Brotherhood or a Union, we are just another hiring agency like Labor Ready.

From my point of view, it is a real problem for us when the leaders of our Brotherhood speak and think in the corporate cultural viewpoint. This dog-eat-dog, rat-eat-rat survival-of-the-fittest does not serve the Brotherhood. In regard to the concept of competition, we should heed the words of Ayn Rand: “Competition is a by-product of productive work, not its goal. A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others.”

In David Allen Corbin’s wonderful book, Life Work and Rebellion in the Coal Fields: The Southern West Virginia Miners 1880-1922, he points out many examples of how the coal operators during that era attempted to break down strong union solidarity by fostering competition among workers and their wives. They sent in social workers, spies, and even the YMCA to start individual competitive games to set the miners wives against each other, like contests to see who could grow the best garden or keep the best house.

These lessons and the corporate culture have progressed to the point of our place in history today. We hear a lot about the virtues of competition, but the fruits are greed, and overworked underpaid people the world over, and a world of environmental degradation too long and depressing to discuss.

It’s up to us to change the world, and to NOT speak or define our world in the terms of the corporate culture. As philosopher Bertrand Russell once said, “The only thing that will redeem mankind is cooperation.” So it is with that, I urge our Union leaders to speak in the language of the workers, and cooperate to make work and life better for each member. After all, they are representing us, not the contractors.

For more information on the history of corporations and how they effect our culture, please visit the Web site for the Program on Corporations Law and Democracy, www.poclad.org .

“Special Call” meeting June 14

At the general May membership meeting, the following positions were filled by a white ballot. Bruce Dennis was elected as President again, Gene Lawhorn will be our new Vice President, Joe Baron will continue as Financial Secretary, Shaun Cushman will continue as Treasurer, John Hahn will continue as Conductor, Steve Wright will continue as Recording Secretary and Kevin Stokes will continue as Trustee.

At the June general membership meeting, members will elect one of the two candidates, Mike Couch and Brian Carson, for the position of Warden. They were nominated at the May Special Called Meeting.
These meetings will begin at 6 p.m.

Scholarship available

Local 247 has a scholarship program available for members’ children and grandchildren. Guidelines are available at the office. Applications and Labor History Essays are due in the office by July 26, 2005. Please call or drop by the office for any questions or more information.

Carpenters Local 247 picnic

Mark your calendars! The Carpenters Local 247 annual picnic will be Sunday, Aug. 28, 2005 at Camp Withycombe (same place as last year, hopefully without the rain we had last year!) There will be lots of fun, food and activities for the whole family! Be sure to mark the date on your calendar, because it’s an event you won’t want to miss! More details will be provided in the upcoming issues.

Dues reminder

Any member who is taking advantage of reduced quarterly dues must have their third-quarter dues payment into the office no later than June 30, 2005. The third quarter payment will pay for your dues for the months of July, August and September. If you are currently not taking advantage of this option and wish to do so, please send your payment into the office before the due date. However, you must have your dues paid through June in order to take advantage of this discount. The reduced rates are as follows: Journeyman - $72.00, Apprentice - $42.00, Tradeshow - $48.00.

In addition, please do not forget to add the Sick & Injured Fund Assessment of $15.

Reminder: Sick Fund fee due

The annual Sick & Injured Fund Assessment fee of $15 was added on June 1, 2005 to all actively working members’ dues accounts. If you are a yearly or quarterly dues member, please remember to submit this amount to the Local. This assessment was voted upon at last year’s May membership meeting.