Meeting Notices

General membership
Meets the second Tuesday, March 11, at 7 p.m. at the Carpenters Hall, 2205 N. Lombard, Portland. Dick Springer of the Fair Contracting Foundation will be a guest speaker, and Cub Scout Pack 214 will conduct a flag ceremony. Michelle Verheyden’s son Jeremy is in the troop.

Retirees
Retirees meet for lunch the second Monday, March 10, at 11 a.m. at JJ North’s, 10520 NE Halsey, Portland.

Executive Board
Executive Board meets the fourth Tuesday, March 25, at 7 p.m. at the Carpenters Hall, 2205 N. Lombard, Portland.

Pay now or pay later
Contractors who violate New Jersey’s prevailing wage law will face significantly steeper fines under a law signed last month by Gov. James McGreevey (D). The first violation will cost contractors $2,500, up from $250, and each subsequent violation jumps to $5,000 from the previous $500 fine. Prevailing wage laws ensure that contractors on government projects pay a wage that is in line with community or state wage levels.

Carpenters confront Equity
Equity Office Property Building personnel were surprised recently when over 40 Carpenters and Jobs With Justice coalition activists distributed fliers throughout Equity’s nine building complexes in Lake Oswego. We have now demonstrated at all of Equity’s properties in the Portland metro area. We are confronting Equity on their poor construction practices. We believe they utilize low-ball contractors who undercut area standard wages and benefits. The contractors hired by Equity pay carpenters and drywallers between $8 and $10 lower than area standard wages, with little or no benefits. caption. Local 247 member Ryan Middleton and Local 1715 member Miles Bond let Equity Properties and their tenants know how much union carpenters care about area standard wages and benefits.

Man the Parapets
Defending against the Morgan Stanley attack

By Steve Jackson
1144 Treasurer/Delegate

Late in the year of 2002, a research memo circulated by Morgan Stanley to its North American clients was published in Harpers magazine. The memo was titled “Bankers of the World, Unite!” This memo revealed a frightening aggressively conservative mind set, and unbridled anti-union sentiment beyond one’s imagination. While reading the memo that follows my brief prelude, I’m sure you will agree on one issue that stands far and above the anti-union theme. If they are dumb enough to put something like this article out for publication, are they smart enough to be handling your money?

The following is the memo that was circulated by Morgan Stanley:

At the risk of encouraging the ghost of Joe Hill to come back and haunt us, we suspect investors should avoid heavily unionized industries today more than usual. From a long-term perspective, unionized areas have not been market-leading industries, and today heavily unionized industries stand directly in whatever the opposite of the sweet spot is. Consistent with our "buy the 800-pound gorillas" theme, non-unionized companies competing in heavily unionized arenas probably stand to accrue large relative gains.

What does history suggest about investing in heavily unionized industries? Avoid them. While the recent carnage in stock prices and brouhaha over excessive options issuance has kept investor focus squarely on the incredible shrinking tech sector, folks may be looking in the rearview mirror when it comes to where risks lie today. Yesterday’s options problems in technology may be a lesser evil than tomorrow’s pension and health care funding requirements in rust belt industries. In all kinds of respects we are living in a brave new world, but a decidedly old world phenomenon … unions … may weigh on some new world issues in the year ahead.

Look for the union label…and run the other way.

This article is like the caregiver slapping your child in front of you, then handing you a bill for daycare, when they ask anyone affiliated with the union to let them have your money to invest with them. To invest against yourselves????!!! I believe the prudent thing to do, and I hope you whole-heartedly agree with me, is to metaphorically slap back. Whether the company actually believes in this investor-directed memo, or it's the workings of an individual with anti-union sentiments working on his own, it's detrimental to everything in which we believe, and undermines our efforts.

Coming from a family that is going into its fourth generation as union members and activists, I am shocked that a large investment firm would insult 17 percent of the population of this country who are union and are investing literally billions of dollars. I work hard for my money, and so do you. It doesn’t appear that this institution thinks very much about where they get their money! I don't believe that's very smart, and you want smart when you invest your money! I think whatever investment firm handles your money, at least they should be smart enough to care what you think. Don’t you? In my opinion, Morgan Stanley is a very bad investment. Come to think of it, maybe they have evoked the ghost of Joe Hill.

Open House
invitation

I would like to invite you to the Open House of our new office on March 22, 2003 from 12 to 4 p.m.

This remodel has been in the process for two years and has finally been completed! Please come and see our beautiful new space! You’ll be excited to see all of our hard work, dedication and the combined efforts it took to put it all together! We are very proud of our new office and the end result!

Our new office is located at 2215 N. Lombard, Portland, Oregon.

Fraternally,
Pete Savage
Financial Secretary

May Day honors the struggle for the eight-hour day

By Mike Couch

“If you think by hanging us you can stamp out the labor movement..the movement from which the downtrodden millions, the millions who toil in want and misery, expect salvation- if this is your opinion, then hang us! Here you will tread upon a spark, but there and there, behind you and in front of you, and every where, flames blaze up. It is a subterranean fire. You cannot put it out….” —August Spies 1886

Working over time can be great. Forced overtime is illegal. Men and women paid with their lives to make that statement true. On May 1, I think we as union members should celebrate and honor the victory that is the eight-hour day.

In 1886 this battle was already years old, but the pace was quickening. Of course at that time, working people like us pretty much worked when and how long they were told, a 14-hour day or a Saturday did not mean overtime. The industrialists controlled the lives of the worker, they controlled the Pinkerton men or the thugs they hired to maintain their stranglehold. They often controlled police and it was always nice to have a few politicians in your breast pocket. The events of spring 1886 changed the world forever.

In Chicago, during the last days of April that year, an estimated 62,000 workers were pledging to strike May 1st for the eight hour day. The city was tense. Armed forces were ready to crush any disturbance. May 1 came on a Saturday that year, but instead of trudging off for another day of work, thousands of workers and their families across the city and across the nation assembled for a parade. In Chicago the day was fine and the mood was high. Work sites were quiet. Countrywide, about 340,000 people were parading. It must have been exciting, kind of scary, but also pretty wonderful. The possibilities solidarity brings is staggering. The “Chicago Mail” stated that 80,000 workers had walked out for the eight-hour day. The march by Albert Parsons and August Spies, two outspoken champions of worker rights and the eight-hour day. The big day ended quietly. The police and Pinkerton men picked up their weapons and climbed down from the rooftops and drifted off into the city.

On Monday even more workers went on strike. At the McCormack Harvester plant 300 scab replacement workers were rushed through gates with police clubbing strikers out of the way. At the end of the shift a large crowd of locked-out employees waited, then with pistols drawn police charged. The protesters started to move away when, a witness said the police “opened fire into their backs. Boys and men were killed as they ran.” Six people were dead, some reports say. Other reports say four dead and many wounded.

To protest police violence, a meeting was planned the next evening at the now infamous Haymarket Square. On May 4, a crowd listened to labor leaders and anarchists call for justice and accountability. Nearby, 180 policemen were ready to move in again. The weather was turning cold and it looked like the protest would end in peace. Much of the crowd had wandered off angry about the senseless violence of the day before, but also with some satisfaction that thousands of workers all over the country were in fact gaining the eight-hour day. Labor was winning. Just then, into the crowd ran more that a hundred policemen, clubs in hand, demanding that the crowd “peaceably disperse.” “But Captain “Sam Fielden, one of the speakers at the event said, “We are peaceable.” A second later, an explosion rocked Haymarket Square.

Today it seems clear that the bomb was meant to provoke more violence. No one knows who threw it. Maybe an agent working for the factory owners or corporate tycoons. Maybe it was an anarchist. We don’t know. We do know that officer Mathias Degan had been killed outright, seven other fatally wounded. Haymarket Square went wild. Police were firing into the crowd, clubbing citizens as they ran. The following days saw madness, police smashing down the doors of private houses and union headquarters. People were beaten and tortured. Chicago’s jails were stuffed full of foreign-born, and the terror spread to other cities.

Eight men were charged with conspiracy to murder in connection with the bombing. Without evidence connecting them to the bomb, they were found guilty and sentenced to die. Of the eight, only Sam Fielden and August Spies had been at the scene when the bomb exploded. Albert Parsons surrendered at the court on the first day of the trial, stating “I have come to stand trial with my innocent comrades.” With tortured and bribed witnesses, the outcome of the trial was already sealed. One man received a 15-year sentence, the rest were given death. The day before the executions, one of the condemned, Louis Lingg, 22 years old, unable to speak English, committed suicide in his cell. That same day, Illinois Governor Oglesby, knowing that the trial was a national disgrace, was sickened by the knowledge of how the case had been conducted, commuted the death sentences of two men to life imprisonment. Albert Parson, August Spies, Adolf Fischer and George Engel died bravely on the gallows, Nov. 11, 1887. History records show score upon score of lives taken, men, women, and children killed in the war against labor.

May 1 is International Workers Day. It’s our day. Come along, we have much to celebrate and remember.

Most of this article comes form “Labor’s Untold Story” by R., Boyer and H,. Morris, copyright 1955, published by United Electrical Radio and Machine Workers of America.

How to reclaim May Day for workers
May Day has been a labor event since 1886, but in recent years its history and labor significance has become lost to a large contingent of other issues from every corner of the political map.
How can we get the focus back on the struggle for the eight-hour day and all the other benefits unions have fought for and contributed to the American work place?
Come join us in finding a way. We are The May Day Coalition and we are meeting at Carpenters Local 247, Upper Meeting Hall, 2205 N. Lombard, Portland. We will be meeting on the following Fridays at 7 p.m.: March 7, March 21, April 4 and April 18.
If you have any questions, contact Carpenters Local 247 at 503-289-9632.