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Carpenters Local 247 April 2004 meeting report
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General membership
Meets the second Tuesday, May 11, at 7 p.m. at the Carpenters Hall, 2215 N.
Lombard, Portland.
Retirees
Retirees meet for lunch the second Monday, May 10, at 11 a.m. at JJ North’s,
10520 NE Halsey, Portland.
Executive Board
Executive Board meets the fourth Tuesday, May 25, at 7 p.m. at the Carpenters
Hall, 2215 N. Lombard.
When you come to meetings, please remember to bring donations for the food bank.
Carpenters turn out for Rebuilding Together
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Seven Local 247 crews volunteered this year on Rebuilding Together, a non-profit that every April fixes up houses of low-income residents in North and Northeast Portland. First pictured from left to right are Jeremy Propst, Alex Boyd, Joe Baron, Mick Crum, and Chelsea Layton. Second are Mark Wagoner and Michelle Verheyden. |
‘Special call’ meetings: May 11 and June 8
At the general May membership meeting, members will nominate one Trustee (Currently served by Darell Duffy) and 12 Delegates/3 Alternate Delegates to the Pacific Northwest Regional Council of Carpenters. In addition, we will be voting on an annual assessment fee of $15.00 per member to fund the Sick & Injured Fund. To date, this fund has helped 16 members who have been out of work due to injury or an illness.
At the general June membership meeting, members will elect the candidates that are nominated at the May Special Called Meeting.
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 27, 2004. Please call or drop by the office for any questions or more information.
Congratulations to our apprentices!!
Carpenters Local 247 would like to congratulate our apprentices who became journeyman between April 1, 2003 and March 31, 2004. These members will be recognized at the Carpenters Honors Banquet on May 1, 2004: Tyler G. Armstong, Hilario H. Baez, Charles E. Bailey, Rob J. Bolkovatz, Shawn V. Bunkers, John L. Burks, Joshua M. Coleman, Michael Condon, Anthony S. Cross, Donald K. Douglas, Chad Hillard, Vernon C. Hochstetler, Mary K. Hogan, Nikolai N. Ivanov, Dawn M. Jones, Kamaki K. Kamahaku, Warren Lenox, Tyna M. McMillan, Adelfo Morales, Joseph J. Nolen, Allen M. Pursley, Mary K. Schneider, Stephen M. Taylor, Jason Trickett, Mike C. Walliker, Mitch D. Weakland, David L. Wilburn.
STP Masters: Clyde Barlow, Warren Lenox and David L. Wilburn.
Mark your calendars!!! The Carpenters Local 247 annual picnic will be Sunday, Aug. 8, 2004 at Blue Lake Park. 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.
Recommended videos about labor history
By Gene Lawhorn
Matewan Written and directed by John Sayles. This is the absolute best acted
and well written story about labor history! It is a work of genius!
Salt of the Earth This movie was banned and blacklisted; do we need a better
reason to see it? The cast of the movie was composed of actual strikers and
blacklisted actors.
Roger and Me by Michael Moore. This is dark comedy about the shut down of the GM plants is Flint Michigan. See this movie and you will never buy another GM automobile!
Norma Rae Based on a true story, Sally Fields does an excellent job in this movie.
Silkwood Hollywood heavy hitters Meryl Streep, Cher, and Kurt Russell tell the true story of Oil & Chemical workers activist Karen Silkwood, and her efforts to expose illegal activities at a Kerr-McGee nuclear plant.
The Killing Floor This movie explores race, and work at a Chicago Meat packing plant.
Harlan County USA Documentary explores the conflict between union miners and management in Bloody Harlan County Kentucky.
These videos can be purchased on Ebay. You can also find many hard to come by labor books on Ebay, as well as www.abebooks.com.
By Gene Lawhorn
Malcolm X once said, “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.” The American state-run corporate school system from elementary to college, and the corporate media from small town newspapers to radio, television and magazines, have created and perpetuate a great illusion about what the United States of America is, and what being a good productive citizen is. One of the greatest aspects of perpetuating this illusion has been keeping the real history of the United States from being taught in schools or discussed in the media, and that is the history of the working class, our struggles, our defeats and triumphs against the corporate monoliths and this government which shields corporations from accountability.
From this nation’s birth, workers who attempted to organize themselves into unions found themselves prosecuted and convicted for forming combinations and conspiracies to raise wages under an old English common law that dated back to 1349, which regulated wages for the benefit of employers.
Despite convictions and fines placed on workers and their unions, they would continue to organize. From the 1790s to the 1860s, many unions would come and go. Many cooperatives and utopian communities would be tested in their effort to create a more egalitarian society. Factory girls and children in textile mills would “turn out” and strike in the tens of thousands in their fight for a shorter workday, higher wages, a safer workplace, and the right to unionize.
With the coming of the Civil War, whole unions would disband to join the Union army: Mechanics of Lowell, the America Miners Association of Illinois, the Iron Moulders under the leadership of William H. Sylivs, and so on.
Now, I can recall my third grade teacher in Olive Hill, Kentucky telling me that it was great Americans like John D. Rockefeller who made America the greatest nation on Earth, and that if I worked hard I could be a great American like ol’ John D. (Illusion is the assumption of knowledge even in its absence). What my teacher failed to tell me was that at the same time, workers were preparing to go to war to defend the Union, the great American John D. Rockefeller and the other great Americans like him — J.P. Morgan, Philip Armour, James Hill, Andrew Carnegie, Jay Gould, and others — used the Conscription Act to buy a working class replacement to fight for them for $300. She also failed to teach me about how each one of these great Americans would grow rich and powerful exploiting the Civil War, and how after the war these men would become mass murderers of working class people.
If there was ever a year in American history that I could point to and say “This is where corporate oppression of workers turned into actual armed conflict against workers to control their revolutionary struggles,” I have to say that year was 1877. Labor historian Philip Foner would call it the year of the “The Great Labor Uprising.” It was also the same year that Franklin B. Gowen, president of Reading Railroad, would triumphantly oversee the executions of 10 militant Irish coal miners known as the Molly Maguires. Within a year, nine more so-called Molly Maguires would also be executed. Harold W. Aurand in his book, From the Molly Maguires to the United Mine Workers: The Social Ecology of an Industrial Union 1869 to 1897, says, “The Molly Maguire investigations and trials were one of the most astounding surrenders of sovereignty in American history. A private corporation initiated the investigation through a private detective agency. A private police force arrested the alleged offenders. The coal company attorneys prosecuted them. The state provided only the court room and the hangman.”
With the successful infiltration, provocation of violence, and executions of the so-called Molly Maguires by the Pinkerton Detective Agency began also the birth of a multi-million enterprise, the private detective/strikebreaking agencies. These agencies would provide labor spies, or stool pigeons, strikebreakers, known as finks, and guards known as nobles to protect and keep finks in line. With the rise of these agencies would also raise a criminal deviant subculture whose livelihood depended on labor conflict. In the pursuit of their duties they could break no law.
On the bloody iron heels of the Pinkertons would come the Mooney & Boland General Detectives, the Thiel Agency, Balwin Felts, Mahon-Wadell, The Railway Audit and Inspection Agency, The Joy Detective Agency, and strikebreaker kings such as Jack Whitehead, Jim Farly, and the notorious Pearl Berghoff. These agencies openly and often with the helping hand of local police, and the U.S. government performed the same duties of the contemporary death squads of Central America. From the 1870s to the late 1930s, no factory, no mine, no mill and no union was without the presence of labor spies, in fact some of the union leaders were stool pigeons and still are.
Within a month of the executions of the Molly Maguires, the flames of discontent grew into a roaring fire from a spark set on by railroad workers in Martinsburg, West Virginia, who were fighting wage cuts and speedups. Within a week, the robber barons of the railroads would find themselves in the nation’s first general strike. State governors called out the state militia, who more often joined the strikers. Angry citizens, miners, mill workers and factory workers joined the strike and took over cities. To quell the uprising, President Hayes sent in federal troops, and the leading wealthy citizens formed vigilante organizations. The great Indian killer, General Sheridan, would be called in from killing Native Americans to shoot workers in Chicago. Before the uprising was quelled, over 100 citizens were killed.
Philip Foner in Volume I of his History of the Labor Movement in the US, says, “The American capitalist drew a lesson from the national strike wave. They saw the importance of a militia controlled by wealthy men, a larger standing army, and more and better armories.
During the next few years the militia in several states was centralized, more armories strategically built, and conspiracy laws enacted against trade unions.” Take careful note, this legacy is very much with us today. The US National Guard is nothing less than reserve army that stands on alert, ready to defend the interest of rich and powerful should the working class rise up again.
In the years following 1877 the war against workers struggling for shorter hours, better wages and the right to unionize would escalate. In 1886 during a nationwide general strike for the 8 hour workday Pinkerton thugs opened fire on peaceful pickets at a Chicago McCormick-Harvester factory killing 6 and wounding over 40. The next day, May 4, leaders of the Chicago anarchist movement gathered at Haymarket Square to protest the killings. As the demonstration was ending someone believed to be an agent provocator threw a bomb into column of police killing 7 and wounding over 540. The panicked police opened fire on the crowd killing as many as 20 and, wounding over 200 demonstrators. Eight leaders of the Chicago Anarchist movement were arrested. For advocating ideas that lead to the bombing August Spies, Albert Parsons, George Engle, and Adolph Fischer were hanged on November 11, 1887.
On Nov. 22, 1886, 30 striking African/American sugar workers were massacred in Thibodaux, LA by a local militia group of the county’s leading citizens. After the massacre, the county sheriff took the strike leaders, Henry and George Cox from their jail cells and lynched them. They were members of the Knights of Labor.
In 1892, 300 Pinkerton thugs would attack striking steel workers in Homestead, Penn. Killing 9 workers. A 13-hour battle took place with pinkies surrendering to the strikers. The strike was broken when 8000 National guardsmen came in to act as strikebreakers.
At the same time, striking hard rock miners in Idaho were also fighting Pinkertons. 3 strikers were killed, and again the National Guard would be called out to support Pinkies. The same year found coal miners in Coal Creek, Tennessee kicking off a two year armed struggle to end the convict lease system.
In June of 1894, the American Railway Union under the leadership of Eugene Debs started a nationwide boycott of Pullman Cars to support Pullman strikers. The strike and boycott was so effective that National Guard, and Government troops were sent out against strikers. Judges issued injunctions against the strike leaders having them arrested. US troops and the Guard opened fire on strikers in several cities where strike activities were most active. By the end of the strike over 34 workers were killed, hundreds wounded. In Chicago alone, 13 were killed, and 53 seriously wounded.
In the Lattimer Massacre of 1897 there was 19 peaceful striking coal miners killed and 39 wounded in Lattimer, Pennsylvania.
In 1898, 14 striking coal miners were massacred and 24 wounded in what is known as the Virden Massacre.
February 10, 1913 in Mucklow, West Virginia, 12 striking coal miners were massacred by Baldwin-Felts thugs. Three days earlier one miner was killed and several miners and wives wounded when a armored train equipped with machine guns known as the “Bull Moose Special” open fire on a peaceful sleeping tent colony.
On December 24, 1913, 62 children and 11 adults were crushed to death on a narrow stair case when Mahon-Wadell thugs yelled a false fire alarm at a Christmas party for the children of striking copper miners of the Calumet & Hecla mining company.
April 20, 1914, The Colorado National Guard & Baldwin Felts detective agency working for great American John D. Rockfeller who controlled interest in the Colorado Fuel and Iron Co. Massacred 12 children, and 2 women, (Cedilano Costa & Patricia Valdez). By some accounts, 10 to 30 miners were also massacred including strike leader Lois Tikas. In the post, massacre uprising US Troops would have to be called in to quell the miner’s revolt. The Ludlow massacre marked the beginning of corporate public relations campaigns to white wash the bloody hands of millionaires who give dimes to children while sucking the life’s blood from their fathers and mother in the workplace.
On November 5, 1915, 500 deputies in Everett, Washington opened fire on a boatload of unarmed peaceful IWW members protesting restrictions in free speech for union organizers. 11 were killed, 27 wounded.
In Elaine, Arkansas on September 30, 1919 over 100 striking cotton pickers were massacred by US Troops, and a vigilante group of the town’s leading citizens.
On May 19, 1920, Baldwin-Felts thugs arrived in Matewan, West Virginia to evict striking coal miners from company owned homes. In the showdown between sheriff Sid Hatfield and his deputies 7 thugs would be killed including Albert and Lee Felts brothers of the agency head, Tom Felts. 3 deputies were killed including the mayor of Matewan. On August 1st, 1921, Sid Hatfield and deputy Ed Chambers were executed on the Welch County courthouse steps in front of their wives by Baldwin-Felts death squad agents. This is the spark, which prompted an armed march on Logan County by 15,000 to 20,000 miners from West Virginia and the surrounding states. In what is known as the Battle of Blair Mountain, all the force of the US Army and corporate death squads were brought down on the revolting miners. For the first time in US history the US Army used planes to dropped bombs on it’s own citizens fighting corporate tyranny here at home.
On March 7, 1932, Henry Ford’s private police who have no rivals in the realm of violence and brutality opened fire on a crowd of peaceful unemployed Ford factory workers killing 4 and wounding 24. This is known as the Ford Hunger Massacre.
On May 30 of 1937 occurred what we call the Memorial Day Massacre. The Chicago Police opened fire on a peaceful crowd of striking Republic Steel workers, killing 10, and wounding over 40. Then proceeded to severely beat another 60 with clubs. What I’ve outlined for you here is just a few examples of the corporate class war against American workers. Beside the blatant violence of openly shooting strikers, workers also found themselves fighting injunctions decreed by judges making laws only for the benefit of their corporate class masters. Our schools teach us about the ILLUSION of the separation of powers from Presidential, legislative and judicial. In the real world beyond the veil of illusions class dictates the real separation of powers.
The corporate use of violence did not stop by my last examples of the 1930’s. They have gotten more sophisticated and ideological. They divide us against each other through the use of racism, sexism, and labels such as Communist, red, preservationist, liberal, and etc. The system also divides us through competition, envy, and consumerism. Whenever these tactics fail, and the system feels threatened they resort to the use of violence exampled by the corporate/Government’s war against the American Indian Movement, Black Panthers and Earth First! Activist.
The history of the American working class is a story of blood and war. Many times over our fathers, grandfathers, mothers and grandmothers have paid the price with their lives for what little social and work place benefits we do receive. Each year, day by day, the greed masters of the corporate controlled American society take more and more away, and give us less and less for the takings. Less wages, less benefits, less clean water, less clean air, less job safety, less compensation for accidents, less diversity of life, and less self worth.
So, it is important that we keep our sense of history. We the working class, man, woman, child; whether we be black, white, brown or a variation thereof, it’s our differences that make us unique worthwhile individuals. It’s our class that should unite us in the struggle for a better world for ourselves, our children, and the many other species of life we share space within this small Earth Island.
Another Beginning
Labor history timeline
Compiled by Tom Day & Gene Lawhorn
1935
Rubber workers for Goodyear, and auto workers for GM find they have more power by sitting down on the job within factory gates than they do on the picket line. So they conduct sit down strikes and win union recognition, higher wages and better benefits. The Byrnes Act becomes law also known as the anti-strikebreaker act. This law prevented the aid to transport of strikebreakers in interstate or foreign trade. The Walsh-Healey Act, or the Public Contract Act also becomes law, which establishes a minimum wage, overtime pay, child and convict labor provisions, and safety regulations on all federal contracts. GM recognizes the UAW. US steel recognizes the United Steel Workers. 10 workers killed, and over 60 wounded by Chicago Police as they peaceably march on the Republic steel works. This was the last mass execution of striking workers by authorities protecting the interest of big business. Why? Because the Movie Tone News Cameras was their to catch every detail. CIO expelled from the AFL. The National Apprenticeship Act Becomes law. This establishes a bureau of apprentship within the Bureau of Labor. The Fair Labor Standards Act creates a .25 cent minimum wage and time-and-a-half for overtime. The Ford Motor Company recognizes the United Autoworkers of America after decades of bitter struggle. Henry Ford hired his own private security known as Ford Service Men. Their job was to beat, intimidate, and harass union organizers, and sympathizers. Japan attacks Pearl Harbor and thus the US enters World War II. Trade Union membership increases. Women enter the workforce in large numbers. On labor day the Liberty Ship SS Peter J. McGuire is launched at Richmond Yards in San Francisco. Liberty ships would supply US troops, and allies with supplies to fight the war. President Roosevelt gives an executive order creating a committee on fair employment to eliminate discrimination in the war industries. The SS Santiago Iglesias is launched in Baltimore, Maryland. Named after a Puerto Rican Senator and Union Carpenter. Union membership reaches it historic peak of over 18,000,000 workers. World War II ends starting the post war boom brining the standard of living up for most all Americans. Especially with Union membership. CIO, Congress of Industrial Organizations affiliates with the World Federation of Trade Unions. Largest Strike wave in the history of the U.S. The Taft-Hartley Act becomes law despite a veto from President Truman. Also known as the Labor Management Relations Act. This law would have a chilling effect on labor organizing, and labor relations. It gave States the right to outlaw the close shop. Secondary boycotts became illegal, and labor organizations have to file financial reports with the bureau of labor. United Mine Workers President John L. Lewis called the Taft-Hartley act ‘the first ugly savage thrust of fascism in America.’
The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 is amended to prohibit child labor for the
first time in US history.
The Congress of Industrial Organizations begin to expel union with communist
leadership.
Second Annual Building Trades Unions Motorcycle Poker Run
a benefit for Doernbecher
Children’s Hospital
Saturday, June 12, 2004
Registration 10 to 11 a.m., $10 entry
Sponsored by Columbia-Pacific Building Trades, affiliates and other local trade unions
All riders welcome. Come for a nice ride, good people, and the best chili (you being the judge.)
Where: Run will start and finish at
IBEW Local 48, 15937 NE Airport Way,
Portland, Oregon
What: A scenic round-trip ride with
four checkpoints. Participants will receive
a playing card at registration, at each of the four checkpoints and return
to the IBEW. You may then donate $5 for a sixth card if you like.
Fun: Cash prizes awarded for HIGH
and LOW hands.
Vendor Appreciation drawing and 50/50 tickets for sale!
Chili cookoff between the trades.
Hot dogs and sodas available for sale.
All proceeds benefit Doernbecher Children’s Hospital
For additional information, call Holly Wheeler at 360-907-3289, Lee Duncan at 503-260-5905 or Kathy Streifel at 503-658-7412.
