August Meeting Report By Bruce Dennis President We had 64 members and three guests present at our regular August meeting of Carpenters Local 247. Recently graduated journey man Brendan McNassar was presented his certificate. Under “Reports of Accidents, Sickness and Death” it was reported that Piledriver representative Bob Acker recently had surgery for lung cancer, representative Joe Whitney broke his wrist in an automobile accident, and Lisa Moon lost her son in a motorcycle accident. A moment of silence was observed. Under “Reports” we heard from Leo Larsen, retired. He has recently visited Roy Coles, former Executive Secretary. He is doing well, living at an assisted living facility. Pete Savage reported about re-signing Robinson Construction to a Union agreement. In order to sign them, we agreed to an Eastern Oregon scale that is $4.67 less than Portland and the Willamette Valley. This Eastern Oregon scale will apply to all contractors who work in that area. This was negotiated without input from the Eastern Oregon members. Pete explained that he did not have time to discuss this with local members. The Trade Show agreement is out for a vote, and appears to be failing. Pete also reported on recent actions against local non-members contractors. Jason Sheckler reported on newsletter committee, articles and welcome. They meet 6:30 p.m. on the second Thursday of each month at Local 247. There was a lot of discussion under “Good of the Order.” Topics included anti-union propaganda, Employee Free Choice Act, Robinson contract, Eastern Oregon culture, delegate expenses, labor history, and political endorsements. Retiree Merle Ehlinger displayed a rebuilt ladder and told a story about how he acquired and repaired it. Under “Jobs Report,” we heard ATG and Robinson are hiring. Under “New Business” we tabled a motion about delegate expenses, needing a bylaws clarification. We agreed to concur with our Political Committee’s endorsement recommendations. The meeting lasted a little over two hours. We need your input next month. ATTEND YOUR UNION MEETINGS.

Meeting Notices

General membership
General membership meets the second Tuesday, Sept. 9, at 6 p.m. at the Carpenters Hall, 2215 N. Lombard, Portland. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact the office at 503-289-9632.

Retirees
Retirees meet for lunch the second Monday, Sept. 8, at 11 a.m. atHometown Buffet, 10452A SE Washington St., Portland.

Executive Board
Executive Board meets the fourthTuesday, Sept. 23, at 6:30 p.m. at the Carpenters Hall, 2215N. Lombard, Portland.

Newsletter committee
Newsletter committee meets the second Thursday, Sept. 11, at 6:30 p.m., first floor, Small Conference Room, Carpenters Hall, 2215 N. Lombard, Portland.

Women face challenges working in the building trades

By Michael Brassell
Member, Local 247

Women face the same challenges in the building trades that our union faces in the broader community—how to build demand for our skills and secure steady work, how to work and take care of our families, and how to give respect and be respected on the job site.

Confronting these challenges head on will help us build the union we want to see.

Speak to women, working women, women that raise families, and the challenges they face are clear enough. I’m 30. My 28-year-old sister has progressive cancer. She is a single mother of two. Our family is struggling to support her as she builds a career, raises her kids, and fights for her life.

Talking with her has made me real concerned about the challenges that women and families face in raising kids. She recently lost another job because her babysitter called in sick. So she lost her apartment. The situation she faces is a paycheck away for any number of women and single families.

I asked her, “What’s the biggest challenge you face to holding down a good job?” She says, “I work hard. I can get a good job. But when I lose a baby sitter … I lose my job. That’s the biggest challenge.”

So I looked around. I make $30-plus an hour, plus benefits. My mom has been working 35-plus years and she’s happy to finally be making $16 an hour at Home Depot. If women make up 51 percent of the population, why are they so scarce in the building trades? Why are they so scarce in the best living wage jobs? Hell, if she’s strong enough to face that, isn’t she strong enough to face this?

I’m concerned about it. An elder member told me that he had been accused of sexual harassment a bunch of times, saying that these things were always unfounded. He said that they have always been found to have no basis. Not true. Well, what do you say to that? Brother, I respect the years of hard work and dues you have paid to our Local, but union women deserve better.

This got me thinking. I can think of things we can say. I say on the job and I think, “How can I hold this man, this elder in my community to some standard that I can’t live myself?” That’s when it became obvious that I didn’t know anything about the challenges that women face in our trade. So I decided to learn, and through learning, I hope to share. By understanding the problems that women face in building trade unions we can lay a foundation of knowledge. We can build respect for our trade with the other half of this community and gain market share.

Labor History

For the Six-Hour Day with Eight-Hour Pay

As workers in the United States, we celebrate Labor Day, the first Monday every September. As Carpenters, this day should hold a special place in our hearts, as the father of Labor Day is also the father of the UBC.

Peter McGuire (our union’s father) became involved in the fight for the eight-hour day in 1882 in New York. In 1882 at a meeting of the New York central labor union, McGuire called for a “festive parade through the streets of the city” to push, for the eight-hour day. On the first Monday in September, over 30,000 workers marched through the streets demanding shorter hours for the same pay. The next year the parade again took place, and by the following year, 1884, five more cities took part and held their own parades for shorter hours. In 1887, Oregon became the first state to make Labor Day an official holiday. In 1894 the U.S. Congress followed Oregon’s lead and made the first Monday in September a national holiday.

Congress passed a law instituting the eight hour day in 1916, but the president refused to enforce it. Peter McGuire knew that if working people wanted the eight-hour day, they had to earn it themselves. He worked tirelessly to see this happen, and he used Labor Day as a tool to achieve this.

Labor Day has moved away from a day in which we demand fewer hours, higher pay, and safety regulation, and has become a day to spend with our families. We go on picnics and enjoy fun parades. This is not a bad thing. Leisure and fun is what our ancestors wanted for us. But as the eight hour day begins to slip away from us, many of us are working five and six 10-hour days. Overtime is optional on paper, but on the job, refusing it could mean a two-check Friday. We all know that working long hours is not good for families. (How many members are divorced because of the long hours required of them?) We must once again be willing to fight, not only for ourselves, but for our families, and for our great grandchildren’s families. We must fight so that they won’t have to.

Here is what our union Constitution says about shorter hours: “We hold a reduction of hours for a day’s work increases the intelligence and happiness of the laborer, and also increases the demand for labor and the price of a day’s work. We advocate the adoption of the five-day, 30-hour work week and urge all local unions to put this into effect as soon as possible.” The struggle for the six-hour day for eight-hour pay won’t be easy. Nor was the struggle for eight hours. But it is a struggle that must happen. The Union staff can’t win this for us by themselves. It is something that is going to take every member. We all must become organizers, educators, and agitators, on the job and in our communities.

As Carpenters we have always led the fight for improvements for all workers. Let us take our holiday every September and use it as a tool to show everyone that Carpenters are still the leaders of the labor movement, that we are still fighting for our families and everyone else too.

—Gabriel Triplett
Member, Local 247

Happy Birthday!

The following members are celebrating their birthday this month. We would like to wish them all “Happy Birthday”! We hope you enjoy your special day! Bryan Alar, Raymond Alter, Alan Anderson, Keith Anderson,Hector Apodaca, Amos Austinson, Brian Barnes, Joseph Baron, Clint Barquist, Dan Bartlett, Michael Beckman, Wayne Beyer, John Bloomer, Wayne Boell, Rob Bolkovatz, Nicholas Boswell, Joseph Bowles, Joseph Brockamp,Duane Broussard, Clifford Brown, Craig Bufton, Benjamin Burkes, Larry Burkhalter, Brandon Busch, Howard Caldwell, Sean Carr, Jose Castillo, Raymond Caswell, Jeremy Catterson, Bartholomew Cavanagh, Phillip Chaperon, Robert Coffman, David Colliander, Michael Condon, Claude Cook, Mark Cooper, Robert Cooper, Edwin Cordon, Nicholas Crawford, Robert Cremer, Shaun Cushman, Ronnie DeRokey, Mike Dorscher, Robert Dumond, Lucas Forzley, Eric Freeman, Jennifer Gambill, Michael Gamble,Wayne Garbarino, George Geppert, Charlene Getchell, Gary Gibbens, Paul Gillen, Larry Gilliland, Jonathan Giltamag, Dennis Golden, Carlos Guerin, Harry Gwaltney, Wayne Haggard, David Henson, Gabriel Hogg, Daniel Hunt, Daryl Iverson, Jeff Jaynes, Charles Jennison, Steve Kelly, Michael Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Jon Koertzen, Jason Koski, Mark Krahn, Michael Krakowski, Joseph Lakowske, Girard Lapointe, Ovidiu Lechinteanu, Frank Lee, Gerard Levesque, Veryl Livengood, Joseph Loos, Neil Machajewski, Zoe Masser, Duane Mattson, Nathan McDonald, Barry McKinley, Terry McPherson, Nickolaus Michael, Jason Molloy, James Morrison, CaseyMyers,MichaelNorris, CalvinOcker, JaMaineOliver,TimPeterson, Stan Presby, Patrick Price,William Quesnoy, Richard Rauch, Paul Reiff, David Renner, Barry Reynolds, Joshua Rinker,Timothy Robinson, Byron Ruddell, Patrick Salvo, Anthony Sanchez,Gabriel Santillan, Rodrigo Santillan, Travis Schmitz, Garrett Schneider, Jason Sheckler, David Sherrell, Robert Smith, Jacob Struck, John Svob, Andrew Swan, Stephen Taylor, Michael Tremmel, James Trujillo, William Trump, Miguel Valencia Cortes, Jaap Vanvogelpoel, Joe Veith, Mike Walliker, James Weaver, Eric Wetzel, Geryld Williams, VanceWise, Valeriy Zagumennyy.

Oregon Fair Trade Campaign Monthly Report

By Jason Sheckler
Delegate & Member, Local 247

Legislative Update

The Trade Reform, Accountability, Development and Employment Act – TRADE Act for short – today has over 70 cosponsors, and is supported by the national AFL-CIO, Change toWin, Sierra Club and many others as the proactive alternative to “business as usual” on trade. We’re asking ORFTC member organizations and supporters to sign onto a letter urgingOregon’s congressional delegation to co-sponsor the TRADE Act by Friday, Sept. 26. Individuals can show their support for the TRADE Act by signing our online petition at: www.oregonfairtrade.org.

Corporate lobbyists are still trying to drum up support for the Bush administration’s stalled free trade agreements with Colombia, Panama and South Korea. We believe it is unlikely that these trade deals will reach a floor vote this year, but when the Consumer Electronic Association’s “America Wins withTrade” bus tour came to Oregon to promote the Colombia FTA, we organized a satirical welcoming party for themjust the same. Watch the video online at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaZRuyiGucw.

The “make or break” negotiations for the Doha round of the World Trade Organization collapsed in Geneva in late July. A major reason was a demand by developing countries that they be able to protect their agricultural sectors from import surges.

Stories Project
SAVE THE DATE: ORFTC is holding a public forum on the impacts of free trade on Oregon the evening ofTuesday, Oct. 14 in downtown Portland. A panel of labor leaders, displaced workers and others will discuss their views on the subject, followed by comments from U.S. Senate candidate Jeff Merkley and (invited) Senator Gordon Smith.

Resources
ORFTC released its new “Analysis of Trade Related Job Loss in Oregon’s Forest Products Sector” in mid-August. The takehome message is that Oregon has a loss of 10,000 forest products jobs as a result of free trade pacts supported by politicians like Gordon Smith. A PDF is available online at http://www.citizenstrade.org/pdf2/ForestJobLoss.pdf.

INTERNATIONAL LABOR

By Gabriel Triplett
Member, Local 247

There is no denying the fact that we live in a global economy. This economy is always viewed in the terms of capital (money and goods). However, there is another component to the economy that is often ignored, or at least not talked about, and that is the workers. We workers in the United States have our struggles and hardships, but for the most part don’t have to worry that carrying a union card or standing up for our rights is going to get us killed.Our brothers and sisters south of our border aren’t so fortunate.

The banana workers unions in Guatemala are under attack. Miguel Ángel Ramírez, founder of the SITRABANSUR union, was murdered on March 2, 2008. Union member Enrique Cruz Hernandez was shot to death on his lunch break for being part of the Union.The daughter of the general secretary-treasurer of SITRABANSUR was gang raped by a group of company thugs.

These atrocities are a common occurrence in Guatemala for those who believe in unions and stand up for workers rights. It’s easy to see that this kind of brutality would be a reason to migrate north.The government and the companies responsible must be held accountable. You can contact the U.S. Ambassador to Guatemala: Stephen G. McFarland at phone 502-2326-4000 or by e-mail AmCitsGuatemala@state.gov and demand that he do everything he can to bring justice to the workers in Guatemala.

Along with free trade agreements, it is the repression and murder of unionists that are contributing to the mass migration north. Through this situation we can clearly see that our struggle is directly tied to the struggle of workers in Central America. Our union Constitution says that “We recognize that the interests of all labor are identical regardless of occupation…nationality, for a wrong done to one is a wrong done to all.” This means that our interests are same as the Guatemalan banana picker. A unionist killed in Guatemala is as much of an assault on us as a 247 member being murdered for union affiliation. If we truly want to strengthen the labor movement, if we really want to solve the migration problem we face in America, then we must begin by asking questions. Why are people leaving their homes to come here? If those in power can move their money and property across the border with no taxes imposed and no penalties, then why can’t those who make the wealth (the workers) cross the border with the same ease? Why can those in power pass trade agreements that close union shops in our country and open sweatshops in Mexico and Guatemala? Are Latino immigrants stealing our jobs, or is it the powerful people opening sweatshops and killing unionists who are stealing our jobs? After we ask these questions, we must sit down collectively and discuss the answers, then we (labor) must begin to solve the problems.

One thing is for sure, if those in power can continue to ship our jobs to countries in the south and then kill and rape workers who try and make life better in those countries, we will continue to see the mass migration of workers fleeing their homeland for ours. This is not sustainable. To fix the problem we need real solutions, not continued ICE raids and bigger walls.