See Inside MEETING NOTICES Page 6 Volume 108 Number 18 September 21, 2007 Portland Portland Hilton Sweeney, Edwards will workers rally headline AFL-CIO confab Several hundred hotel workers and supporters marched outside SEASIDE — The Oregon AFL- a.m. Oct. 8. the downtown Portland Hilton CIO will hold its 50th convention Sun- The convention begins at 9 a.m. all Hotel and Executive Tower Sept. day through Wednesday, Oct. 7-10, at three days. 14 to protest slow progress in the Seaside Convention Center. A welcome party will be held on contract bargaining. Workers National AFL-CIO President John Sunday, Oct. 7, from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m., wore red T-shirts printed with Sweeney, Democratic presidential can- at the Best Western Oceanview Motel, “Hotel Workers Rising.” That’s didate John Edwards, and Oregon Gov. which also will serve as the convention the name of a national campaign Ted Kulongoski are scheduled to ad- headquarters. The state labor federa- by their union, UNITE HERE, to dress convention delegates. tion’s Executive Board, General Board increase union power in the hotel Sweeney is slated to speak at 10 and Committee on Political Education industry. In Portland, UNITE a.m. on the opening day, Monday, Oct. will meet Sunday starting at 1 p.m. at HERE Local 9’s contract cov- 8. Kulongoski is scheduled to appear at the Best Western Oceanview Motel. ering the downtown Hilton 4:30 p.m. After adjournment on Monday, Oct. workers expired at the end of On Tuesday, Oct. 9, at 10 a.m., Ed- 8, delegates will canvass sections of the July. Hilton pastry chef Megan wards, a former U.S. senator from city with Working America, a commu- Futrell, a member of the union North Carolina who ran for vice presi- nity affiliate of the national AFL-CIO bargaining team, said the two dent in 2006 on the John Kerry ticket, that is partnering with labor to create a sides haven't begun to discuss will address delegates. massive workers’ movement. After the wages. Futrell said union On Wednesday, delegates will elect canvass, volunteers will have a barbe- priorities include a reduced new officers and Executive Board cue at Broadway Park in Seaside. workload for the hotel’s house- members. Both president and secre- At 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 9, the keepers, a successorship clause to tary-treasurer posts are up this year. popular Union Label Show will be held protect workers in the event the President Tom Chamberlain is com- at the Seaside Convention Center. hotel is sold, and the right of the pleting the term of Tim Nesbitt, who An Executive Board meeting will be local union elected officials to stepped down in mid-term, and Secre- held immediately following adjourn- take extended unpaid leave from tary-Treasurer Barbara Byrd completed ment on Oct. 10. work while serving their terms. the term of Brad Witt, who was deemed Delegates can register from noon to Currently the hotel only allows ineligible to following the departure of 8 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 7 at the Best six months. United Food and Commercial Workers Western Oceanview Motel, and from 8 to the Change to Win labor federation. a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday and Tuesday, Nominations will be held at 11:45 Oct. 8-9, at the Convention Center. Of the national AFL-CIO Chavez-Thompson steps down as executive vice president WASHINGTON, D.C. — National AFL-CIO Executive Vice voice of those who often are unheard or left behind. President Linda Chavez-Thompson will step down to return Chavez-Thompson traveled extensively throughout the coun- home to San Antonio and be with her family, effective Sept. 21. try speaking to union and community groups. She has worked Chavez-Thompson, 63, is the first person to hold the office of tirelessly to strengthen state and local labor movements and has executive vice president and the first person of color to hold one served as a strong voice on behalf of civil rights, human rights of the top elected offices at the AFL-CIO. She was elected in and women’s rights. She also has been a national leader on the is- 1995 after serving in a series of leadership roles in the American sue of immigration and immigrant workers’ rights. Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and on the “For millions, she was the face of the AFL-CIO’s new union AFL-CIO Executive Council. movement,” said President John Sweeney. “Linda has broken new AFL-CIO President John Sweeney will ask the Executive pathways for the labor movement. Countless working women and Council to appoint Arlene Holt-Baker to fill Chavez-Thompson’s men, not only in the United States but throughout the Western unexpired term (2009). Holt-Baker, also a member of AFSCME, Hemisphere, have a better life because of all she’s contributed.” has served as Sweeney’s executive assistant for the past several Chavez-Thompson will continue to chair the AFL-CIO Immi- years. She came to the federation from California in 1995 as the gration Committee and serve as head of the Inter-American Re- executive assistant to Chavez-Thompson. gional Organization of Workers, the International Trade Union If approved, Holt-Baker will become the first black woman to Confederation’s regional organization for the Americas. She also hold a leadership position in the national AFL-CIO. National AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Linda Chavez- will serve as an adviser to state federations and labor councils. Chavez-Thompson, who joined the union movement 40 years Thompson, who resigned as of Sept. 21, was a familiar face in Under the AFL-CIO Constitution, she will become the AFL- ago, is a second-generation American and the daughter of cotton Oregon. Here she talks to union members at the 2005 Labor CIO’s first executive vice president emerita. sharecroppers. She says she hopes she has been able to raise the Day picnic at Oaks Park in Portland. Let me say this about that —By Gene Klare Maintenance workers ratify new pact with Portland Schools by one vote By a vote of 40 to 39, maintenance happening. Wages will increase 1 percent in and construction workers on Aug. 29 “We got some help from some January 2009 and 2 percent in January ratified a new four-year contract at school board members to break 2010. Pay scales range from $18 to Portland Public Schools. through this mess,” said Jerry Moss, about $30 an hour, depending on the The unit of roughly 100 trades chief spokesman for the DCU and a craft. workers from more than a dozen dif- business rep for Plumbers and Fitters Employer-paid health insurance ferent unions bargain jointly as the Local 290. “The school board pushed premiums will be capped at $779 a District Council of Unions (DCU). the district to talk to us and to come up month, which means that out-of- The maintenance and construction with something reasonable,” he said. pocket costs could increase, depending crew had been working under a man- Before the implemented contract, on which health plan a worker agement-implemented contract since DCU members were working under a chooses. The previous cap was $764. June 11. That contract contained no contract that expired Jan. 1, 2006. That Martin Luther King Jr. Day was wage increases and higher out-of- contract had also been unilaterally im- added as a holiday. pocket health insurance costs; it elimi- plemented by the school district and The biggest takeaway, Moss said, nated retiree health insurance alto- contained no wage increases. was elimination of the employer-paid gether, stripped workers of two “Our people haven’t had a raise in a retiree health insurance plan. That will holidays, and it had no expiration date. long, long time,” Moss said. sunset on June 30, 2014. The bloody shirt In April, DCU members rejected Following the contract implementa- DCU members with 15 years’ serv- “THIS BLOOD is on your hands, Joe!” the district’s implemented proposal by tion June 11, Moss said discussions ice can retire at age 60 and be covered That exclamation was shouted at Portland Mayor Joe Carson by strike leader a margin of 80 percent, and by a simi- were held “off line.” The two sides under the school district’s health insur- Matt Meehan as he threw a blood-soaked shirt on Carson’s desk at City Hall on lar margin authorized a strike — the came up with a package that members ance plan for five years — or until they July 11,1934. first such authorization in DCU his- narrowly accepted. Had they rejected become eligible for Medicare. The shirt belonged to one of four striking longshoremen who were wounded tory. After a failed attempt at media- the contract, a 10-day notice to strike Moss estimates that one-third of the that day by the police in a fusillade of gunfire at Terminal 4 in North Portland. tion and a 30-day “cooling off” period, would have moved forward. maintenance crew will retire in the THE STRIKE on Portland’s docks was part of a waterfront walkout at West the district implemented its own terms. The four-year contract provides all next two years. A skilled workforce Coast Ports in July 1934. The number of workers involved is reported in a recent As union officials pondered their DCU members a lump-sum payment that once numbered 400 to 500 mem- two-page feature on California labor history in the Los Angeles Firefighter. The next step, some of the workers at- of $1,000 in October 2007 and an- bers, it’s now a skeleton crew em- award-winning union newspaper said: “In 1934, 15,000 longshoremen along the tended a July 9 school board meeting other check for $1,120 in January ployed primarily to do emergency re- West Coast struck when the owners refused to recognize their union or negotiate to let school officials know what was 2008.