AFSCMELOCAL 88

www.afscmelocal88.org503-239-9858 • 1-800-792-0045

6025 E Burnside, Portland, OR 97215

PAGE 4 NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS JANURAY 4, 2013

General membershipmeets 7 p.m.Wednesday, Jan. 16, preceded by 6p.m. stewards meeting. ExecutiveBoardmeets 6:15 p.m. Wednesday,Feb. 6. Retireesmeet 10 a.m. Tuesday,Jan. 15. Call Michael Arken for infor-mation at 1-800-521-5954 ext. 226.Meetings are at 6025 E. Burnside St.,Portland.

AFSCME Local 88 Calendar

AFSCME Local 88 held its annual hol-iday party at the Portland AFSCME

office on Wednesday Dec. 19, hosted bySusan Palmer, Local 88 Secretary, andDeirdre Mahoney-Clark, Local 88 VicePresident.Over a hundred people attended the fes-

tive event, including Santa (also a memberin disguise), who delighted the many chil-dren attending with their families. Mem-bers and their families were greeted withdoor prize tickets, gifts of a 2013 labor cal-endar, a Local 88 pin and new Local 88lanyard and ID badge holder. AFSCMEgreen will be visible in many more officesaround the County as proud memberswear their ID. Door prize drawings were held every 15

minutes with special guests assisting ouremcee, member Jackie Tate. Jeff Cogen(Multnomah County chair), Steve March(Multnomah County auditor), Beckie Lee(chief of staff for Commissioner Kafoury),Steve Herron (labor relations director), andSanta each took a turn at drawing ticketsto award door prizes of $20 gift cards toFred Meyer or $10 gift cards to Burgerville.An assortment of hot and cold appetiz-

ers, salads, desserts and beverages were en-joyed, all wonderfully coordinated byNicole Newsom. Gary Sinnen and KorieErickson tended the beverages bar with anassist by Percy Winters, one of our neweststewards.Tasty food, music, laughter and the

chance to visit with member friends andco-workers was the order of business during

this fun evening event. Three candidatesrunning for Oregon AFSCME Council 75officer positions also came to the party:Mark Abrahams, running for Council 75treasurer, and Council 75 president candi-dates Jeff Klatke and Tina Turner-Morfitt.Having the chance to meet new mem-

bers and re-connect with others is one ofthe best parts of our annual holidayparty. The officers and Executive Board ofLocal 88 thank everyone who attended,with a special thanks to those who volun-teered to plan this event and also stay afterto help clean up.

Nominations and elections Oregon AFSCME’s biennial convention will be April 19-21,2013 at the Riverhouse Hotel and Conference Center inBend. The Convention Call was sent out on Dec. 3 and all in-formation is posted on the Council 75 website. Nominationsof six delegates to represent Local 88 (in addition to the Local88 officers) will be taken at the Jan. 16 general membershipmeeting after 7 p.m., and an election will be held at the Feb.20 general membership meeting after 7 p.m.

Annual holiday party

Vol. 114, No. 1 Portland, Oregon January 4, 2013

Official Publication of AFSCME Local 88

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LABORPRESS

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2012 was a year mixing successesand setbacks for organized labor, bothnationally and locally. President Barack Obama was re-

elected with union backing, but imme-diately after the votes were in, unionleaders felt a need to mobilize to pushhim, and Congressional Democrats, notto mess with Social Security orMedicare as part of a “fiscal cliff” com-promise.Labor failed in its effort to recall

Wisconsin’s Republican GovernorScott Walker — who made war on pub-lic employee union rights in 2011. Butthree months after Walker beat back re-call with 53 percent of the vote, a statejudge struck down parts of the law.And in December, a lame duck Leg-

islature passed a law, with little publicnotice, making Michigan the 24th“right-to-work” state, or as one pro-union legislator put it, “a right-to-free-

load” state. Right-to-work laws makeunion dues strictly optional, eventhough unions are bound by law to rep-resent all workers in a workplace.In Chicago, a weeklong strike by

26,000 public school teachers in Sep-tember dealt a partial blow to a corpo-rate reform agenda for schools. Later,voters in Idaho and South Dakota re-jected anti-teacher reforms.But at bankrupt Hostess Brands,

management responded to a weeklongprotest strike in November by membersof the Bakers Union by closing the 85-year-old company for good, putting thecompany’s assets up for sale and lay-ing off close to 18,000 workers.

In Oregon, unions lost some hard-fought campaigns, and won others:• Dosha Salon Spa, an Aveda-

branded salon chain that unionized in2011, fired several union supporters in2012, and campaigned to decertify the

union; predicting certain loss, Commu-nications Workers of America (CWA)Local 7901 called it quits after failingto secure a first-time union contract.• At TriMet, an arbitrator picked

management’s offer over the union’s,leading the transit agency to demandworkers pay up to $7,080 for retroac-tive health insurance premiums. ButAmalgamated Transit Union Local 757challenged that in court, and won sev-eral partial legal victories in a set ofcases that are still pending.• At Cascade Steel Rolling Mills in

McMinnville, about 300 members ofUnited Steel Workers Local 8378 gotannual raises of up to 2.5 percent aftera 12-day strike, but also paid more forhealth coverage.

New union members:• In March, 1,912 University of Ore-

gon faculty unionized with AmericanAssociation of University Professors.

• In July, 500 Portland security offi-cers joined Service Employees Local49 at four companies that agreed to“card check” union recognition: Secu-ritas, ABM, G4S, and AlliedBarton.• In November, TriMet Lift workers

at a long nonunion unit of contractorFirst Transit voted 111-31 to join ATULocal 757.But at BrucePac, a Willamette Val-

ley cooked meat and poultry processorwith 284 workers, a three-year-longcampaign to join the Laborers Unionwent down by more than 3-to-1 in aJuly union election.And in November, a group of 600

support staff at St. Charles MedicalCenter in Bend voted 334 to 212 to gononunion Nov. 1. Workers voted nar-rowly in January 2011 to join ServiceEmployees International Union (SEIU)Local 49, but never got a union contractin the course of more than 40 formal

negotiating sessions.

Portland City Council made somepolicy changes that will benefit work-ing people:• In September, it approved a model

“community benefits agreement” thatcommits to build city projects withunion labor, and to use minority work-ers and contractors.• And in November, it voted to issue

50 taxi permits to Union Cab — anewly-formed driver-owned co-op thatis affiliated with CommunicationsWorkers of America Local 7901.

The recession seemed to end formany local building trades workers aswork boomed at Intel’s giant new man-ufacturing facility and in projects build-ing a “cloud” of computer data centersin the high desert of Central Oregon.In July, Coquille Valley Hospital

Volume 114Number 1January 4, 2013Portland, Oregon

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InsideInside MeetingMeetingNoticesNotices

By DON LOVINGTuesday, Dec. 11, 2012, is a day that Jeff Campbell

and his co-workers at the Clackamas County Depart-ment of Communications Center will never forget. Thecenter, colloquially known as C-COM, was thrust intothe national spotlight when Jacob Tyler Roberts openedfire inside the Clackamas Town Center shopping mall,killing two people and seriously injuring another, be-fore taking his own life.The first call came in at 3:29 p.m.“It’s not all that unusual for someone to call in to say

they heard a shot fired, or at least thought they heard agunshot somewhere,” says Campbell, a veteran C-COM9-1-1 dispatcher and longtime member of Oregon AF-SCME Local 350. “But then immediately there was asecond call, and a third. You can see calls build on thescreen for the same event, so it didn’t take long for all ofus on the floor to know what was happening: there wasan ‘active shooter’ at the Clackamas Town Center.”For 10 minutes, calls came fast and furious … from

people running out of the mall, from people in the mall,people in stores, people in hiding, and then, quickly,from people tending to victims.“We were quickly triaging calls,” said Campbell. “We asked,

‘Did you see anything, or did you just hear the gunshots?’ ‘Are youhiding?’ ‘Are you barricaded?” ‘Do you believe you’re safe?’ If theyfelt safe, we encouraged them to stay put and wait for emergencypersonnel.”It’s the kind of situation no one wants to be a part of, but Camp-

bell says he and his colleagues were prepared for the task.“It’s a credit to our union that we were able to respond as we

did,” says Campbell. “That fact is undeniable. It was fortunate theevent happened near a shift change, so we even had some extra peo-ple on hand. But we’ve fought tooth and nail over staffing here atour center (for years). Adequate staffing levels at any 9-1-1 centerare a perpetual issue, but we’re in pretty good shape here because ofour union.”As the event unfolded, Campbell says it took about an hour be-

fore dispatchers could figuratively take a breath. C-COM typically

receives 200 to 300 calls per day; they fielded over 100calls in the first 10 minutes after the shooting. For the daythey totaled 546 “emergency” calls, another 600 that wereclassified as “non-emergency” plus 72 classified as “fire”calls, many of those also attributable to the Town Centersituation.“Of course, while this was going on, we were still re-

ceiving other, ‘regular’ 9-1-1 calls,” said Campbell. “Wehad to dispatch those as well. I’m proud of all of us hereat C-COM. I believe we handled the situation profession-ally, and we handled it well.”Campbell says dispatchers have had some limited “tac-

tical dispatch training” geared toward an event of the mag-nitude of the Town Center shooting, but for the most part,he and his colleagues relied on their regular training.“It’s pretty much the same thing, just on a bigger

level,” he said. “Again, the union deserves credit on thatpoint. (Union leaders) were dogged over the years in de-manding training. Our contract includes required train-ings, and we even have a training coordinator in our bar-gaining unit. We have a good relationship withmanagement on the training issue today, but that’s due tothe union’s insistence on the topic in previous years.”

Campbell, who’s been a 9-1-1 dispatcher for about 17 years, hasbeen in his share of prickly situations. He says Clackamas Countydispatchers receive a “wide gamut” of call types, including theirshare of Mt. Hood-related search and rescue operations.“But this event goes right to the top,” he said. “It’s the situation

you never want to have to deal with. But we did, and again, we did

At Clackamas Town Center

AFSCME 9-1-1 dispatchers first to respond to mall shooting

Jeff Campbell, a member of AFSCME Local 350 at his Clackamas County 9-1-1dispatch desk.

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2012 — A YEAR OF SUCCESSES, SETBACKS FOR LABOR