ped quality control inspectors. “If they ever get a license to operate that plant,” one worker told a CBS television crew, “it’s criminal, because it’s structurally unsound.” A quality control inspector told the same crew that project inspectors had “threatened to kill me” if he did his job too zealously. Brown and Root’s work on the Comanche Peak Nuclear Plant in Glen Rose, Texas left six workers fatally injured on the job. It seems safe to say that the company’s safety procedures are among the most slipshod in the construction industry. (The Dallas Times Herald noted that Bechtel, a San Franciscobased union contractor, had but one fatality on 20 different nuclear projects during the same period.) Brown and Root’s long history is littered with charges of fraud, corruption and bid-rigging. Founded in the early 1900s by George and Herman Brown and Dan Root, the company hitched its 17-mule operation onto the pork barrels of the New Deal, the cold war and Vietnam to become one of the largest construction companies in the world. George Brown, a close friend and the principal bankroller of Lyndon Johnson (Oregon Senator Wayne Morse used to refer to his Senate colleague as the “Senator from Brown and Root”), parlayed that connection into hundreds of millions in defense contracts, building military bases for NATO and the Pentagon in Europe, the Pacific and Southeast Asia. During the Vietnam War, the company was one of four which shared in $1.6 billion of military construction there. General Accounting Office reports of “missing millions” and other irregularities in Brown and Root’s contracts did little to slow the flow of federal mega-bucks into company coffers. During the ‘60s and ‘70s, the company diversified quickly into the booming offshore oil construction business. In 1979, the company was fined $1 million, the largest ever levied by the Federal Trade Commission, for conspiring in restraint of trade in construction of oil and gas rigs in the Gulf of Mexico during that period. Brown and Root paid out an additional $14.5 million to plaintiffs in 66 civil suits which grew out of the same situation. At the Port of Portland, Brown and Root is winding down its project. The completed modules are due to be sealifted to Alaska this summer. But just up North Channel Avenue, Daniel International is still gearing up for its project, which at its peak will employ some 800 workers. In the signs fastened to the tall chain fence surrounding its 23- acre construction site, Daniel InternaThe unions agreed to a twenty percent slash in the wage scale and a number o f other concessions to make Portland look attractive. The ARCO bonanza seemed a godsend—a $40 million project employing a peak workforce of 1100. tional does not mince words: “employees are prohibited from soliciting or distributing literature on company property during work time. . Security is authorized to inspect all persons, vehicles, lunch boxes, packages and bundles at our discretion. Employees who . . . refuse to searches will be terminated. Daniel has its own long and interesting history of anti-unionism. Charles E. Daniel, who founded the South Carolina company in 1934, is best known for his successful efforts to convince Northern textile industries to ditch the unions by moving South. Not surprisingly Daniel made his fortune building mills for the South’s booming new textile industry. In 1977, after it was purchased by the Fluor Corporation, one of the nation’s largest engineering/construction companies, Daniel’s long antipathy towards organized labor was reaffirmed. Until his death last year, Fluor Corporation founder and president Robert Fluor was a major bankroller of the new right political movement, and sat on the board of the conservative Heritage Foundation, the think tank whose theories became policy with the election of Ronald Reagan. Daniel’s history is also checkered with labor law violations, charges of bid-rigging, fraud and using high ratios of nonlocal workers on its construction projects. Former Breadwinners ARCO’s use of non-union contractors prompted the Northwest Oregon Labor Council to add the oil company to its “do not patronize” list this winter. The Fair Jobs Committee continues to picket selected ARCO stations and AM-PM Markets. “We’re trying to let the community know what is going on here,” explains the committee’s unofficial spokesperson, Richard Crabtree. “And we can do things as a group that unions can’t get away with under federal labor law. We’re trying to do this without confrontation, of the physical type. Believe me, if I wanted to round up some guys with axe handles to go bash in some windshields,” he says, referring to the Swan Island demonstrations, “I would have had no problem." Crabtree may talk like a maverick. And with his busy grey beard, set off by his closely cropped, nearly shaved hair, he looks like one too. But sitting in his Portland home, clad in bluejeans, a plaid flannel shirt, cowboy boots—his bronze “NRA Life-Member” belt buckle gleaming like a piece of jewelry—Crabtree in other ways seems about as solidly all- American as they come. Antique china and crochet work, passed down from members of his family who settled in these parts generations earlier, adorn the counters and table tops of the living and dining area. A large stereo consul and a color television with VCR attachment dominate the living room. Crabtree’s home, located in one of those pleasant, solidly middle class Southeast Portland neighborhoods, seems evidence enough that this is one part of the country where a steamfitter, electrician, plumber or other blue collar worker could earn enough from his trade to buy a piece of the American Dream. Crabtree knows that is changing. “I’m one of the fortunate ones,” he says.” The house is paid for, the kids are grown and gone. I’d rather be working, but we can get by pretty well on what my wife makes.” “Other guys in the local,” he continues, “are losing their homes, everything they have.” The second and fourth Thursdays of each month, families of unemployed union craftsmen begin lining up at the Shipwrights Hall on North Lombard. By 12:30 p.m. when the doors open, they are often 400 strong. Within an hour, the stores of government surplus cheese, butter and grains—and canned goods donated by union members still lucky enough to be holding a steady gig—have been distributed. Many of the former breadwinners of these families have been out of work as long as two years. Local 48 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, for example, has a third of its 1400 members out of work, and that doesn’t include many who are working only one or two days a week. Tropical Breezes and Culinary Treasures LIVE MUSIC 31Northwest First Avenue - Portland. Oregon Between Couch and Burnside in Old Town - 223-9919 CLUB * HANK’S FRANKS Hours: 11AM-10PM Closed Sundays 3302 S.E. Division Portland, Oregon 233-7617 A Hot Dog With Class BUY ONE CHICAGO HOT DOG & GET ONE FREE WITH THIS ADU Clinton St. Quarterly ■ ■ _ i 43
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