Unemployment ranges up to 60 and 80 percent in other trades here. “When you have unemployment for that length of time,” says Earl Kirkland, “it backs you up against the wall.” And some, like Barbara Walters, come out fighting. Much of her time these days she spends coordinating Fair Job Committee activities. Ten years ago Walters embarked on what she assumed would be a promising career as a steamfitter, working as an apprentice, taking the required two classes a night for four years to get her license, all while being a single parent. By mid-May, she hadn’t worked a day since the third week of January. She got in only six months of work last year, five months the year before that. “This is the worse year I can remember at the union hall,” she says. “We’ve had guys who’ve worked on every nuclear plant on the West Coast, heliarc welders who worked on the Space Shuttle project down at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. These guys are the best welders on the Coast. You should see their work—every bead perfect, like a work of art. “And yet they’ve been idle for months, they can’t get work. Unless they’re willing to forget about their pensions, work without benefits, take huge pay cuts, turn their back on the union and sign up with one of these non-union companies.” As union welders sat idle this winter, Mount Hood Community College, working with the Port of Portland, the state employment offices, and the Private Industrial Council, was busy training their replacements. That program, under the watchful eye of a Brown and Root welding foreman, was ostensibly set up to help dislocated workers get back in the job market—it provided Brown and Root with 14 welders for the ARCO project. As Barbara Walters sees it, “ My own tax dollars are helping to make it possible.” ARCO’s contractors might soon have to stop using unskilled non-union electrical workers on its Oregon projects, however. In an opinion issued in April, State Attorney General David Frohnmayer said that the modules constructed here are subject to the state’s electrical codes. The opinion means, among other things, that ARCO would have to use a higher ratio of licensed electricians on these projects than it has so far. And that means using more union labor, since few licensed electricians in this state are not union members. ARCO, in turn, threatened to take future module contracts to Washington or California, which exempt module construction from their building codes, unless Oregon’s law is changed. It’s Union-Bustin’ Time ■ n Coos Bay, ARCO awarded a $10 million contract to construct 39 methane modules— part of a backup safety system for oil-pumping operations in Alaska's frigid North Slope—to a non-union, Houston. Texas-based firm called KRI Constructors Inc. Last October 19, soon after the firm began work at the Coos Bay site, Plumbers and Pipefitters Local 51 filed petitions for a union election. The election, held in February, proved a landslide for the company: of 82 eligible to vote in the election, 66 voted against the union. These results were hardly surprising, however, giver?the efforts the company made to thwart the union drive. Soon after the union petitions were filed last fall, the company began evaluating its workforce, employee by employee, firing any with suspected union sympathies. A National Labor Relations Board (NRLB) inquiry and a civil lawsuit ensued. The company had allegedly “engaged in surveillance of employees and their union activities to determine their union sympathies.” In late October, the company fired 42 workers “either because they were suspected union supporters or because they were non-union employees selected to cover up the discriminatory motive behind the layoffs,” according to court documents. After the layoffs, the company upped its wage rate and offered travel bonuses to entice Southern workers to the Coos Bay site. One local resident stated, “That’s when Texas plates started showing up all over town.” The company's actions might not have come to light had not its construction supervisor, Travis Ballard, filed a $3.5 million suit against KRI for firing him this spring. Ballard ' alleged that he was fired in part because he had told company superiors that if called to testify before the NLRB, he would testify truthfully. Late in April, only days before Ballard was to give his deposition, KRI settled with him for an undisclosed sum. However, largely based on his testimony, the NLRB has filed complaints of unfair labor practices against the company, and hearings are set for late in June. Such action by the NLRfe is becoming pretty rare in the second term of the Reagan presidency. But as plumbers union business agent Charles^Morgan put it, “you have to understand there was some pretty outrageous conduct here." The most bitter irony in this struggle is that the Port used tax dollars to entice ARCO and its contractors. At a packed hearing in early April, Steamfitters Local 235 Business Agent Wally Mehrens asked the Port commissioners point blank, how they could “encourage, actually subsidize in a roundabout way, these types of contractors. ” With perhaps a decade worth of module projects from other oil companies still looming on the horizon, the question has long-range implications. Bill Fast, a sympathetic Port Commissioner, explained that though ARCO had given the Port verbal assurances it would use local labor in its projects, “the arrangements with the subcontractors is between ARCO and the subcontractors. We would rather have local people do the work. But with the bidding process and everything else, our hands are pretty well tied.” Earl Kirkland doesn’t buy that explanation. “The commissioners in Seattle and Tacoma had leaned harder on ARCO to go with local union companies. We obviously didn’t get that kind of cooperation down here.” The unions got no more cooperation later in May when Lockport Marine Company, an open-shop subsidiary of Lockheed Corporation, asked the Port for a work agreement and lease on shop space on Swan Island, in order to bid on Navy construction work. Union members strenuously objected, arguing that the company would drive down area wages, and might prove fatal to the Port’s union- izejd ship repair tenants. The Port needs about $90 million a year more in contracts to break even. The commissioners approved Lockport’s proposal to bring in this badly needed revenue. Union members saw the 5-3 vote as another large step toward an open shop. Maintaining a stable, local workforce should be a key concern of future efforts by labor, the Port and other government bodies. No one would like to see a reprise of the violent ‘30s labor demonstrations. But even more ominous is the arrival of this “Sduthernization,”.the open shop, which will ultimately undermine the income levels of us all. “People should understand,” said George Smith on the Swan Island picket line, “that we are only the first line of defense. If we lose here, everybody else in this region, whether they know it or not, are going down with us. Peter Dammann is a free-lance writer living in Portland who has contributed to In These Times, The Progressive and Willamette Week. BREITENBUSH ^HX COMMUNITY^ HOTSPRINGS RETREAT CONFERENCE CENTER RETREATS Summer is the perfect time to be in the mountains. Walk on trails through camp surrounded by the roar of the river, the sound of wind in tall trees and the sweet smell of fir. The gong summons you to meals in the old lodge and hot mineral waters invite you to relax. CONFERENCES We schedule workshops and conferences on a wide variety of subjects. Write to us for a complete calendar or to arrange a group event. 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