Don McIntosh

Apprentices from six locals competed (above), and Jose Parra Pineda of Portland-based Local 49 (below in orange) placed first in the advanced category. | Photos courtesy Roofers Local 49

Once again, a union fight has raised standards for non-union workers too. Even as it’s laying off thousands of engineers and managers, Boeing gave a 9% wage increase and a $12,000 retention bonus to production employees at its non-union assembly plant in South Carolina. That bonus is identical to the return-to-work ratification bonus that 33,000 Machinists union members won in November after a 54-day strike. Boeing’s union machinists also won an immediate 13% raise, followed by others that will total 43.65% when compounded over the four-year term of their new contract.

A half dozen members and officers of Teamsters Local 206 gathered outside the Troutdale Amazon Fulfillment Center from sunup to sundown Dec. 19 and 20, waving picket signs and asking drivers to honk their horns as they left the warehouse. It was one of hundreds of Teamster solidarity rallies around the country in support of striking Amazon delivery drivers.

Thanks to end-of-session action by Congress, about 2.5 million local, state, and federal government employees — mostly teachers, firefighters, and police officers — will have their Social Security benefits restored.

In an executive order signed Dec. 18, Oregon Governor Tina Kotek is directing all state agencies — when they award any construction contract or commit funds to a construction project — to require contractors and subcontractors to sign project labor agreements (PLAs) with building trades unions, committing to use union labor. The PLAs have to include a no-strike guarantee and binding procedures for resolving labor disputes, and can’t exclude non-union firms from signing on temporarily. The order applies to all projects where labor is 15% or more of the total cost, but agency directors can ask the governor for exemptions for short-term emergency work and projects that involve only one trade.

Cement Masons Local 555 business manager Geoff Kossak retired Dec. 27. The local appointed business agent José Ávalos Guzmán to serve the two years remaining on his elected term.

Since Donald Trump won the presidential election vowing to carry out the largest deportation operation in U.S. history, members of several Portland-area unions have passed resolutions pledging to defend immigrants generally. The resolutions pledge to mobilize members “to defend immigrants who are under attack either from government raids or racist groups.”

An estimated 5,283 U.S. workers died of injuries on the job in 2023, according to the latest report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, released Dec. 19. That’s down 3.7% from 2022.

It was the least productive Congress since before the Civil War. When it went into its final recess Dec. 21, the 118th Congress had passed just 158 bills in two years. And many of those were uncontroversial and symbolic, like giving Shirley Chisholm a posthumous Congressional Gold Medal or requiring the Treasury to mint coins commemorating the 2026 FIFA World Cup.

“He was a genuinely good man whose post-presidency focus on humanitarian work and championing human rights around the world was deeply inspiring.” So said the AFL-CIO on news Dec. 29 of the death of former U.S. president Jimmy Carter at the age of 100. It was about all the labor federation could say and not commit sins against historical memory.