Charlie Finger

Maintenance Mechanic, McCall Oil Portland, Ore. Inlandboatmen's Union of the Pacific (IBU)/International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU)

Charlie Finger

The single, biggest reason Charlie Finger wanted a union was the way his terminal manager treated him and the other workers at McCall Oil, a wholesale distributor of fuels and asphalt in Portland, Ore. But for Finger, a maintenance mechanic, and the other 10 McCall employees, the problem wasn't just the terminal manager. They were dissatisfied with unequal pay for similar work, insufficient training for some workers to load and offload vessels on the dock and inadequate safety protections in an often dangerous workplace where heat exhaustion and third-degree burns from high-pressure steam are not uncommon.

"I called several labor lawyers in the phone book," Finger says. "They heard we didn't have a union, and they'd say, 'Too bad, you're screwed.'" He met with the company's president and CEO to air the workers' complaints, but the only result was that "things got worse by tenfold." So Finger got in touch with the Columbia River Region of the Inlandboatmen's Union of the Pacific (IBU), the marine division of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. He knew it well because he'd sailed on tugs organized by the IBU years before. He then reported back to the other workers that "the IBU has the horsepower. They won't give up." Before long, Finger recalls, "the consensus was, 'Let's do it.' All of us signed union pledge cards and we hand-delivered them to the president and CEO."

Soon, management launched what Finger describes as a "union avoidance campaign." He says, "The owner of the company made personal visits to each one of us. We were given a lot of propaganda with the line that 'we're just a little family company and we don't need a third party' and 'the union's just going to cost you money and they can't deliver anything.' It was pretty lame. At least five of us had been union members before, so we knew it was a bunch of garbage."

When the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) held an election, every one of the workers defied management, stood firm and voted to organize into the IBU. In March 2005, the NLRB certified their union. But then, management started resisting much harder than ever. "It was almost as if they decided to fight a rearguard action," says Finger. "They couldn't stop us from unionizing, but they could stop us from getting a contract."

Instead of seriously negotiating a first contract, McCall management used tactics so obstructive that the NLRB issued complaints of the company's unfair labor practices: for example, that McCall "failed and refused" to bargain with the union on such issues as subcontracting and seniority. McCall even declared an impasse when there wasn't one, refusing to negotiate with the union for months.

Finally, workers went on strike to protest the company's unfair labor practices, they won a contract. But a process that should have taken weeks had taken 11 long months with all the hardships of a strike, thanks to management resistance.

After this experience, Finger is a strong supporter of the Employee Free Choice Act, because it strengthens workers' freedom to organize and it provides mediation and arbitration when labor and management can't negotiate a first contract. "Employers now are almost omnipotent," he observes. "Without protections of a contract and belonging to a union, you're at their mercy. The only thing that's going to change anything is the law. It's just that simple."