Workers at a Portland barge-maker could soon be union. On Sept. 13, Boilermakers Local 104 filed a petition asking the National Labor Relations Board to hold a union election at the shipyard known as Gunderson Marine, at 4350 NW Front Ave. The unit would consist of about 220 welders, fitters, riggers, crane operators, carpenters, painters, janitors, forklift operators, and others. Workers there speak multiple languages, including Vietnamese, Russian, and Ukrainian.
The Portland company was founded in 1919 by Chester Ellsworth Gunderson as a maker of automotive wheels, and has been making barges at the 58-acre industrial waterfront site since 1947. Originally family-owned, it was sold in 1985 to FMC Corporation, and then to publicly traded Greenbrier Companies of Lake Oswego in 1985. Last year Greenbrier closed Gunderson’s adjacent railcar manufacturing operation and sold the barge operation to newly formed Oregon Green Manufacturing and its owner Marvin “Dee” Burch, who is also president of marine construction company Advanced American Construction.
Local 104 Business Manager Ritchie Browning once worked at Gunderson himself before he got a union shipyard job across the river at what is now Vigor Marine. Browning says Burch hasn’t made it easy for union organizers, but also hasn’t hired union-busters or mounted the typical scorched-earth anti-union campaign.
Browning was on the corner outside the site handing out union fliers when Burch came by and got out of his car.
“I just told him flat out, ‘We’re not trying to make a secret of this. We’re trying to organize you.’ … And he looked me in the eyes and said, ‘If these guys want a union, I won’t get in their way.”
Until the 1980s, Gunderson employees were represented by Boilermakers Local 72 and a dozen other unions in the Portland Metal Trades Council. Today, Browning says Gunderson wages and benefits lag behind the union standard at similar shipyard operations.
No date has been set yet for the election.
