Powell's Books trying to stifle organizing drive by ILWU

By DON McINTOSH, Staff Reporter

The worker-led campaign to organize Powell's Books is heating up. Store owner Michael Powell has retained attorney Howard Rubin of Amburgey and Rubin for advice, and the store is employing orthodox measures to persuade some 325 employees that the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) is not for them.

Between Nov. 19 and Dec. 3, at least eight employee meetings were held, at which Powell spoke about the union and responded to questions, the Northwest Labor Press was told.

"We do not believe that a third party in the form of the Longshoreman's union (or any other union) is needed here," wrote Powell and managers Miriam Sontz and Ann Smith in one of six letters mailed to workers since Nov. 2.

Powell has it wrong. The workers ARE the union. The ILWU was chosen by a committee of several dozen workers who went "union shopping" to find the best union to help them pursue a campaign that the workers would lead.

The ILWU offered them the chance to charter a new local, writing its constitution, setting officer duties, and so forth. That factored heavily in the workers' choice to go with the ILWU, said organizer Michael Canarella.

In the company's Nov. 25 letter to employees, the truth was as torn and frayed as the cover of a used paperback. Workers had posted a pro-union handout in the day book at Powell's Beaverton store, noting, among other things, that the president of the ILWU took a pay cut in order to serve, and that he makes less than Powell's marketing manager. [It's true - according to Canarella, the international president of the ILWU collects a salary of $72,800; Powell's marketing manager can make as much as $83,200 a year.] In management's five-page point-by-point rebuttal, Powell, Sontz and Smith charged the union with misrepresention, adding that the president of the International Longshoreman's Association made $302,324 in 1997. Accurate enough, but the ILA is a different union, representing mostly East and Gulf Coast longshore workers. It's the ILWU that Powell's workers are choosing as their representative.

One might think Powell, a commissioner of the Port of Portland, would know the difference between these two entirely distinct unions. The store did issue a Nov. 27 letter correcting the mistake.

Powell seemed to take it personally that workers want to organize. "Does it upset me? You bet it does," he told the NW Labor Press. "I care a lot about the staff."

"I respect the right of the workers to join a union, but I don't think it's the right answer," he said.

But whether Powell likes it or not, the store's worker-organizers have been keeping busy. The campaign has almost majority support among employees, Canarella said.

To take the campaign public, the organizing committee is planning a "button day," when pro-union employees will wear union buttons to work. They're also producing brochures that say "I'm for the union," with employees - many of whom are in their 20s - photographed and quoted.

As in so many recent organizing campaigns, community support may be a key to success. At a Dec. 10 labor/human rights rally at Lewis & Clark College, Powell's worker-organizers were honored, and Powell was lambasted.

Canarella thinks Powell's benefits substantially from a positive public image of its owner; fear of tarnishing that image may prevent the company from committing some of the worst anti-union abuses.

"He really cares about what people think about him," Canarella added.

The ILWU is working closely with the Workers Organizing Committee on the campaign, which assigned a staff person to help and lets workers use its office at 74 E. Burnside as a meeting place.

The AFL-CIO has lent support, scheduling a special one-day organizing training in mid-November for Powell's employees at which trainers from the labor federation's Organizing Institute were brought to Portland.

One of the trainers, AFL-CIO Western Regional State Director Jean Eilers, was involved in an early '90s attempt to organize Powell's with the Oregon Public Employees Union. Eilers said when unionists at that time presented a "Justice Doctrine" to Michael Powell, he went ballistic. A number of employees resigned in disillusion after the campaign failed.

Canarella says it failed because support was strong at the West Burnside store, but not at other locations. This time, support is more widespread.

Canarella says for Powell's, unionizing could be advantageous. There are 18 million union workers in the United States. As a union store in a non-union industry, Powell's could benefit from patronage by pro-union consumers through its growing Internet sales.

On the other hand, if management gets its hands dirty fighting an organizing attempt, the store could suffer as consumers avoid the store, Canarella pointed out.