Over the years the Labor Press has been blessed with a number of talented and dedicated full- and part-time staffers.
In chronological order they include Alfred D. Cridge, Kelley Loe, Arthur Brock, Emsie Howard, Doris Clark, Ann Beckmann, Jean Soderberg Miller, Buford Sommers, Frank Flori, Bob Hulen, Gail Mason Rosebrook, Mary Lyons (MacKillop), Amy Klare, Debbie Sluyter, Patrick Philpott, Diane Whitehead, and Bonnie Serino. Contributors of articles and editorials have included W.S. U’Ren, Colonel C.E.S. Wood. Tom Scanlon, George Roe, and Tim Nesbitt.
Current staff members are Associate Editor Don McIntosh, and Office Manager Cheri Rice. In addition to reporting, McIntosh, 40, handles the on-line version of the newspaper, as well as some Newsletter Plus pages for subscribing locals. Rice, 56, takes care of the Meeting Notices, classified ads, and bookkeeping. Both came on staff in October 1998 — on the same day. Both are members of Office and Professional Employees Local 11.
Doris Clark was the longest-serving employee in the history of the Labor Press. For 27 years — from 1955 to 1982 — she was office manager, bookkeeper, secretary, reporter, photographer, ad saleswoman, and proofreader. She died in August 2000.
Hulen, Flori, and Sommers had been employed at the Oregonian newspaper before the strike in 1959, and all three worked for the strike-born Portland Reporter before taking jobs at the Labor Press. Buford’s newspaper career extended more than four decades. He left the Labor Press in 1971, when Flori succeeded him. Flori departed to edit the Oregon Teamster, from which he is now retired. Hulen retired from the Labor Press in 1993.
Beckmann left to edit a daily newspaper in Washington and now works at Seattle University in the communications department. Rosebrook, who was on staff during the newspaper’s 75th Diamond Jubilee, went on to become an elected officer at Communications Workers of America Local 7901 and served on the Labor Press board of directors. She worked in CWA’s district office until its closure earlier this year. Mary Lyons, the daughter of Doris Clark, married Ken MacKillop, then president of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 555. He retired and the couple live in Florida.
Amy Klare, who worked in the office as a secretary, later was hired by the Oregon AFL-CIO as research and education director. She now serves as director of the Civil Rights Division of the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries.
Serino left the Labor Press for a position in the communications department at Willamette Falls Hospital in Oregon City. She now lives in Arizona and works at a transit agency in Phoenix.
Philpott, a longtime printer and member of Communications Workers of America Local 7901, was instrumental in computerizing the Labor Press in the late 1980s. He later edited the Union Register, the in-house newspaper of the Carpenters Industrial Council and has since gone to work for the City of Portland. Working with Philpott, Sluyter computerized the newspaper’s system for maintaining subscription lists and processing its bookkeeping and billing. She left the Labor Press after nearly 12 years to start her own business. She returned to the labor movement, first working in the office at the Northwest Oregon Labor Council; then as the elected executive secretary-treasurer of Office and Professional Employees Local 11. Today she is employed by the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries investigating prevailing wage complaints.
