By DON McINTOSH, Associate Editor
David Neal’s 20-month fight for reinstatement ended with a crash.
Neal, 37, is a telephone fundraiser who believes passionately in the union movement. He helped win a 2012 campaign by workers at the Portland call center of PIRG-affiliated Fund for the Public Interest to join Communications Workers of America (CWA) Local 7901, and then became an active volunteer on the union contract bargaining team. Then on Nov. 6, 2012, he was fired on a string of trumped-up accusations.
[pullquote]I wanted them to be forced to do the right thing.” — fired telephone fundraiser David Neal[/pullquote]Neal, unlike at least 12 other pro-union workers fired by the Fund for the Public Interest, was able to prove to a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) agent and a federal judge that his union activism was a factor in his firing. The judge ordered the Fund to reinstate Neal with back pay, but the Fund appealed to the NLRB’s five-member board in Washington, D.C. The Fund lost there too, and then appeared to defy a May 2014 Board order for reinstatement. The Fund wanted Neal to accept a financial settlement in return for waiving his right to reinstatement, but Neal refused.
“I wanted them to be forced to do the right thing,” Neal said. “I wanted to go back.”
But in early morning July 5, Neal and his fiancee Stephanie Castillo were heading home on his 1982 Yamaha motorcycle after a night out watching fireworks. As they stopped for traffic on Southeast Milwaukie Boulevard and Ochoco, a Ford Explorer SUV plowed into them. Neal and Castillo survived the crash, but suffered significant injuries. Castillo stayed in the hospital 10 days with a shattered pelvis, a broken ankle, and two fractured vertebrae. Neal was in the hospital three days with a concussion, four fractured vertebrae, and head lacerations. On release, she’s in a wheelchair, and he’s walking with a cane, and they have months of recovery ahead of them. Pondering medical bills and lost wages, and with two teenage sons to support, Neal decided to accept the settlement.
The terms of the settlement, approved in mid-August by the NLRB and CWA Local 7901, are that the Fund pay Neal $19,088 of backpay and interest, plus $7,000 for waiving his right to reinstatement.
“David would be coming back to work if it weren’t for that horrific accident,” said CWA Local 7901 President Madelyn Elder. “The NLRB found the Fund in the wrong. They wrongfully fired him, and they need to stop discriminating against union people.”
