Office and Professional Employees International Union (OPEIU) Local 11 has hired longtime union organizer Pedro Olguin to help grow the local’s membership.
Olguin, 43, has a bachelor’s degree in political science and joined Local 11 after 13 years on staff of Teamsters Local 117 in Washington. He’s been part of the labor movement for as long as he can remember. At age 17, he helped unionize coworkers at an immigration nonprofit. Local 11 represents about 1,500 workers in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and Utah, including workers at Northwest Natural and office workers at unions, nonprofits, and local governments.
AFSCME members at the City of Portland, Prosper Portland, and Port of Portland have a new union rep. Patricia Loving comes to Oregon AFSCME from Washington Federation of State Employees (WFSE), the AFSCME state council for Washington, where she supervised union reps and support staff in Seattle. Prior to that, she served for more than a decade as a shop steward at the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services.
At Oregon AFSCME, Loving will represent Local 189 at the City of Portland, Local 3769 at Prosper Portland (Portland’s economic development agency), and Local 3220 at Port of Portland (airport parking control workers). In total, she’ll be responsible for the wellbeing of about 1,300 workers, leading bargaining, mentoring shop stewards, helping the units sign up new members, and representing workers in grievance hearings.
Loving, 54, was born and raised in Portland, and her mother and two sisters — both AFSCME-represented workers for Multnomah County — still live in the Portland metro area.
Oregon AFL-CIO has a new deputy political and legislative director. Tan Perkins, 27, has a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Oregon, and comes to the state labor federation after serving about a year as the director of New Oregon Movement, a collective of Black and Indigenous People of Color organizations. Before that, Perkins was political director of Our Oregon, a union-backed political strategy group. At the Oregon AFL-CIO, Perkins will help advocate for labor-backed bills in the legislature, and support affiliated unions with political candidate endorsements.
After seven years serving as labor liaison to U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Dan Mahr is starting a new venture as a government affairs consultant, where he’ll advise clients on how to access federal grant programs. Mahr has a bachelor’s degree in political science from University of Iowa, and came to work for Merkley after managing several Oregon ballot measure and candidate campaigns. He also served seven years as field specialist and regional director of Working America, the AFL-CIO’s community affiliate for pro-union individuals who don’t have a union in their workplace. Merkley is one of the foremost labor champions in the U.S. Senate, and Mahr made sure he stayed up to date with what mattered to the union community back home. He also worked behind the scenes to support Merkley’s success in getting labor standards in the big infrastructure spending bill. Merkley is looking for a new labor liaison.
Oregon State Building and Construction Trades Council and the Columbia-Pacific Building Trades Council are sharing a new full-time political and special projects coordinator. Hayley Watson has a bachelor’s degree in human resource management from Portland State University and formerly worked for SurveyMonkey. She’s no relation to her predecessor in the job, Teri Watson, but she is the sister of Oregon AFL-CIO Research Director Chelsea Watson.
