Workers at Portland barge-maker Gunderson Marine and Iron voted to remain non-union, with 73% voting no in an Oct. 23 election on whether to join Boilermakers Local 104. The tally was 64-170, and turnout was high: 94% of the 248 eligible voters cast a ballot.
The union defeat came three weeks after Gunderson hired a Lakeway, Texas, union-buster, Employer Labor Solutions, which held on-the-clock anti-union meetings in the workplace, relying on workers to translate the anti-union boilerplate into Vietnamese, Russian, and Spanish.
The company, founded in 1919, has been making barges at the 4350 NW Front Ave 58-acre industrial waterfront site since 1947. Workers there were union-represented until 1985.
“We really don’t have a reason to introduce the union here and bring another party into the decision making process and separate our employees from our leaders,” said Gunderson owner Dee Burch in a video appealing to workers to vote no.
“The relationship is solid,” Burch says as he walks through the shipyard on camera. “It’s absolutely critical to what we do, and we just don’t need a third party involved in that. All that’s going to do is add complications and disrupt the excellent communications that we have right now.”
Lately Gunderson has won several big government contracts, including $43 million to construct an Antarctic barge for the U.S. Army and $33 million to build a ship the U.S. Navy will use for target practice.
See Gunderson’s anti-union video here.
