Zack Culver was reelected as business manager of Laborers Local 737 in April alongside other officers who ran unopposed. They were sworn into three-year terms at a May 21 membership meeting at the union hall at 17230 NE Sacramento St. in Portland.
Local 737’s roughly 2,900 members do an extraordinary range of work in construction, public works, shipyards, and even manufacturing. Most are in construction, working in demolition or asbestos abatement, cleaning construction job sites, serving as traffic control flaggers, handling materials and carrying hod for other construction crafts, or raking asphalt on road crews. About 600 are employed on public works departments of small cities like Joseph, Union, Drain, and Cottage Grove, or at manufacturers like the Ash Grove cement plant in Durkee or the CertainTeed asphalt roof tile plant in Portland.
As business manager, Culver is responsible for their wellbeing — advocating for public and private projects that will employ members, securing wage increases in contract bargaining, and overseeing union-sponsored health and retirement benefits. He’s been the top officer of Local 737 since its creation in 2015 as the merger of three locals.
In Culver’s next three-year term, getting members back to work will be one top priority. Amid higher tariffs and interest rates and economic uncertainty, the construction industry is in a lull right now, and roughly 250 to 300 of the local’s 2,900 members are on the union’s out-of-work list waiting for dispatch to their next job. That’s a higher rate than usual, but not as high as past business cycle downturns. The current downturn follows an unusually long construction boom period of about 15 years.
“We went so good for so long,” Culver told the Labor Press. “I’ve been in for 29 years. I’ve seen downturns before, and I think we’ve gotten better at it, where the lows aren’t going to be as low as they have been in the past.”
This is the first downturn since 2015, and the union’s merger that year may help spread the work around now: Members in Western Oregon who are willing to travel have opportunities to be dispatched to work on wind, solar, and data center projects within the local’s jurisdiction in Central and Eastern Oregon.
Culver said another concern will be health insurance. Local 737 partners with participating employers to provide high quality full-family insurance to members and their families. But hospitals have lately been negotiating higher rates with insurers, and that’s likely to lead to increased costs. As business manager, Culver serves as union trustee on the union’s health and welfare and pension trusts.
As for the pension, it’s in the best shape it’s been in years. Increased investment earnings, hourly contributions, and work hours have enabled the pension fund to increase its benefit accrual rate from $40 every 1,000 hours in 2015 to $100 today, more than doubling the benefit that members earn. Thanks in part to robust investment performance (last year investment return was 13%), the fund was deemed 111% funded in its most recent annual evaluation. Not only that but in 2021 the local resurrected employer contributions to a long-dormant 401(k). Contributions started at 25 cents an hour and are now $2 an hour. The union-sponsored 401(k) is seen as a supplement to the guaranteed benefits of the union’s defined benefit pension plan.
Culver also said he hopes to get members more engaged through Labor Rising, an internal organizing campaign promoted by Local 737’s international union. Some of that could be turning out together for union nights at Winterhawks hockey games. Other times it might be doing political work.
Local 737 has consistently gotten top honors from the Oregon AFL-CIO for doing the most volunteer door knocking and phone banking shifts in the federation’s political mobilizations. That’s been a priority, Culver says, and he puts in the hours alongside other volunteers.
“I think you have to lead by example,” Culver said.
The goal is then to use that political muscle to win gains for members and working people as a whole.
“We focus on stuff that’s going to position our members to get more work, like requirements for project labor agreements, or labor standards as a whole being lifted up, requiring full family health care — things that put us and our contractors in competitive advantage,” Culver said.
Culver and other Local 737 leaders will soon be preparing for new contact negotiations. All the Local’s major collective bargaining agreements with employers are coming up for renewal next year, with existing agreements set to expire June 1, 2027. As of June 1, the typical journeymen laborer in Local 737 earns $42.74 an hour. That’s up more than $16 an hour since 2015.
Besides Culver, Local 737’s other newly sworn in officers are:
- PRESIDENT Matthew Jensen
- VICE PRESIDENT Dagoberto Aranda
- RECORDING SECRETARY Mario Calderon Jr
- SERGEANT-AT-ARMS Jontae Clardy
- AUDITORS John Hanner, Donald Percifield Jr, and Christine Reed
- EXECUTIVE BOARD Salvador Cortez, Earl Browning IV, Brian Davidson
- DISTRICT COUNCIL DELEGATES Zack Culver, Jeffrey Gritz, Dagoberto Aranda, Matthew Jensen, and John Hanner
