(The Associated Press distributed the following story on July 8.)
PORTLAND, Ore. — Unemployed union steamfitters, electricians and plumbers are protesting Georgia-Pacific’s decision to hire a nonunion contractor with out-of-state workers to expand its paper mill on the lower Columbia River.
The decision comes after Georgia-Pacific won a $12 million tax break to add a $200 million tissue-paper machine to its Wauna paper mill. The mill, 56 miles northwest of Portland, is part of an enterprise zone, a statewide economic development tool used to attract investment.
The enterprise zone agreement imposes no hiring conditions during the 15-month construction phase. It does require Georgia-Pacific to work through local employment agencies to fill most of the 110 permanent jobs the expansion will create. The agreement also requires the company to pay permanent workers 150 percent of the area’s average annual wage, or at least $41,500 a year.
Union members said they see construction workers driving trucks onto the site with license plates from Colorado and southern states and working for less-than-union wages.
Some union members recently went to work on the site for $22 an hour, union representatives said, compared to the $30-an-hour wage demanded at other union jobs.
Officials from the company and the main construction contractor said about 80 percent of the site’s construction workers live in Oregon or Washington.
But the union outcry prompted commissioners from Clatsop and Columbia counties, which have double-digit unemployment rates, to urge Georgia-Pacific Chairman A.D. ”Pete” Correll to change the project’s hiring practices.
Dick Wenger, the mill’s manager, told Clatsop County Commission Chairman Helen Westbrook that the mill provides the area with more than 1,000 jobs paying an average of $60,000 a year. The new jobs will be on top of that.
Last month, the Senate amended Gov. Ted Kulongoski’s economic development package to address union concerns by permitting local governments to negotiate for prevailing wages during the construction phases of projects built in enterprise zones.
Lawmakers must now resolve differences between the House and Senate versions of the governor’s plan.