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Natural
Alliance
Almost a year after Powell's employees joined the International
Longshore and Warehouse Union, the ILWU is working with
employees of another of Portland's signature merchants--Nature's
Northwest. WW has learned that the union is holding
training sessions for store employees.
The local natural-foods pioneers fought an earlier unionization
effort by the United Food & Commercial Workers in 1997.
At that time, Nature's was owned by General Nutrition Corp.
Since then, Nature's has been acquired by Wild Oats Markets
Inc., a chain based in Colorado, and it's hardly a secret
that the business has been in turmoil. Nearly all Nature's
management and dozens of other employees bailed out after
the acquisition, and many of them later joined together
to open New Seasons Markets.
Some of the Nature's employees who stuck around began moving
toward unionization as early as last August, they say, forming
a group called Natural Food Workers United. The NFWU, which
has no legal standing, is led by workers at the Southeast
Division Street store but claims to have support at all
seven Nature's locations.
Workers say that the publicly traded Wild Oats' bottom-line
emphasis has led to heavy employee turnover, skimpier staffing
and a lack of supervisory personnel. Particularly offensive
to employees is a Wild Oats policy of checking employees'
bags when they end their shifts (the company is apparently
worried about theft). Nature's officials did not return
WW's calls.
Fed-up workers say the store is being run like a Safeway
or Fred Meyer by out-of-state owners who don't understand
Portland's environment.
"They're acting like they're the only game in town," says
one Division Street employee who requested anonymity, "but
there are lots of places around here to buy organics."
- -Nigel Jaquiss
F
for Filthy
Last week, Friends of the Earth released a national report
card that measured how well each state regulates polluters.
We got an F.
Under the Clean Water Act, anyone--and we mean anyone--who
is discharging effluent (read: dumping bad stuff) into any
river, pond, creek or ocean in the state has to get a permit
from the Department of Environmental Quality. The permit
holders have to meet limits, standards, rules and regulations
on toxins, temperature and other goodies.
Every five years the DEQ is supposed to review and renegotiate
the permits to track how much stuff is going into the waterways.
It's the kind of information that comes in handy when dealing
with, oh, a potential Superfund listing on the Willamette,
say, or threatened salmon swimming through the middle of
town.
Problem is, according to some environmentalists, we don't
really have it. It turns out that two-thirds of the state's
71 major polluters are operating with expired permits, which
the environmentalists say means the DEQ has been extending
permits without doing a thorough review.
"We have the illusion of data without really having data,"
says Karen Lewotsky of the Oregon Environmental Council,
which monitors water quality for the state.
Mike Llewelyn of the Department of Environmental Quality
Water Quality division says that's hogwash.
"I wish they could do more than this tally," he says. "Implying
we have an environmental disaster because of the expired
permits just isn't true."
Every major permit holder is required to report monthly
to DEQ what they're dumping, says Llewelyn, so there are
no mysteries. The reason the agency is behind on renewing
the major permits, he says, is that it has switched its
focus to the 3,000-some minor permit holders in the state,
who had been overlooked. In a perfect world, there would
be no backlog at all, but that isn't the reality of DEQ,
which continues to be financially strapped.
Oregon's record was the fourth-worst in the country, behind
Washington, D.C. (which let all its permits expire), Nevada
and Rhode Island.
--Patty Wentz
For a complete list of the companies with expired permits,
go to www.foe.org/cleanwater/grades/oregon.html.
THE BIG O MISSION
Writers at The Oregonian forgot to mention a key
detail in an editorial last Wednesday applauding the news
that Portland Family Entertainment had acquired the Albuquerque
Dukes.
"Portlanders ought to be cheering Marshall Glickman's acquisition
of a Triple-A baseball team to play in Civic Stadium," the
paper wrote.
"Play Ball" was at least the fifth editorial endorsement
of PFE's deal to renovate Civic Stadium to appear in the
paper since last July, when the deal was announced. None
mentioned The Oregonian's financial interest in the
deal.
The Oregonian Publishing Co.'s printing plant covers a
city block and a half directly east of Civic Stadium--a
prime piece of property that it wants to unload. As first
reported in a small blurb in the Oregonian business
section on Dec. 25, the company plans to build a new printing
plant in the Northwest industrial district.
Given that PFE and the city plan to spend $37 million renovating
the stadium and more than double the number of paid events
held there, The Oregonian plant's present site will
be in heavy demand. If nothing else, it could make a convenient--and
much needed--parking lot.
Editorial page editor Bob Caldwell says it never occurred
to him that the O might have a conflict. Citing the
separation between the editorial and business sides of the
paper, Caldwell says the relocation of the printing plant
had no influence on his section's opinion pieces. "I don't
have any idea what our corporate plans are," he says, "and
any such plans had no role whatsoever in any of our editorial
considerations."
But another local newspaperman thinks Oregonian writers
ought to be more careful. "They should at least disclose
that they have a direct financial interest in the area,"
says Dan Cook, editor of The Business Journal. "Otherwise
people are going to say, 'What good is their endorsement?'"
--Nigel Jaquiss
Miami Envy
Unless you're a confirmed policy wonk, there's little chance
you'd be familiar with an obscure bit of accounting jargon
known as the AAPCC. But a titanic legal battle is shaping
up around this ungainly acronym, which critics say is cheating
Oregon's seniors--and its health care industry--out of millions
of dollars.
The AAPCC, which stands for "average adjusted per capita
cost," has long been a bedsore on Oregon's healthcare body
politic, because it determines how much money the federal
government pays local HMOs to provide Medicare coverage--a
formula that varies enormously by region. HMOs in Oregon
are paid an average of $420 per member per month, well below
the national average of $505. The fluctuation becomes more
dramatic when you look at smaller areas: in Miami, the figure
is $794; in Portland, just $445. That means next year the
AAPCC will shortchange Oregonians by as much as $276 million.
The result is that seniors enrolled in Medicare HMOs in
areas such as Florida, California and New York enjoy prescription
drug coverage, dental coverage and hearing aids, while their
counterparts in Oregon trudge to the drugstore clutching
their last nickels in their fists.
Adding insult to injury, the 183,000 Oregon seniors enrolled
in Medicare HMOs pay an average of $40 per month in premiums,
while seniors in other parts of the country pay nothing.
"We are not happy," says Ken Rutledge of the Oregon Association
of Hospitals and Health Systems.
Local health-care insiders say the latest numbers are particularly
galling because Oregon is being penalized for its relatively
low-cost health-care system.
"I get angry just talking about it," says Jack Friedman,
executive director of Providence Health Plans.
Things are so bad that Oregon's attorney general, Hardy
"The Hammer" Myers, is now considering teaming up with Jesse
"The Body" Ventura in Minnesota's class-action lawsuit against
the federal government, charging that the formula used to
determine the AAPCC is unfair to states like Oregon. Such
a move would draw roars of approval from local HMOs, hospitals,
doctors and retirees.
--Chris Lydgate
The Bookworm's Turn
Stalemated at the bargaining table, Powell's employees
took their battle public last week. On Friday afternoon,
about 45 picketers showed up at Powell's Internet headquarters
at 40 NW 10th Ave. and blocked the double doors leading
to the loading dock for 21/2 hours.
ILWU organizer Michael Cannarella describes the action
as a legal strike, meant to publicize what he considers
unfair labor practices on the part of management ("Powell's
City Divided," WW, March 15, 2000). "We weren't there
to prevent people from going in and out," says Cannarella.
"We were there to slow progress down."
In that respect, Cannarella says, the picketers succeeded.
Drivers from United Parcel Service and the U.S. Post Office
honored the ILWU picket line. That, in turn, led a Powell's
manager to drive a company van to the loading dock to try
to move outgoing packages himself.
What happened next remains in dispute.
Corporate manager Ann Smith says someone slashed one of
the van's tires, leaving a hole the size of a quarter. Smith,
who says picketers prevented her from entering the Internet
building, called the police and says she'll file an unfair
labor practice complaint with the National Labor Relations
Board over Friday's action. (The union has already file
six complaints of its own.)
Cannarella says Smith overreacted. "I hear someone let
the air out of a tire," he says, "but there were a lot of
people there who don't belong the ILWU, and in no way do
we sanction actions of that type."
The protests may have energized union members, but not
all employees liked what they saw. "I was mad that three
goons, ILWU pawns who have no business even being here,
barricaded the doors," David Weich wrote in a letter to
fellow employees. Weich was so incensed, he says, that he
spent $90 copying the letter and distributing it to employee
mailboxes at several of Powell's seven stores.
The ILWU followed Friday's action with a sick-out on Sunday;
Cannarella says 65 employees stayed home. Although bargaining
continues this week, it seems likely that work actions will
continue.
"This will continue to escalate," Weich predicts, "right
up until when the ILWU has its convention here in May."
--Nigel Jaquiss
Murmurs
SCUTTLEBUTT WITH AN EDGE
Local rockahs The Pinehurst Kids stacked victory
atop victory this week. First, the foursome pummeled a South
by Southwest crowd in Austin, Texas (see Daydream Nation,
page 44). Then the Pinehurst anthem "Viewmaster" hit No.
1 on the Fairly Underground chart, a ranking of singles
spinning on specialty radio shows prepared by music-biz
titan SFX.
Next week, the City Council concludes one of its most contentious
issues of the past year, water/sewer rate reform, and it
appears that the enviro-populists will ace out the business
groups. Comish Charlie Hales has announced he will
join Erik Sten and Dan Saltzman in supporting
a system based "squarely upon the volume of water and sewer
services consumed by each user." Translation: Water hogs
pay more.
It's not as if peace on earth has broken out, but Sunnyside
neighbors emerged from a meeting with Sunnyside Methodist
Church and its allies last Saturday and for the first time
felt that the church would accept stringent terms for keeping
its homeless-feeding program alive.
Rolling Rock Beer is busily soliciting the help
of Portland journalists and scenesters, desperate for ideas
for a series of commercials featuring "two British guys
travelling across the country." Apparently, ad engineers
want their wandering Anglos to check out nightlife hotspots
across the land. No word on whether they'll make it to Chopsticks
Express for karaoke.... On a related note, rumor has
it a new VH-1 series on local scenes may hit Portland
to soak up some of that ineffable Northwest cool.
The new Wieden & Kennedy building received a
big welcome to the neighborhood, Pearl District style. Late
Saturday night, someone sprayed the tag "HUGE" along the
Everett Street side of the building in bubble letters. It's
the trademark tag of Aaron Reimer, who's currently serving
a six month sentence for painting graffiti all over Portland.
This apparent show of support for Reimer extended around
to the 11th Avenue side of the building, where Portland
Institute of Contemporary Art has its gallery space.
Underneath the large gallery windows where the name of the
current show, Fictional Cities, is stenciled, the
taggers sprayed "Fictional Hairstyles." By Monday morning,
the mysterious message had been painted over.
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