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A 12-foot inflatable rat showed up last week at the Milwaukie headquarters of the R.B. Pamplin Corporation.
That company, run by industrial and media investor Robert B. Pamplin Jr., owns 24 Oregon newspapers, including the Portland Tribune, and subsidiaries such as Ross Island Sand & Gravel Co.
The rat came courtesy of International Union of Operating Engineers Local 701, whose members are working on the reclamation of Ross Island after 75 years of mining. James Anderson, business manager and financial secretary of Local 701, says his union wanted to express displeasure that Ross Island allegedly owes workers more than $450,000 in unpaid benefits.
The union has regularly sued Ross Island in the past over late payments, a sign of the company’s financial struggles (“Trader Bob,” Feb. 23, 2022).
“We exercised our First Amendment rights to notify the public that Pamplin is a bad player,” Anderson says. “They flipped out.”
Anderson says Pamplin officials called police, but when officers determined the rat was on public land, they allowed the protest to continue. Anderson says the rat may visit other Pamplin properties if Ross Island doesn’t meet its obligations.
Pamplin officials didn’t respond to a request for comment.
