A statewide labor group will vote Saturday on whether it will ask all public officials including elected representatives and “friends of labor” to boycott the Sept. 14-18 celebration marking the beginning of the removal of the Elwha River dams.
The proposed resolution is one of more than a dozen that will be considered Saturday at the Washington State Labor Council’s statewide convention, which begins today in Seattle.
Lee Whetham, the Olympic Peninsula Building and Construction Trades Council president who is spearheading the boycott effort, said the $324 million dam removals project — the largest in the nation’s history — should not be celebrated because the Park Service didn’t create a project labor agreement.
The proposed resolution urges that wages be governed by such an agreement and asks that Washington’s congressional delegation contact President Barack Obama about its lack.
“With one voice, we ask in support of the affected workforce that all friends of organized labor boycott the Elwha River celebrations,” the proposed resolution says.
A project labor agreement would have further guaranteed workers would receive prevailing wages and benefits, Whetham said.
“It would have been another tool to prevent contractors from stealing from his workers,” Whetham said Wednesday.
“My push has always been for the local workforce.”
The Olympic Peninsula Building and Construction Trades Council is based in Clallam County and also has membership from Jefferson, Kitsap and Mason counties.
The state Building and Construction Trades Council passed a similar resolution Friday.
Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Belfair — who represents the 6th Congressional District, which includes the North Olympic Peninsula — said in a written statement then that he will “work with Sens. [Patty] Murray and [Maria] Cantwell to understand the council’s concerns.”
George Behan, Dicks’ chief of staff, said the congressman supported a project labor agreement, and his office helped get union representatives a meeting with the U.S. Department of the Interior, which oversees the Park Service.
But in the end, Behan said, the department did not support such a move.
Whetham said he is not calling for a general boycott out of recognition that rural areas are “more Republican.”
“It would be nice to get the entire general population to support this, but as [the resolution] stated, it’s friends of organized labor,” he said.
“Historically, our connection is with the Democratic Party.”
Whetham said he contacted Clallam County Democratic Central Committee Chairman Matthew Randazzo.
“I would hope that they would support the boycott but at this point have made no formal request,” Whetham said Wednesday.
Randazzo said Wednesday the boycott has not been brought up for a vote before the central committee and that he did not know if it would be.
Whetham also forwarded the information to state Democratic Party Chairman Dwight Pelz.
“We are not planning on taking any action on this,” Pelz said Wednesday, adding that the dam tear-down marked “a wonderful day for Washington state.”
Whetham said he had not given the information to Terry Nomura of the Jefferson County Democrats because the celebration is occurring in Clallam County.
Olympic National Park spokesman Dave Reynolds would not comment on the potential impact on festivities of a call for a boycott.
Barnard Construction Co. Inc. of Bozeman, Mont., won the $27 million, three-year contract to tear down the Glines Canyon and Elwha dams, beginning Sept. 17.
Company project manager Brian Krohmer has estimated that the company uses 12 to 14 of its own workers, about half of whom will be administrative personnel.
“We have subcontracted a large portion of this project, many of whom are local, thereby greatly reducing the Barnard workforce required,” Krohmer said in an email.
“The total number of workers on site at the peak of construction, including subcontractors, could approach 40.”
Krohmer said local subcontractors include Bruch & Bruch Construction Inc., Northwestern Territories Inc., Straits Electric, Pacific Office Equipment Inc., Star Welding & Wrenching, N C Power Systems and United Rentals, all of Port Angeles, and D&H Enterprises of Forks.
Workers will be paid prevailing wages for the area, a requirement of the federal Davis-Bacon Act, which governs wage structures for public works projects, according to the National Park Service, the lead agency for the project.
Samantha Richardson, a spokeswoman for the Park Service’s Denver Service Center, said in an earlier interview that prevailing wages exceeded $31 an hour for power equipment operators, $35 an hour for carpenters and $40 an hour for electricians.
But Whetham said a project labor agreement guarantees workers will not be “misclassified” to be paid scales lower than what they should be.
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-417-3536 or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
