Construction union members Saturday were readying fliers, petitions and signs of support with which to blanket Clallam, Jefferson and Kitsap counties with their message:
Keep the Hood Canal Bridge graving yard project in Port Angeles.
The unionists will draft petitions and post signs in store windows this week urging support of the project on the Port Angeles waterfront.
They’ll collect signatures outside plants at shift changes. They’ll ask church members to solicit help for their cause after Sunday services.
They’ll even ask businesses on U.S. Highway 101 to post the same theme on their reader boards for a day.
And at 6 p.m. Thursday, they’ll hold a rally at Local 1303 Carpenter/Pile Drivers hall, 416 E. First St., Port Angeles.
The union workers want the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe and the state Department of Transportation back to the table to find a way to continue construction of the huge dry dock project.
“It’s jobs for their kids, their relatives,” said Armando Gonzales, a union officer.
100 jobs pending
The graving yard project, priced at $17 million to build before work was virtually shut down in August 2003, would yield about 100 shipyard jobs if built.
By comparison, the proposed Washington Alder LLC sawmill is expected to bring 95 jobs to Port Angeles.
The Rayonier Inc. pulp mill provided 365 jobs before it closed in 1997.
By Saturday afternoon, Gonzales already had passed petitions outside the Third Street Safeway store in Port Angeles. He said he and other workers collected more than 1,000 signatures.
Seventy percent of the people he asked to sign did so, he said.
“And a lot of them want everyone to walk away happy,” he said, meaning both graving yard workers and tribal members.
“I’m not just for the work,” Gonzales said. “I’m for the tribe getting what it wants, too.”
