Article: The Camas Washougal Post-Record
November 18, 1964
HOW COULD A STRIKE HAPPEN HERE? IT COULDN’T , BUT WE HAVE IT
By Pop Porter
Last Thursday morning at 7 a.m. pickets appeared in front of the Camas Crown Zellerbach mill for the first time in more than 45 years.
The community was stunned.
How could it happen here?
By the time the strike occurred in Camas there were three recognizable factions involved.
There were the men who struck the plant � the AWPPW.
There was the Management.
And there were the men and women who chose to work, even if it meant crossing a picket line.
Each had a simple answer to who was at fault.
The strikers said Management had refused them an honorable settlement.
Management said the AWPPW had made unreasonable demands.
The people who went to work across picket lines said Labor�s leadership had erred; that they had not been given a voice in the decision, and that their basic allegiance was to their families and to their community.
Each answer is undoubtedly an over-simplification.
Truth, if it can be found, seems to be a-stray in a bewildering maze of complexities.
The roots of the problem go too deep to be fully exposed to a single glance.
But the problem first emerged as a three headed dilemma in April of 1964.
William Perrin had been elected a caucus chairman for contract negotiations by members of the Pulp and Sulphite union. He disagreed with Management on ground rules for the negotiations in progress in Portland. An International vice president of his union stripped him of his authority. He with several others walked out.
On May 9, in Olympia, Perrin forme3d the new union named the Association of Western Pulp and Paper Workers.
The representatives of the two international unions who had stayed on in Portland brought back a working agreement that was deemed the best ever offered paper workers.
Perrin asked workers to reject the offer and petitioned the NLRB to have the 21,000 paper workers in 48 mills vote on which union would be the labor�s representative.
Approximately 18,000 voted, and by a majority of 10 to 8 they gave Perrin the nod.
Although the vote was ne3ver broken down into a count by mills it was generally agreed Camas workers had voted overwhelmingly for the AFL-CIO.
On October 28 Perrin and representatives of the new AWPPW began negotiating with Management in Portland for a working agreement. Regional commissioners of the federal Mediation and Conciliation Service sat in on the sessions.
After one week of negotiating the AWPPW and Management were far apart.
On the night of Nov. 5 members of AWPPW local 5, Camas, met and conducted a strike vote. The membership voted 8 to 1 to favor calling a strike if an honorable settlement could not be reached.
The same night members of the AFL-CIO union met in Camas and voted to notify Management they would man the mill if a strike was called.
On Friday AWPPW representatives and Management began to move closer together.
On Sunday a spokesman close to management (who shall remain unnamed) told this reporter: “I don�t expect a strike. We aren�t far apart and it wouldn�t be sound economics to operate behind picket lines.”
Monday the negotiators moves still closer together.
Tuesday morning Hal Zimmerman, publisher of the Post-Record, and G. M. (Jerry) Reed, advertising manager, met with Bill Perrin in the Masonic Temple in Portland where negotiations were being conducted. At noon they returned, hopeful, but worried.
Wednesday this reporter spent all day (from 8:30 a.m. until nearly midnight) in the Masonic Temple talking to Perrin and others present.
Twice during the morning and once during the afternoon Perrin offered “to avoid a strike” to accept the package Management had offered their workers in May when the AFL-CIO was the official representative.
On each occasion S.W. Grimes, spokesman for Management, declined.
At 5:13 p.m. Wednesday Management presented its “final” offered on the disputed “management rights” clause. The wording was rearranged � the meaning was unchanged.
During the afternoon several delegates had been told:
“There is nothing further a delegate can do here. If they sign we�ll phone you. If they don�t the strike deadline is 7 a.m. We want you to be with your men to keep the strike orderly and to prevent violence.”
After several had left a telegram arrived from Washington asking that the strike be delayed until the principals could meet in Washington with Secretary of Labor Wirtz.
Perrin favored the delay, but asked his remaining delegates to make the decision.
The consensus was: The men have been keyed up too long. We couldn�t get the word to everybody on the coast in time, there would be confusion. If an orderly shutdown isn�t affected machines that are important to our jobs will be damaged.
Without a dissenter the remaining delegates voted to begin the strike at 7 a.m.
That�s when it was � at 7 a.m. Thursday morning pickets appeared in front of the Camas Crown Zellerbach mill for the first time in more than 45 years.
Today the principals are negotiating in Washington, D.C. and all three factions hope for an honorable and amicable settlement.
