Nope. Longshore Workers Did Not Endorse Anti-Worker Smith in Oregon

by Mike Hall, Oct 14, 2008

A U.S. Senate candidate who opposes the Employee Free Choice Act sure as heck wouldn’t win the union movement’s endorsement. After all, the legislation would level the playing field and allow workers to chose to join unions without the pitched anti-union battles so many employers launch.

But just last week in Oregon, Sen. Gordon Smith (R), who is in a tight re-election battle with Jeff Merkley (D), speaker of the state House of Representatives, implied he had won the backing of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU). Smith opposes the Employee Free Choice and holds a sorry 24 percent lifetime voting record on working families issues.

The next morning, ILWU Local 8 members set the record straight on the Portland docks. Take a look at the video and be sure to send the link to any friends and relatives in Oregon.

Jerry Lawrence has seen Smith operate during his 12 years in the U.S. Senate and isn’t impressed.

To me and what I’ve seen—and I’ve lived here all my life—I’ve never seen him come to the aid of the working class people.…Everything that Bush implements, he follows along with it. Look at our economy now. It’s going down the tubes. We’ve got to have a change.

ILWU President Jeff Smith says Merkley has been “a great friend of labor” and thanks to him:

Longshore workers will qualify for unemployment insurance benefits if our employer locks us out again like they did in 2002. Plus, Jeff Merkley is right on all the issues—health care, fair taxes for working families, ending the war in Iraq and protecting Americans’ union rights.

For more on Sen. Smith from Labor 2008 in Oregon, click here.

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Paid for by the AFL-CIO Committee on Political Education Political Contributions Committee, www.aflcio.org, and not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.

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