Labor days

A visit with the angry workers turning Portland into a hotbed of union upheaval

By Sharon Bass

SIGNS OF THE TIMES: BIW workers stand on the picket line outside the company's Portland facility.

Life can suck when you're sparring with the guy who signs your paycheck. Just ask any of the pissed-off employees around Portland. Whether

it's newspaper workers or ship builders battling over contracts and picketing, or nurses agonizing over whether to unionize, they'll tell you, it ain't fun to be on the outs with the boss. It ain't fun toiling in a tense, unhappy shop every day.

It can really do a number on you.

Look at the number it's doing on education editor Tess Nacelewicz. She's been really stressed out over the strife at her place of employment -- the Portland Newspapers. Earlier this year, Nacelewicz came down with a nasty case of shingles. Her workplace distress was the suspected culprit, her doctor told her. (Shingles, also called herpes zoster, is a viral condition that causes painful blistering and often occurs when there's a compromised immune system, which stress can create.) Then nearly two months ago, she woke up with painful neck spasms. Her neck's still hurting her, as is the turmoil in the newsroom.

What exactly is eating Nacelewicz?

The same thing that's eating virtually everyone else in her newsroom: their boss, the Seattle Times Company, which bought the daily newspaper in 1998. According to Nacelewicz and her colleagues, the new head honchos haven't exactly lived up to their promises. Last week, newspaper staffers held an informational picket outside their offices at 390 Congress Street to inform the public about their strife. Another picket was planned for September 20.

"We thought they'd be a great company, family-friendly . . . but they've reduced the number of reporters and we're expected to do the same amount of work," says Nacelewicz, a 10-year veteran of the paper. And the list of grievances doesn't stop there.

She and about 300 other Portland Newspaper employees belong to the Portland Newspaper Guild, a local branch of the Communication Workers of America. Their problems started about three years ago, when their contract ran out. They're still without a contract or a raise.

"This summer we got hit by this horrible contract offer," says Nacelewicz, her pain easily heard. "That added to my stress." The most recent offer, she says, included a tiny raise, about 1.8 percent, offset by an increase in the employee contribution to health-care premiums, and tightened-up sick-leave time, from the current open-ended policy to a max of five days a year.

"You feel like your company is against you," says Nacelewicz. "You feel like they don't think you're worth the money they pay you." Lugging around those bad feelings makes it hard for her to concentrate at work, she says. And she has a hard time leaving her frustration at the shop. Her live-in boyfriend is also a Portland Newspaper staffer. "It'll be a Saturday night and we'll find ourselves in a heated argument over this.

"They may be driving me from what I love," she says bitterly. She's not the only one there who's seriously thinking of jumping ship. In fact, two top staffers, features editor Steve Greenlee and political reporter Steve Campbell, recently gave notice.

"I don't think there's a soul in the newsroom who wouldn't take another job if the opportunity arose. And there are lots of opportunities out there. There's dotcoms out the ass," says Joshua Weinstein, a general assignment reporter at the paper. "I'm telling you they [upper management] have contempt for us." What does that do to a newsroom? "It sucks the soul out of it," he says. "The newsroom is absolutely unraveling. It's a horrible place to be."

Weinstein says he lives with a "free-floating" anxiety now due to all the crap that's going on. "It alters the way you look at your work. I take pride in my work, but the company is telling me I am insignificant. I'm not only mad" -- and boy can you hear the resentment in his voice -- "I'm sad," he says.

Like Nacelewicz, Weinstein says he feels betrayed. "They lied. They came in here and said they value their employees. They constantly said they were good corporate citizens," he says. "I don't like being lied to."

Neither does Steve Vegh, another general assignment reporter at the Portland Newspapers. "I'm definitely thinking of leaving the state," he says, and "I'm aggressively" scanning through job ads online.

Maybe a new job will cure Vegh of the trouble he says he's been having coming up with creative leads to his stories. This has been happening, he says, because he's been so distracted by the turmoil around him. "And I don't appreciate that," he says emphatically.

While Vegh has contemplated relocating to be nearer his wife, who is a graduate student in New Jersey, he says he has resisted the idea because of his love for Portland and his work. But going without a pay raise or contract for three years and feeling betrayed by management "has tipped the scales in favor of moving."

Craig Stanley, Philip Jimino, and John Chase aren't having much fun either, carrying signs on Commercial Street, going without a paycheck, going without health benefits, going without the dignity of having a full-time job.

They are three of the 4800 Bath Iron Works members of Local S6 of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers who have been striking since August 27. They don't like the contract provisions their boss, General Dynamics, has offered -- three times. So they walk and they work here and there, but they are definitely not happy campers. Even a steady flow of passing motorists honking in support, giving them the thumbs up with broad smiles, doesn't seem to buoy their spirits much.

When asked, "Is this fun?" The strikers reply in unison, "Oh, yeah!" But then they start to open up, one by one, and their "Oh, yeah!" attitude dies a quick death.

"I wake up in the morning and [realize] I don't have a job," says a now solemn-voiced Jimino, who's been a painter at BIW for 27 years. "I'm in a depressed mode."

Chase feels he's let his wife down. "We made a decision four years ago for me to be a sole provider so she could run from school to school," says Chase, a carpenter at BIW for the last 12 years. Chase and his wife have five kids between them, and while the kids don't all live with them, his wife is very involved in their schooling and other activities, he says. Now there will be less running around between schools as Chase's wife has to get a job.

Stanley, who's been driving a truck for the ship builder for 18 years, simply wants to know "how much longer this is going to go on." Meanwhile, he's been venting his anger toward the guy who used to sign his paycheck by building driveways and taking down trees. "That pretty much takes care of that," he says.

His comrades are doing the same, otherwise the resentment could consume a guy. "I'm a carpenter," says Chase, " I pound nails." Jimino says he does a lot of painting and a lot of roofing.

September 14 may have been the best day in months for the registered nurses at Maine Medical Center. Even those who were disappointed that their unionizing efforts didn't pay off -- nurses voted 622-509 that day against joining the Service Workers International Union -- felt some relief.

"I used to go out with my friends and go mountain biking," Barbara Senko said on the day of the vote, as she stood under the late-summer sun on the Western Prom. She was on the nurses' union-organizing committee, a job that took up nearly all her time, when she wasn't doing her paying job as an emergency room nurse.

Senko says a union is sorely needed because of staffing shortages and other workplace problems, which management won't fix. Nurses pro and con unionizing agree. They also agree that the old shop just wasn't the same during the campaign.

"As things started heating up, it got more and more stressful," said Senko. "You worry about retaliation. I thought I might lose my job." And this nurse had less and less time to work out as she usually does, in order to work off that stress.

That pre-union-vote tension was felt throughout the hospital, many of Senko's colleagues reported. But for many, the cause of their anger wasn't so much fueled by the boss' laxity in curing what ails their working conditions, but being at odds with their fellow workers "I felt like I'd been badgered by them [union supporters]," said a middle-aged nurse, who was walking toward the hospital's Dana Center to vote. She didn't want to state her name. She said during the campaign she got flooded with letters and phone calls from union organizers. "I don't even want to be here," she said, pointing toward the entrance of the Dana Center. "I love my job. I love being a nurse. I just want this to be over with."

"It's [been] a pain in the ass," said Terry, a nurse in the cardiac surgery recovery unit. Looking relaxed in shorts and a T-shirt on September 14, a day off for her, Terry said she too got lots of letters and phone calls [from union supporters]. But worse than that, she said, "was all the tension going on at work." She flashed a smile to illustrate how she dealt with the constant workplace stress over the last months.

For Shirley Lavoie, a nurse in the cardiac care unit, it went further than "aggravating" letters and phone calls. She says someone from the union came to her home -- during dinner time yet. That was the final straw for Lavoie, who has been going through some personal struggles as well.

"At that time I was sort of considering joining the union, but when she wouldn't leave my doorstep until I signed a union card . . . " Well, Lavoie seems like a tough cookie, and despite the card-toting individual's tenacity, she drove the woman away from her doorstep with card unsigned, and the union undoubtedly lost a vote.

Eventually the fires will be extinguished, agreeable resolutions will be struck -- at least for the meantime -- and the reporters, the ship builders, and the nurses will toil away as they did before things got out of hand. Well, maybe not exactly as they did before. See, once there are wounds, it may be unlikely to have a full recovery.

As Portland Newspaper's Nacelewicz puts it: "I'll feel happy if we get a decent contract, but I'll never trust them again." n

Sharon Bass can be reached at sbass1@maine.rr.com.