Support Growing Seeds Workers

Last month I made passing mention of union organizing at the Growing Seeds North preschool in Portland on this blog. I sought to put that good work in a larger context and pose some questions for us to think about.

The Northwest Labor Press is running an article on the plight of the families and workers at Growing Seeds as the preschool has shut down and paychecks have bounced. The article by Cameron Crowell says the following:

The Growing Seeds North preschool at 6505 NE MLK Blvd. shut its doors July 18 after owner Nashae Lightbourn stopped paying bills, leaving its 16 teachers without final paychecks and around 50 families scrambling to find childcare. Teachers, who are represented by International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 5, told parents of the schools’ dire financial situation after their July 12 paychecks bounced.

Growing Seeds became the first preschool to join ILWU Local 5 when workers at its three locations voted to join in March 2020. But in March 2022, owner Kyrie Eppley sold off each location as an independent business. The Crystal Springs location at Reed College became Wander in Wonder, Growing Seeds Irvington was renamed Flouriche, and the Northeast MLK Jr. Blvd location was dubbed Growing Seeds North.

After Lightbourn took ownership of Growing Seeds North in 2022, teachers noticed common areas at the school getting dirtier, plants dying, and trash overflowing. Late or short paychecks became a regular occurance, says ILWU Local 5 Childcare Organizer Nat Glitsch. Then on May 31 staff were told the school was downsizing after getting evicted for not paying rent at one of the buildings on campus. The union says workers discovered the owners had stopped paying bills to janitorial contractors, healthcare premiums and workers’ comp insurance, along with the rent for their main facility for months.

“We are NOT asking you to work for free,” said Growing Seeds manager L.T. Lightbourn, the owner’s spouse, in a July 18 all-staff email that was shared with the Northwest Labor Press. “We are simply saying if you still believe in (Growing Seeds) and would like to help us keep moving forward please help. We will inevitably have to close our doors if we are unable to provide care. The truth is I can not give you a firm date on when funds will be released.”

Lightbourn did not respond to requests for comment before going to press.

The preschool hasn’t opened its doors since. On July 26, an email signed “Growing Seeds North,” informed staff they were laid off. Teachers have not received their last paychecks. Local 5 is helping workers file wage claims with Oregon’s Bureau of Labor and Industries, and collecting online donations to help the laid off teachers at gofundme.com/f/help-gsn-teachers- recover-unpaid-wages.

Union preschools

ILWU Local 5 represents workers at seven Portland pre-schools.

* Wild Lilac 3829 SE 74th Ave.

* Wander in Wonder (formerly Growing Seeds Crystal Springs) – 2808 SE Steele St.

* Joyful Noise Downtown – 333 SW 1st Ave., Suite A

* Joyful Noise CityKids – 138 SW Clay St.

* Joyful Noise Metro – 600 NE Grand Ave.

* Joyful Noise East – 911 NE 11th Ave.

* Flouriche (formerly Growing Seeds Irvington) – 2808 NE MLK Jr Blvd.

KOIN TV ran a report by Ariel Salk and Aimee Plante on Growing Seeds on August 2 under the headline Teachers, families in financial ‘scramble’ from preschool’s abrupt closure that quoted teachers and parents speaking about the sudden closure of the center and also gave the gofundme information. One of the parents is quoted in that story as having said, “To disrespect us in such a way, to like, just refuse to communicate, refuse to apologize, refuse to be transparent is just – I mean – it’s angering. It’s disappointing." Those words no doubt cover much of what the workers are thinking and feeling as well.

The Growing Seeds owners and management look terrible here no matter how we slice the bread. Securing help and redress for the affected workers and families is the immediate task. I hope that readers will donate to the gofundme account. The bigger task is to sort out how, or if, unions can organize workers in preschools of this kind and what that unionism might look like and how it might relate to the communities that those schools serve. I can't help but think that what has happened with Growing Seeds makes for a strong argument for government contracting in of daycare and education.   

Join Bill Fletcher, Jr., Rebecca Mills, Manuel De Paz and Prof. Peter Cole for a virtual discussion about the ILWU’s 1980 courageous defiance of the government order to send weapons to the brutal El Salvador regime.

Join Bill Fletcher, Jr., Rebecca Mills, Manuel De Paz and Prof. Peter Cole for a virtual discussion about the ILWU’s 1980 courageous defiance of the government order to send weapons to the brutal El Salvador regime.

Tuesday, April 23, 2024, 5:00 pm PST

Drop a line to sheard2001 at gmail.com for the Zoom link. 

Read the true story in the powerful historical novel Presente - A Dockworker Story, available from Hard Ball Press and your favorite independent bookseller.

Hard Ball Press to issue a powerful historical novel about west coast longshore workers

Hard Ball Press publishes great books for working people. Here is an announcement of a forthcoming book that you won't want to miss.

In December, 1980, an officer with the longshoremen’s union in San Francisco learned there was a shipment of military weapons on the docks waiting to be loaded onto a ship bound for the fascist government of El Salvador. Ronald Reagan had just been elected president on a right wing, pro—fascist agenda. The El Salvador government was murdering thousands of its citizens.

Herb Mills, an officer in that ILWU Local, proposed that the union refuse to load the weapons -a direct violation of their union contract that could lead to the officers going to jail and the government taking over the union.

Could they stop the shipment and keep out of jail?

Out of his personal diary and historical union records, Mills fashioned Presente, A Dockworker Story, a fictional account of that campaign. The names have been changed, but the courage and the daring of the union men and women have not.

Release date: March 7, 2024

The Northwest Labor Press reports on some union wins and on-going struggles

The Northwest Labor Press is reporting several important union victories and on-going struggles in our region. Each link below contains a line from a Northwest Labor Press article and will take you to their great coverage of the events and the issues involved.

There are some common threads here. In most cases workers took risks in organizing, they reached out to coworkers and discussed the issues confronting them, the risks lessened as the heat in the workplace increased, and action followed. Action may not always bring home the goods, but not talking, acting and organizing will always lead to a loss. 

* About 20 Multnomah County dentists represented by AFSCME Local 88 ratified a new contract Dec. 6.

* Mechanics who maintain equipment at the Coffin Butte Landfill in Corvallis ended their strike Nov. 13 after two months on the picket line.

* International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 5 reached a second tentative agreement with Powell’s Books on Nov. 22, about a month after workers rejected a previous offer from the independent bookstore. 

* Oregon Tradeswomen reached agreement with Machinists Local Lodge 63 on a first union contract. Ratified by workers Dec. 7, the three-year agreement takes effect Jan. 1. It spells out cost of living raises, establishes basic union rights like “just cause” discipline, and locks in an existing four-day 32-hour work week. Workers did agree to give up one unusual perk, the right to take up to a month of paid personal leave.

Photo from the Northwest Labor Press/Don McIntosh

I want candidates, elected officials, union leaders and union activists to read this

Janice Fine , Mark Engler and Paul Engler recently published an article in the Boston Review that was picked up by Truthout and posted there under the headline Government and Grassroots Unite Against Labor Violations. The article-interview reviews what I think are commonsense points about how Labor and government can partner to work on enforcing legal protections for workers and talks about the concept of  "co-enforcement," which is a bit deeper and more complicated than it sounds.

Janice Fine says, "The idea is that if you really want to enforce labor law in a systemic and strategic way, then you have to have the knowledge of the workers. You need that tacit knowledge to understand what’s really happening at an individual workplace — and more broadly than that, to understand the labor structures and schemes that are specific to a given sector. But in order to access that knowledge, you need to have groups involved who have built relationships and built the trust needed for workers to be willing to come forward" early on in the interview. She later goes on to distinguish between "thick" and "thin" enforcement.

Fine also says, "Whenever we start working with an agency, at the state or local level, we say to them: “Your job is not to play whack-a-mole. Your job is to think about how you can permanently raise standards across a sector. If you want to reach the workforce, you have to be in relationship with whoever the workers trust — particularly when it comes to undocumented workers.” We want them to see individual complaints not as the end, but as indications of something deeper — to see how they often connect to broader problems. Agencies need to think about what interventions would have ripple effects across the sector. And they should see that they have a role and responsibility in permanently raising standards. I bring up all this because I’ve found that even when progressives take over these agencies, if we haven’t given them a way to think about this stuff, they default to how it’s always been done." 

There have been moments our labor history---in the 1940s and again in the 1960s and 1980s---when some progressive voices in Labor talked seriously about worker/union safety committees having the right to shut down unsafe work areas, strike over health and safety violations, and have a "community steward" system in place in which Labor allies with community organizations who are concerned about the environmental impacts of polluting factories and unsafe working conditions. The organizations would jointly process complaints and represent their allied interests much as unions might represent workers in grievances. I think that we need to explore and act on this now.

Of course, we need government officials who will cooperate with us, or listen and learn from us. If they won't cooperate, we need to know how to browbeat them into cooperating or how to work around them. That gives us an interest in progressive politics. We're talking here about community and working-class health and safety and well-being, not factional politics. 

We need to be able to speak independently of candidates for public office and officeholders and the political parties and from a place that solely represents working-class and community interests. And we need to do this without getting coopted by the boards and agencies that we need to push hard on. How is it that the soil in Marion County is contaminated with pesticides, that truck and auto pollution are greater in working-class areas than elsewhere, and that we have on-going fights over the disposal of medical waste and Labor is largely silent and not allied with the community organizations taking up these issues? And how is it that we have many good union people serving on boards in our region who do not get the training and support from our unions that they need to be more aggressive and to organize us to support a strong push for better community and workplace health and safety?

Most unions do a great job on steward training these days. But so long as we keep serial violations of our safety and health and well-being within the confines of our grievance procedures and contract negotiations, and so long as we can't strike over health and safety and worker and community well-being and don't build relationships with people outside of our workplaces and unions, and so long as we refrain from taking united action, we're fighting with on hand tied behind our backs. The United Mine Workers and the Longshore Union (ILWU) have taken great steps in these areas over the years. Others should get on board.

Please give the article a read.     

The opinions expressed here are not those of the MPYCLC or the Oregon AFL-CIO.

From SIMIAN