Grit Nation

Team Work Makes a Dream Work!!

October 27, 2020 Paul Philpott Season 1 Episode 3
Grit Nation
Team Work Makes a Dream Work!!
Show Notes Transcript

Welcome to Fight Club. 

Fight Club is the, call to action’ segment within Grit Northwest. 

It’s built to educate and motivate you to fight back against attacks on your right’s as a Union Carpenter to provide for yourself and your family. 

Fight Club is not for excuse makers or finger pointers. 

If standing proud, with your brothers and sisters to protect what we have worked so hard to achieve is not your cup of tea, you can stop reading now.

Fight Club members care about their careers and aren’t afraid to take action to protect it. They don’t assume or expect someone else to do the heavy lifting needed to strengthen their union and better their lives. 

Fight Club members roll up their sleeves and get involved, because they understand and appreciate that a union is only as strong as its members. 

My question for you is, are you ready to join Fight Club?

If so, let’s get to work.

Our guest today is Paul Philpott, political lead for Oregon and a member of the Local 196. Paul will explain the steps used to vet out the candidates that we choose to endorse and why rank and file involvement is crucial to this process.

Show Notes:

NW Carpenters Union Political Recommendations 2020:
https://www.nwcarpenters.org/live-ballot/

For comments, questions or suggestions please email;
GritNW@gmail.com
https://gritnw.buzzsprout.com/

Join the Grit NW Nation  at:
https://forms.gle/WEKcA76y3Wegmv8z7

Grit NW is a proud member of the Labor Radio/ Podcast Network
https://www.laborradionetwork.org/

And if you haven’t already done so please take a minute to post a review on Apple Podcast.

It will help others find the show.

Thank you for your support. Until next time remember to

Work safe, work smart and Stay Union Strong!!!

Joe Cadwell:

Welcome to another edition of Fight Club. Fight Club is the call to action segment within grit Northwest. It's built to educate and motivate you to fight back against attacks on your rights as a union Carpenter to provide for yourself and your family. Fight Club is not for excuse makers or finger pointers. If standing proud with your brothers and sisters to protect what we have worked so hard to achieve is not your cup of tea, you can stop listening now. Fight Club members care about their careers and aren't afraid to take action to protect it. They don't assume or expect someone else to do the heavy lifting needed to strengthen their union and better their lives by club members roll up their sleeves and get involved because they understand and appreciate that the union is only as strong as its members. My question for you is, are you ready to join Fight Club? If so, let's get to work. Welcome to Fght Club Paul.

Paul Philpott:

Hey, thanks for having me.

Joe Cadwell:

Thanks for taking your time to be here. So Paul, as you know, the premise of Fight Club is to identify a threat to our members livelihoods. What is that threat? And how do we address it?

Paul Philpott:

Well, I you know, I would say complacency when it comes to voting, not taking the time to get informed on what candidates are going to be good for carpenters, when we engage our members, typically through hustle or texting or get phone calls, we get a lot of pushback about the presidential race. You know, as a council, we've decided really to focus on more of our state and local races, because none of the states in our council are battleground states, they're pretty much going to vote presidentially how they normally do, but how we can really affect our lives. And our livelihoods is in the state and local races. You know, voting party lines isn't necessarily the best way to go nowadays, you really should get informed on where these candidates stand on our right to collectively bargain and our right to even being a union. You'd be surprised how many candidates you may agree with on some social issues, guns abortion, you know, they may want to take your right to be in the Union away. And so you have to look at it in a way of well, do I want to be able to provide for my family? Or, you know, do I do I care how they stand on some other issues that have nothing to do with my pocketbook? And sometimes our members push back a little bit on our endorsements and say, Well, I don't feel they represent me. And you know my answer to that as well get involved help us make these endorsements, we reach out to our members several times throughout the elections and ask them for help to interview candidates to help us make these decisions. And so we come to these decisions based on, you know, the help we get from our members. So the ones that are they're the ones that help help us make the decision. And so if you don't like the decisions we're making get involved. Help me Help the political team help the other active Carpenter members to make the endorsements. Help us to find candidates that you feel are good, and, you know, bring them to us. Not all these candidates, you know, reply when we ask them for interviews. So, you know, if they don't reply, we can't get their answers. So that you know, that's my call to action is get involved. We need your help. We want your help. We want your voice to be heard. So I had just the other day on the spotlight. I had Haley albs, a seven term apprentice at PNC AI. And Haley got involved. It sounds like back in February, the early stages of vetting out a lot of these candidates, and has been pretty much keeping active with the with the Political Action Group this entire time. She's on her way to Montana right now to work in that state there which has some big races going on for both the governor and senate seat that could go horribly wrong if we don't see the candidates that we have endorsed take office. The reason that being is the candidates that are running against our endorse candidates are more right to work minded republicans in this case, and that's something we definitely want to keep out of our region. Exactly. Yeah. You know, members like Haley chopper smart, Amber McCoy, Jonathan Middleton, and along field a Roy Newton, there's just been John Reynolds, there's just been so many members that have helped out and stepped up, you know, we actually brought on John Reynolds and Haley Alice as pol tical organizers. And they a tually came on staff on a tempor ry assignment, because they w re stepping up and becaus they were just so valuab e. We had to offer them short erm employment with us to help, ou know, fight this fight primar es, we actually had close to 70 f our members come in on one of the first sunny Saturdays we had in a long time. They spent n entire Saturday with us to int rview tons of candidates and he p us make a bunch of endors ments and it was amazing to see that and you know, I really wish COVID Wouldn't have slowed us down with that moment m we had. But we still plug a ong. We have had a lot of member engagement with our endors ment process, we've had a lot of members step up and help us mak phone calls to members, we're p over 30,000 phone calls and do r knocks. Now, this moment m is just building and we really welcome our members that are in erested that maybe want to kno more want to know how we make t ese endorsements and who these andidates are, it would just b amazing to have a moveme t, a real political moveme t, you know, because our jobs a e tied to politics, whethe we like it or not the non un on carpenters out there are no having their jobs attack d every day, by politi ians around this country, but un on members, Union constr ction workers, our jobs are un er attack all the time. And if we let our guards down, just l ke you said, you know, they'r they're having a really hard f ght in Montana right now. If rig t to work comes in, you know, hat's lower wages, you're more l kely to get hurt or die on a j b site, your benefits, if you ev n get to keep them are going o be significantly decrea ed and more expensive. There' just so many things that right o work does that are bad for un on members. Don't use the excuse that you're an appren ice, that you know, you're just an apprentice you can't elp out. I don't buy that. ike I said, John Reynolds and Ha ey aljs are both apprent ces that volunteer their time an prove their worth and have re lly just been amazing to work wi h. chopper, the carpent rs and action political chair m t him when he volunte red his time to go to Las Veg s to get out to vote convent on. And he has just stepped up and has been an organiz ng machine. You know, we need mo e people like that. And we need you. So please, step up and help plan it's a great call to action there for sure. Paul, with one week away, literally one week away from the November 3 election, those members that at this point aren't going to be stepping up to volunteer just can't find the time. What can they do? I understand the council has resources available to us to help them make decisions when it comes to which candidates are more labor friendly, more working class minded. And where would where would our listeners find that information, you should be getting something in the mail, you'll be getting a slate card here any day, if you have not already received it, you could also go on our website, and w carpenters.org. And right there on the front page, you should see a link to the political endorsement. So it'll take you to the live ballot page, you will put in your address. And it will give you everybody that we've endorsed that you should be eligible to vote for it's not going to have everybody on your ballot because we really had to choose the most important races this year. But it should give you a good idea of who we're looking at. We're nonpartisan so you will see people from both sides of the aisle on there. And again, we you know, we came to those endorsements with the help of members. So that's where you need to go that'll help you at least get an idea. So before we wrap up, Paul, that call to action right now is to our members to help out get involved on the front end, make sure that the candidates that you are that are looking out for us are getting your endorsement on the front end. Make sure that if you are have any questions at all about which ballot initiatives are which candidates are more union friendly to consult the the council's information either on the website or look for the slight car that's going to be in the mail. And then finally, the last thing we need to do is make a plan to actually vote. So you should have your ballots now they should be filled out and they should be either in the mail or on their way to being dropped off in person at one of the ballot boxes. Paul Phillpotts thank you so much for being on bike club today. I know you've got a lot of work to do. But thank you again for being on the show. Appreciate it, Joe and you're doing great work with this podcast.

Joe Cadwell:

My guest today has been Paul Philpott Political lead for Oregon. The threat of complacency in this coming election has been identified. complacency at the polls can have real consequences in our ability to provide for ourselves and our families. Both this coming election and support those candidates who have your back. know someone wanting to fight to protect their union. If so, tell them about Fight Club. Be sure to join grid nation by following the hyperlink in the show notes. You will be entered to win and official I've got grid t shirt when you do till next time. This is Joe Cadwell reminding you to work safe, work smart and stay union strong