Over the years the Labor Press has been blessed with a number
of talented and dedicated full- and part-time staffers.
In chronological order they include Alfred D. Cridge, Kelley Loe,
Arthur Brock, Emsie Howard, Doris Clark, Ann Beckmann, Jean Soderberg
Miller, Buford Sommers, Frank Flori, Bob Hulen, Gail Mason Rosebrook,
Mary Lyons (MacKillop), Amy Klare, Debbie Sluyter, Patrick Philpott,
Diane Whitehead, and Bonnie Serino. Contributors of articles and
editorials have included W.S. U’Ren, Colonel C.E.S. Wood.
Tom Scanlon, George Roe, and Tim Nesbitt.
Current staff members are Associate Editor Don McIntosh, and Office
Manager Cheri Rice. In addition to reporting, McIntosh, 40, handles
the on-line version of the newspaper, as well as some Newsletter
Plus pages for subscribing locals. Rice, 56, takes care of the Meeting
Notices, classified ads, and bookkeeping. Both came on staff in
October 1998 — on the same day. Both are members of Office
and Professional Employees Local 11.
Doris Clark was the longest-serving employee in the history of the
Labor Press. For 27 years — from 1955 to 1982 — she
was office manager, bookkeeper, secretary, reporter, photographer,
ad saleswoman, and proofreader. She died in August 2000.
Hulen, Flori, and Sommers had been employed at the Oregonian newspaper
before the strike in 1959, and all three worked for the strike-born
Portland Reporter before taking jobs at the Labor Press. Buford’s
newspaper career extended more than four decades. He left the Labor
Press in 1971, when Flori succeeded him. Flori departed to edit
the Oregon Teamster, from which he is now retired. Hulen retired
from the Labor Press in 1993.
Beckmann left to edit a daily newspaper in Washington and now works
at Seattle University in the communications department. Rosebrook,
who was on staff during the newspaper’s 75th Diamond Jubilee,
went on to become an elected officer at Communications Workers of
America Local 7901 and served on the Labor Press board of directors.
She worked in CWA’s district office until its closure earlier
this year. Mary Lyons, the daughter of Doris Clark, married Ken
MacKillop, then president of United Food and Commercial Workers
Local 555. He retired and the couple live in Florida.
Amy Klare, who worked in the office as a secretary, later was hired
by the Oregon AFL-CIO as research and education director. She now
serves as director of the Civil Rights Division of the Oregon Bureau
of Labor and Industries.
Serino left the Labor Press for a position in the communications
department at Willamette Falls Hospital in Oregon City. She now
lives in Arizona and works at a transit agency in Phoenix.
Philpott, a longtime printer and member of Communications Workers
of America Local 7901, was instrumental in computerizing the Labor
Press in the late 1980s. He later edited the Union Register, the
in-house newspaper of the Carpenters Industrial Council and has
since gone to work for the City of Portland. Working with Philpott,
Sluyter computerized the newspaper’s system for maintaining
subscription lists and processing its bookkeeping and billing. She
left the Labor Press after nearly 12 years to start her own business.
She returned to the labor movement, first working in the office
at the Northwest Oregon Labor Council; then as the elected executive
secretary-treasurer of Office and Professional Employees Local 11.
Today she is employed by the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries
investigating prevailing wage complaints.
