With the end of a pipefitters and plumbers dispute at Spokane late Tuesday, full-scale operations resumed yesterday at the site of Lower Granite Lock and Dam on the Snake River 32.5 miles downstream from Lewiston.
Although not directly involved, Lower Granite Contractors, the general contractor for the project, was caught in the backwash of the dispute between the union and mechanical contractors in the Northwest, except for those at Seattle.
The pipefitters union placed a picket at the damsite Monday and a number of the 375 workers employed there failed to report for work Monday and Tuesday, despite announcements that neither the picket nor the walkout were union-authorized. Pipefitters had been off their jobs since Jan. 12.
The settlement reached at Spokane provides for fabrication work at shops as well as on the job and a wage boost for plumbers and pipefitters. It will provide a total $2.13 per hour increase for the period ending in May, 1972.
At the damsite, Barney Smith, labor relations manager for Lower Granite Contractors, estimated the walkout may have slowed work toward completion of the concrete batch plant about five days.
Work at the damsite includes completing the aggregate or rock crushing plant and the batch plant, both on the south shore of the river, construction of access roads and haul roads. The contractor also is erecting “whirley” cranes, the large rotating cranes which run on tracks. They will be used in dam construction.
Under present schedules, concrete pouring is to begin in early February. Reinforcing steel now is being delivered to a fabrication yard on the north side of the river.
PACT LAUDED
SPOKANE (AP) — An agreement on liberalization of prefabrication work that ended an eight-day plumbers’ strike Tuesday will benefit the entire cooling, heating and plumbing industry, a contractors’ spokesman said Wednesday.
Max Tonn, Spokane management member of the Washington State Board of Negotiators, said cooling and heating or plumbing systems now can be prefabricated before being taken to the job.
“This will be advantageous to the entire industry,” he said. “Being able to prefabricate systems in contractors’ shops and then move them to jobs will spread work through the winter.”
Settlement of the dispute was announced Tuesday night by Frank B. Hart of Everett, secretary of the board, following a day-long negotiating session. Negotiations had been shifted here from Seattle.
The agreement covers more than 1,200 plumbers and pipefitters employed by 500 contractors in Washington, northern Idaho and northeastern Oregon, includes 300 members of Plumbers’ Local 44 in Spokane, Pullman, Moscow and Lewiston.
This story was published in the Jan. 21, 1971, edition of the Lewiston Tribune.
