“Powell’s is a union store,” Powell’s workers had printed in foot-high pastel letters. “We have a contract! Welcome to Powell’s. Ask us about organizing your workplace.”

By a vote of 293 to 37, the workers had just ratified the first contract between Powell’s and ILWU Local 5. The three-year pact covers more than 400 employees at Powell’s seven locations in Portland, Oregon. Eighty percent of those eligible turned out to vote Aug. 9 and 10—and the size of the victory awed even members of the bargaining team.

“I never expected such a landslide,” said Jeff Hensley, who’s worked at Powell’s for almost 16 years. “I was thinking we’d get 60 or 70 percent.”

“It’s thrilling,” said Gin Enguehard, one of the team members from Powell’s satellite store in Beaverton. “Getting a first contract is like falling in love. I’m loco over Local 5.”

Powell’s was the largest bargaining unit organized recently in Oregon, which made the contract victory all the more important, according to Lynn Feekin, a member of the faculty at the University of Oregon’s Labor Education and Research Center.

“You showed that it can be done,” Feekin said. “Organizing a bunch of young people, where there’s high turnover, in the retail sector with one percent union density—it can be done. That’s so important.”

The agreement approved so overwhelmingly by the Powell’s workers met the goals they’d set when bargaining started in September 1999.

It provides an 18 percent wage increase over three years—six percent a year, with three percent coming as a step adjustment and three percent as a cost-of-living increase. Equity adjustments at implementation help longer-term employees who’d been shorted in the arbitrary awarding of raises before the contract. And wages for workers just coming off their trial service period will rise 25 percent over the life of the contract, according to bargaining team member Jim Cowing.

The agreement also secures and improves Powell’s popular health care plan. Before the union election, management had made noises about increasing health care costs, and they kept it up during negotiations.

“They had no intention whatever of giving us anything—in fact they were wanting to take away care,” Hensley said. “Their insurance agent got up in a meeting and said they wanted to build disincentives into the plan so we’d use it less.”

But Local 5 squelched management’s attempt to impose a co-pay for visits to the doctor and nailed down a formula which ties premiums to management’s actual costs, keeping them small and predictable. The contract also exempts $350 worth of check-ups and other preventive care from the deductible, and removes restrictions on use of the vision benefit.

The union came out of the toughest piece of negotiations with union security and agreement on a grievance procedure with progressive discipline and an option for neutral third-party arbitration of disputes that can’t be resolved earlier in the process.

And the two sides developed a unique, Internet-based profit-sharing program. When Local 5 establishes its Web site, it will link to powells.com, the company’s on-line sales outlet. Workers will then get a 10 percent cut of all powells.com sales that come through the union link.

But for many activists, the security and the possibilities a contract brings outweigh all the other gains.

“I want representation and structure,” City of Books worker Mary Zartmann said. “I want to know my rights and act on them and the contract gives me the means to do that.”

Months of persistent, escalating actions and consistent community pressure brought on the seemingly sudden settlement. Workers wore stickers and buttons, chalked the sidewalk and held “read-ins” in the stores. Between October and May they stopped work eight times for anywhere from 10 minutes to two days in protest of management’s unfair labor practices.

“We saw a huge change in what people were willing to do for what they believed in,” said Diane Brodie from City of Books. “We went from all punching out together for 10 minutes to going out for two days over Memorial Day weekend. We learned we can work together and help each other out because we are strong together—and we keep getting stronger.”

Community support played as critical a role in the contract campaign as it did in the union election. Other unionists and community members joined workers in festive, creative pre-Christmas and Valentine’s Day rallies that spilled into the store. The ILWU showed solidarity in full force during the 31st International Convention, marching down to back the workers in a ULP action and recessing the Convention for a 500-strong rally. Hundreds of customers took the pledge to boycott Powell’s if the union requested.

Jobs With Justice, the core of the workers’ community support, organized its first Portland Area Workers’ Rights Board hearing on the Powell’s contract fight. Seven community leaders heard the workers’ case at a packed public forum June 13. Two weeks later, several members of the Board—including State Rep. Diane Rosenbaum and Multonmah County Commissioner Diane Linn—met privately with store owner Michael Powell, a high-profile liberal who sits on several local boards and commissions.

“Everything contributed [to getting the contract],” said bargaining team member John McMahon. “Every day it was something new—death by 1,000 cuts.”

Management unwittingly fueled organizing when it hired union-busting attorney Larry Amburgey as its chief negotiator. His ham-handed insults at the table convinced many skeptics of the need for a union. More than 70 percent of the workers who were not in their trial period signed an open letter in April calling for a fair contract. The letter later appeared as an ad in The Nation.

A gasp of a decertification effort expired in June and with it any hope management might have had that the union would go away.

On the porch of City of Books after the vote count, it certainly seemed Local 5 was here to stay. Powell’s workers and friends clapped and whooped and gave thanks and appreciation to rival the Academy Awards—but this was for real.

“I don’t think the people in the store realize the impact they’ve had on the labor movement,” said Doug Carey of ILWU longshore Local 8. “They’ve held together through thick and thin and came out with a pretty damn good first contract. Now maybe we can go on from here to organizing other places.”

Even in the exhilaration of the moment, some Local 5 members managed a sober look ahead to the next stage of their own organizing.

“The only way we get what’s in that contract is if we stay together and keep on working,” Meredith Schafer said. “The contract is not a gift—we worked for it and we’ll work to keep it.”