Q: What's this Rock Out to Walk Out about? Are you guys going to go on strike?
It's not like we're doing this because we intend to strike, it's just a good idea for preparing for the future. It's a celebration of Local 5's 10th birthday, it's of course a fundraiser and it's also a release party for an album that has been compiled with a bunch of Powell's employees who have come together with their bands to reinterpret old union songs from the 20s and 30s. We've produced this album called, "The Little Red Album," which is an homage to the Little Red Songbook. [Check out the MP3 of one of the Powell's employee band songs below the cut!]
Q: So what's your job at Powell's?
I work in the Gold Room of Powell's, that's the SciFi room. As a SciFi fan, it's pretty cool to be working in the largest's SciFi bookstore in the state. We get all kinds of people, looking for all kinds of things from the obscure to the mundane.
How do you feel about working there?
I was born in Oregon and my family moved to Beaverton in 1997, when I was in the 7th grade. I pretty much lived at the Beaverton Powell's, I was just an avid reader. When I got a job at Powell's, it was just awesome.
Q: What are the big issues you guys in the union deal with? What sparked the union to form in the first place?
The biggest issues really boiled down to trying to protect our healthcare. Also, there had also been a wage freeze for the two years before I started, no one was getting raises even thought the company appeared to be doing very well, so well that they began this enormous expansion. There was plenty of money to plan a four story tower on the corner of 11th and couch, but there was no money for raises. People also felt like they had no control at work, like they went from being booksellers intimately involved with the bookselling process to sort of shelving monkeys. As Powells got bigger and bigger, it started to step further and further away from a mom and pop operation to a much more corporate-minded organization.