Ridenbaugh Press/Northwest

If you’ve been around downtown Portland the last couple of weeks, you’ve seen something unusual – visual evidence of a labor strike (other than by teachers, which isn’t so rare). In this case, the strikers are members of the carpenters union (in western Oregon and southwestern Washington), primarily dry wallers, and they’re striking principally in seeking a pay raise.

They produced a video showing – for those who haven’t seen – what some of the activity looks like.

We asked Zack Knowling, the consultant who sent along the link to the video, about the status of the strike, and his reply this afternoon suggests it might not be over soon:

“As far as I know, there have been no formal negotiations, nor have none been scheduled, between the carpenters and the contractors. However, if you check out www.nwcarpenters.org, you will see strike updates that show some contractors peeling off from their parent organization to sign interim agreements with the union. So headway is being made, but the carpenters are still waiting on the official word from the contractors association that they are ready to negotiate a fair contract.”

Strikes are more or less the ultimate weapons labor has, and they have been but barely used in most industries in recent decades – a measure, in considerable part, of the decline in clout of organized labor. (Those who remember back to the middle part of the last century recall a time when strikes weren’t rare at all.)

So we’ll keep watch to see how this one goes. No doubt, plenty of other people will as well.