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New Voices at AUD construction trades conference.
by Carl Biers

Fair hiring, fighting pension abuses, and a Bill of Rights for Building Trades Unionists were up for discussion at AUD's national conference of construction workers in Brooklyn, November 8 and 9.

The 100 plus unionists -- Carpenters, Pipefitters and Plumbers, IBEW electricians, Operating Engineers, Sheet Metal Workers, Laborers, Ironworkers, Bricklayers, and Teamsters -- came from around the country to attend the first national intertrades conference on problems of rank-and-file building trades workers since AUD hosted a similar event in 1986.

The conference revealed that, in those sixteen years, a new generation of courageous, independent-minded, construction unionists has come forward. Among them at the sessions were activists who successfully fought to remove repressive clauses from union constitutions; the business manager of a reform Laborers local; leaders of the national reform movement in the Carpenters; the insurgent candidate for president of the Plumbers and Pipefitters who garnered 40% of the votes at its recent international convention; an insurgent elected to the executive board of a big IBEW local; local union officers and members battling for fair hiring, safe work sites, and honest unionism.

At the plenary panel on Saturday morning, speakers posed the key subjects for discussion at the following sessions: Mark Brenner, economist, reported that years of decline have reduced union density in construction from 40% to 18% today. Tom Robbins, labor writer for Village Voice, spoke of the pervasive corruption in the New York City building trades. Edgar Pauk, an expert pension attorney, described how many pension funds penalize workers who have gaps in service, a frequent fact of life for construction workers.

Susan Cranmer, a leader of the Carpenters for a Democratic Union in Boston, reported that her group conducted a grassroots campaign that convinced council delegates to elect the CDU-supported candidate to the top office in the New England Carpenters Council. Rick Garrett, executive board member of IBEW Local 58 in Detroit, described his local's fair job-referral system, which is kept honest by a vigilant membership, emboldening them to speak up at meetings and run for office. Herman Benson emphasized the remarkable progress that has been achieved in building trades reform. In the past, he said, construction unionists would have risked expulsion simply for attending an event like this; now reform movements are proliferating throughout the building trades, attracting many courageous activists like those here.

The conference concluded Saturday night with a plenary discussion of AUD's proposed Bill of Rights for Building Trades Unionists. The draft was received with enthusiasm as the first attempt to summarize the concerns of workers in all the trades. Let's begin, was the consensus, by distributing it at union meetings, posting it at work sites, and circulating it on the internet. (Contact AUD for an 11 x 17 inch poster of the Bill of Rights.)

Workshop Reports
by Andy Piascik

Survival and Solidarity Workshop: Mike Orrfelt led a discussion on day laborers and temp workers in construction at non-union, lowest-cost wages. Management calls the shots and decides who works and at what rate. The difficult task is to unionize all construction work and make sure that those who have been historically excluded from the trades have equal access to good union jobs at union rates.

Carlos Canales spoke about his experience in organizing day laborers in Long Island through his job at the Workplace Project. With power in the hands of management, day laborers have to fight hard to win improvements that unionized construction workers take for granted. Paula Lukaszek reported on her work with the Northwest Labor Employment Law Office, a Seattle-based organization that campaigns for greater inclusion of women and people of color in construction. LELO has been successful in working with unions to put pressure on the industry to achieve its aims.

Pension rights, wrongs , and reforms featured Edgar Pauk of the New York Pension Rights Center; and Bob Fitch, labor journalist. Pauk, who had addressed an earlier plenary session, explained, in greater detail, how companies and unions often cheat workers of some, or even all, of their pensions. Few attorneys know pension law, he noted, so that workers often don't know where to turn for help. His organization is one of the few that has sued successfully to recoup pension money. Construction workers at the workshop said they could use what they had just learned to launch movements for pension reform in their locals; others reported on successful campaigns in their locals on pension issues.

Fitch reported how union officials sometimes use pension money as capital for investments that benefit themselves and their cronies. In the building trades, where federal oversight is minimal, this practice is especially pronounced. As many building trades unionists have discovered, luxury hotels and casinos get built, pension fund loans are never repaid, and the funds face staggering losses, even bankruptcy.

Toward fair construction hiring

Hiring hall referral abuse and the employers' arbitrary right to reject are fundamental obstacles to unionism and democracy in the building trades. These subjects were seriously discussed at the AUD construction conference.

Union officials often wield substantial control over who works and who doesn't. Rick Garrett, executive board member of the member IBEW Local 58 in Detroit, noted that where fair hiring does exist, members feel free to speak up at meetings, run for office, and exercise their full range of democratic rights.
But how do you fight for change in unions where members are intimidated by past blackballing? Based on their experiences, workshop participants offered a combination of tactics: organize a core group of activists and confront business agents at meetings; use your right, enforced by the NLRB, to meticulously monitor referral lists; most important, remind fellow unionists that fair hiring is a fundamental principle of solidarity on which union strength depends. If, for example, unionists are blackballed for protesting against unsafe working conditions, you can demonstrate that a defense of a fair hiring system is a key to the defense of working conditions on the job.

Most union contracts give employers the unlimited right to reject any job applicant even those referred from the hall. The employer is not required to justify the decision; the victim has no recourse. Good stewards and good union activists who get the reputation of insisting on contract enforcement soon find that they can't get work; they are rejected without cause; the grievance procedure becomes a mockery. What good is filing a grievance, even winning, if it becomes the road to future rejection? At the last IBEW convention, delegates voted to instruct their international officers to get rid of that obnoxious provision in their contracts.

In a rare exception, some local Plumbers and Pipefitters contracts do provide recourse against arbitrary rejection of applicants. The contract of Local 112 in Binghamton NY includes the following: "The contractor may reject a member who is referred from the out-of-work list for just cause." Once the employer is compelled to justify a rejection, it becomes the legitimate subject of a grievance.

However, at the conference, Pipefitters reported that even when they have won that kind of protective clause in their contract, they must still fight hard to press their union reps to enforce it.

Other Construction News

In the Plumbers and Pipefitters

Local 354:
In UDR 141 we reported that a member of this 1,100-member local in western Pennsylvania, Michael Gavin, had been charged with "circulating letters of misrepresentation and falsehood." The charges were originally brought by the local Business Manager who sought to expel Gavin from the union under Sections 199 and 157 of the UA constitution. There was a problem: a federal judge had already ordered the UA to remove Section 199 from the constitution (see box p. 9) because it violated the LMRDA free speech provisions. Gavin appealed and the International instructed the local to refund the $500, citing an unspecified "administrative error."

"Administrative errors" are not the only problem in the local. In the last election, pipefitter Kenneth Nyswaner ran for the Business Manager's position against incumbent George Rattay. Nyswaner lost by 15 votes out of about 700 cast, but charging serious election violations, he spent the requisite three months in the internal union appeals process, and then took the case to the DOL which has filed suit against the local for violations of the LMRDA. Case pending.

The complaint and suit, says Nyswaner, have "brought members together. For years members were afraid to voice their opinion. The business agents and business manager took care of your livelihood, if you did something they didn't like they could see to it that you might not work for a while, or overlook you on a list. But, members realized that the business manager and agents are not as powerful as they used to think. People are asking questions they never asked before... at union meetings and on the job site. This lawsuit has made people braver."

Pipe Trades form continuing caucus:
At the conference, unionists met separately by trades to plan how to strengthen democracy in their own unions. Plumbers and Pipefitters seized the opportunity to set up a continuing caucus: Pipe Trades for a Democratic Union.

Here's what California pipefitter Chuck Callihan said about it: "The caucus meeting - WAS DYNAMITE! We had a very lively discussion and settled on a name for our group and web site - Pipe Trades for a Democratic Union, www.p4du.org. The web site is up and running now - check it out! It was agreed by all that our mission and goal was to educate and inform the membership and raise hell."

Here's the mission statement of the new group, from the website:

• To educate, inform, and motivate ALL UA pipe trade members,
• To compel union democracy, awareness, and justice for ALL UA pipe trade members,
• To seek out and eradicate union corruption,
• To resist any entity that would attempt to dismantle this cause or stifle union democracy,
• To promote the [AUD] Bill of Rights for ALL Building Trades Unionists,
• To assist in the prosperity and advancement of ALL United Association pipe trade members and their families.

In the IBEW

Electrician guilty of free speech

In August a trial board in Delaware IBEW Local 313 found electrician Mike Kerrigan guilty of "making known the business of a local union…to any employer," in violation of the sweeping Article XXV of the International constitution. The charges stemmed from Kerrigan's publication of an independent newsletter and website. The trial board handed down a symbolic fine of $20.00. Kerrigan, who spoke on a panel on Internet Free Speech at the recent AUD Construction Conference, has appealed to the International and awaits a decision.

A fair shake for construction travelers

Once they were called boomers; now it's "travelers" or "transients," the construction workers who leave town in search of work, wherever they can find it. They keep their union books in their home locals, while they work under the jurisdiction of other locals. Some have been blacklisted on their own turf and are forced to travel where they are unknown; others are single without too many attachments and free to come and go; others support families, with the usual burdens of mortgage and health insurance, and simply cannot afford to wait on the out-of-work list when things are slow at home base.

We don't know what percentage of construction workers are travelers, but it is appreciable. And they have special problems. Sometimes they lose out on fringe and insurance benefits because they are not vested. They can't vote or run for office in the "host" local where they work, and so business managers can ignore their complaints. In the host local they may be third-class union citizens. Long-established local workers get job preference on an "A" hiring list. Next come the newly organized, or about-to-be organized, workers who sign on the "B" list. Then after everyone else is happily at work, travelers hire off the "C" list. By that quirk of sequence, a local worker with only a few months in the union can outrank a traveling old time unionist with 20 years.

Those disadvantages might be tolerable for travelers whose stay is short-term when work is plentiful and who move on when it gets slow. Friction arises when a traveler settles in, sometimes for years, buys a home and moves a family to the new location and then finds that he or she is denied membership in the local and is forced to remain on that low-ranked "C" list. Once a traveler, always a traveler?

The trouble arises because the established local unionists look upon their traveling fellow unionists with a wary eye. If travelers pour into my locality when there is a big demand for labor, is the worry of the local worker, what happens when work is slow? If all those travelers get onto the "A" list, my chances of getting work in slow times is undercut. And so, many locals want to make sure that travelers never get a firm foothold and leave promptly when work gets slow.

The misgivings of the local membership are understandable. This is an industry where tomorrow is uncertain and job security is nonexistent. Construction unions must find a way to balance fairly the interests and the concerns of all members. Local members are the union's main source of strength. Travelers have special problems but they are also a special union resource. They make up a union battalion that carries unionism to any part of the country where construction work is in progress. By traveling the nation, they become familiar with what's going on in the union and in the industry. And they are a valuable kind of member: informed, resourceful, venturesome, versatile, independent-minded. You have to be strong to survive as a traveler. Their problem is that as travelers they can't develop power in their home locals, they have no power in the host locals, and so they wield little direct power in the international.

AUD's draft Bill of Rights for Construction Unionists touches briefly on the subject and it came up for discussion at the final session of our construction conference. Most of the participants were active local member and they expressed precisely the concerns outlined here. One traveler replied forcefully and heatedly as expected. The discussion, brief as it was, confirmed the conclusion of the draft Bill of Rights, "We understand that it is not always easy to mediate the contrasting interests of travelers and longtime local members. It is essential, however, that we always make a good-faith try."

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