SCABS IN 'DA HOOD...what are the NYC building trades doing about all the government financed non union low income residential work? By Gregory A. Butler, local 608 carpenter Every day for the last 6 months, brick pointers have climbed into swing stages (motorized window washer scaffolds) at the Ulysses S Grant Houses, at West 125th St and Amsterdam Av in Harlem. As they dangle above the earth along the building's 20 story walls, they carefully chipped out and replaced water damaged bricks on the complex's nine hirise low income apartment buildings. Those brick walls were laid by union brickies (with the help of union laborers and operating engineers) back in 1957, when the Grant Houses were built..but, the brick pointers, laborers and heavy equipment operators who toil on that site today are employed by a non union contractor. The whole job is open shop, down to and including the sidewalk bridge scaffolding that protects the tenants from falling debris, which was built by non union carpenters. And, that's not an exceptional situation...because the owner of that complex, and the rest of the City of New York's public housing projects, the New York City Housing Authority [NYCHA], has a 100% open shop contracting policy. That is, they do NOT use union labor on their renovation jobs. That's a serious problem for the New York building trades. The NYCHA just happens to be the city's largest landlord, operating over 250 public hoursing projects which are home for three quarter of a million New Yorkers. And, it goes without saying, they are one of the city's main consumers of apartment building renovation services....and every single one of their renovation jobs is done with non union labor. This is despite the fact that, as a city authority (a government owned corporation) they are bound by the prevaling wage provisions of the Federal, New York State and New York City Davis Bacon Acts. Unfortunately, the NYCHA isn't the only governmental authority which is going the open shop route. Far from it...it's actually something of a trend here in New York. The Dormatory Authority, State of New York [DASNY] started this trend a few years ago. DASNY was originally set up to build, as it's name implies, dormatories for the campuses of the State University of New York [SUNY] system, but it also builds classrooms for the City Univeristy of New York [CUNY]. These days, most of what they build is, ironically enough, jail cells for the New York City Department of Corrections and the New York State Department of Corrections Services. And, be it classrooms or prison cells, wherever possible DASNY uses non union contractors, a policy they began upstate, but have since imported down to New York City. The New York City School Construction Authority, [SCA] builds and renovates the schools of the New York City Department of Education...and, despite the name, it's run by the STATE, not the city. SCA is also ideologically and financially committed to building open shop whenever and wherever possible. SCA recently renovated a school in Queens, using all non union contractors. Having gotten away with that, they are currently renovating the former Sotherby's art auction house on E. 76th St and 1st Avenue into a public high school..again, using 100% non union labor. The New York City Department of Design and Construction [DDC], which builds and maintains the city's police stations, fire houses and other government buildings, has also been known to use rat contractors here and there. And, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority [MTA], the state entity that runs the Long Island and Metro North commuter railroads, the NYC subway and bus system and the Nassau County bus system, has also tried to go the open shop route too...although their biggest non union job, the Subway Command Center run by Roy Kay, Inc, at 9th Avenue and W 54th St, was turned around by "the 40,000 man march", a Building Trades Council rally that turned into an uprising against rat contractors. I wrote about "the 40,000 man march" on the GANGBOX listserv, at : http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gangbox/message/22 The worst offender is the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development. They administer the city's HUD housing programs. However, they have, for many years, had what amounts to a money laundering scam, so as to evade Davis Bacon. They hand the HUD money off to anti poverty agencies in Harlem, the Bronx and Brooklyn. Those agencies, who are, nominally, private not for profit corporations, turn around, and hire non union GCs to renovate their low income apartment buildings. And not just any rat GC's...but some of the lowest paying contractors in the city. Journeymen carpenters, bricklayers and painters only get paid $ 75 dollars a day (as compared to $ 100 - $ 150 a day at other non union contractors..and the union scale of $ 260 a day plus benefits). Helpers and laborers only get $ 40 dollars a day plus a sandwich. (They actually have to give those guys lunch..because they're too broke to buy their own!!!!). Sadly enough, some of the African American and West Indian tradespeople on these jobs are former or current union members, who had to take these scab jobs because they can't sit on the out of work list for 5 months at a time waiting for a job. Most of the rest are recent, and most likely illegal, immigrants from Poland, Mexico or the West Indies, who have to take whatever job they can get. Harlem is filled with these jobs, in particular along Fredrick Douglass Boluevard in the 140s, just south of the NYCHA's Polo Grounds Houses. Typical of these jobs is The Washington, a moderate income co-op housing development, composed of 6 low rise 6 story buildings on the north side of W. 148th St between Fredrick Douglass Blvd and Lenox Av. This writer recently did his New York District Council of Carpenters annual mandatory picket duty at that very jobsite. As I pointed out above, it's not at all unusual to see union carpenters on these jobs. And this site was no exception, some of the tradespeople were actually former or current union members. One non union carpenter on that site, an African American woman, said she was a former member of Westside Carpenters local 608. She spent 7 years in the union. That carpenter had to do a 2 year jail sentence, and claims she was unable to unfreeze her union book when she came home..so, she had to go and do scab work. This is a $ 30 million dollar job..all ultimately paid for with public funds. HPD helps the developers evade Davis Bacon by using the money as "loan guarantees"for loans made by private mortgage banks like JP Morgan Chase and Citibank. Since, technically, the job's being paid for by private funds, it's not a Davis Bacon job. That means that the GC on this job, BFC, Inc, and their concrete and drywall sub, IBK, can legally justify the $ 100 a day wages they pay. Of course, they CAN'T justify paying their guys cash off the books..but, since they 're wired with the government, they don't have to worry about IRS audits. The anti poverty agencies that develop these projects (most of which are Black or Latino-run) actually justify these starvation wages by saying that they are "helping the community". Considering the fact that most of the carpenters, brickies and laborers on these jobs are Black or Latino, that argument is questionable, at best...unless, of course, "helping the community" means helping minority BUSINESSPEOPLE by underpaying minority WORKERS. And, sad to say, a lot of these workers are lucky if they do actually get paid.. Some rat GCs have a pratice of not paying their workers on time..or, in some cases not at all. Concrete and drywall sub IBK is, allegedly, one of those companies that, reportedly, doesn't pay it's guys on time, according to an anonymous GANGBOX source. That's kind of ironic, since IBK's owner, one Shamsuddin Riza, actually was a minority labor activist at one time. He was a "site coordinator" (kind of like a shop steward) for a minority "coalition"..a Black and Latin construction workers organization that fights for jobs for workers of color in this business. I've written about the coalitions on GANGBOX before, at : http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gangbox/message/954 Riza even went to jail on behalf of the Black and Latin construction workers of Harlem. Riza actually did 5 years in a United States correctional facility, because he used to force White contractors to hire minority workers... But, today that Riza is a contractor himself, instead of a labor activist, he's the one allegedly carrying out the labor abuses. Riza reportedly has paid his guys very late on occasions....in one case, he allegedly had his men waiting until 9PM on Thanksgiving night to get their measly wages...and, allegedly, Riza never bothered to show up with the guy's pay. Now, the reason that these non union outfits have such rock bottom wages, and why they pay their guys so sporadically is not spite or meanness, (it would be hard to ascribe those motives to a former labor activist like Shamsuddin Riza) but simple economics. Many of these contractors put in really low bids to get these jobs..a pratice known in contracting as "lowballing". Just a few feet down the street from The Washington is a building known as 214 W 148th. According to an account in "City Limits" magazine, when that building was renovated, the owners, real estate developer L & M Equity and a "not for profit" anti poverty agency called Harlem Congregations for Community Improvement, hired a small carpentry contractor, one Simone Peele. Peele only bid the absurdly low price of $ 36,000 dollars to do all the framing, sheetrock, doors and cabinet work in the 6 floor apartment building. Considering how low her bid was, it isn't really that surprising that Peele and her crew got kicked off the job after only finishing 4 1/2 floors..with Peele only getting paid $ 18,000. Even at her original bid, which was $ 50,000 before she got bid down by L & M and HCCI, it's doubtful that she could have finished the job on time or on budget. Peele turned around and hired a lumper, Andrell Padgett, to finish the job. She only paid him and his 4 helpers the nauseatingly low sum of TWENTY DOLLARS A DAY to get the remaining 1 1/2 floors done. Now, remember, anti poverty agencies like HCCI and developers like L & M get literally millions of dollars in public funds to renovate these buildings...but, they keep that cash for themselves (and their mortgage bankers, of course). The people who actually build the buildings get the table scraps....because these "not for profit" entities hire the most marginal contractors they can find..who, in turn, pay their carpenters, laborers, plumbers, painters and brickies the lowest wages they can get away with. This kind of sweatshop contracting has bled out from HPD's jobs in the inner city to include all kinds of public works...including, as I pointed out above, the NYCHA. Now, technically, the Davis Bacon Act DOES allow non union contractors to do government work. But, they are required to pay the prevailing wage. In this town, the Davis Bacon prevailing wage is the same as union scale. To comply with Davis Bacon, these contractors would have to pay either the same wages and benefits that union contractors do..or the cash equivilent. That is, a non union contractor would have to pay it's carpenters either $ 37 an hour in wages and $ 24 an hour in benefits..or, pay their guys $ 61 an hour in cash. Of course, no non union contractor pays that much...at best, they might pay $ 25/hr..more commonly, they pay anywere from $ 75 to $ 150 for a day's work..with that day often being 10 hours. As I pointed out above, there are outfits that pay even less than that...$ 40 bucks, $ 30 bucks, and, in at least one extreme case, $ 20 dollars a day. Some outfits don't even pay by the hour... Instead, they use lumpers, and pay by the apartment. Even some union contractors don't actually pay prevailing wage, despite the fact that both the law, and the union agreements they are signatory to, require them to pay that scale. I've written about that problem on the GANGBOX listserv before, at : http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gangbox/message/2920 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gangbox/message/2987 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gangbox/message/3024 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gangbox/message/7582 and http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gangbox/message/8985 Incidentally, the NYCHA's anti union activity isn't limited to the construction trades. Housing has a long running in house Davis Bacon prevailing wage dispute with the union that represents it's 20,000 porters, building supers, stationary engineers and skilled trades maintenance workers, City Employees local 237 of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Carpenters, electricians, elevator mechanics, plumbers, sheet metal workers, roofers, bricklayers and painters who work for NYCHA are grossly underpaid as compared to their building trades counterparts...and the Housing Authority has bitterly resisted paying these workers the approprate prevailing wage-scale pay. HPD's use of some of the worst contractors in the industry has been going on for years. But, the NYCHAs wholesale use of non union contractors is more recent. In either case, it's a one two punch right to the gut of union labor in the New York building trades...ESPECIALLY to carpenters, laborers, brickayers and painters, who make up the bulk of the workforce in residential construction. The question is..what are the Building Trades, and in particular the New York District Council of Carpenters, Mason Tenders District Council, Bricklayers local 1, Plumbers local 1 and Painters District Council 9, (the unions who have jurisdiction over the bulk of residential construction) doing to turn these jobs around? Let's take a look.... At one time, pretty much all residential construction in this town was done union. But, starting in the 1970's, a scam began, called "lumping", that was at it's worse in (where else?), the New York District Council of Carpenters. How it worked was dirty, < cosa nostra > linked contractors, like Inner City Drywall, would bid jobs as if they used union labor..but, they'd actually sub out all the labor to guys who'd work for a "lump sum" or piecework payment, that was substantially below union scale. This was called "lumping" and is the ancestor of the pratice that New York union carpenters today refer to as "working for cash". Thanks to lumping, almost the entire residential construction sector in this town went dirty. This has led to the present situation, where housing construction in New York City is dominated by non union contractors, and even union firms in that sector in pratice operate like rat contractors. As I pointed out above, the low income housing construction sector, which is mainly concentrated in Upper Manhattan, the South Bronx and Central Brooklyn, is almost entirely non union. But, that's not the only open shop zone...far from it. New construction of moderate income apartments and houses, in those areas as well as Southern Brooklyn, the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, Staten Island, Queens and the Northern Bronx, is also predominantly non union..although those contractors pay a little better than the extremely low wages piad by the GCs that do low income work. And, renovation, alteration and repair work on luxury housing, in the Lower Manhattan neighborhoods of the Upper East Side, the Upper West Side, Chelsea, the West Village, Greenwich Village, the East Village, Soho and the Financial District, and the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Williamsburg, Dumbo, Park Slope and Brooklyn Heights, is also almost entirely non union. There is only one sector of the housing business here that's done with union labor...new construction of luxury hirises. And, the "union" jobs in that sector are notorious for payng cash...a problem that has also plagued many of the declining number of union Davis Bacon jobs..and has even bled into the office interior construction sector, which is the bread and butter of union work in this town. According to investigations by the US Department of Labor and the New York County District Attorney's office, as well as anonymous reports on rank and file carpenters website Carpenter's Jaw'in and anonymous GANGBOX sources, the cash activity among NYDCofC signatory contractors allegedly starts from the foundation hole up. Reportedly, there has been cash activity among concrete contractors Rivara, Peter Scalamandre & Sons, Inc, North Side, Inc [formerly North Berry, Inc], LaQuilla Pinnacle, Marmer Brothers, Atlas and Manhattan Concrete. Allegedly, some of these contractors supposedly paid cash to laborers and cement masons, as well as carpenters. But, the reports of cash activity don't stop with the concrete outfits. Some of the drywall and ceiling outfits that work in this sector have, allegedly, paid cash to some of their carpenters too, reportedly including S & S Construction, R & J Construction, Frank's Home Improvement, S & F Carpentry, Eurotech, Target Construction, Crown Partition, Arrowstar, New York City Accoustical, Chelsea Interiors, Luna Carpentry, Sunrise Construction, On Par, Prince Carpentry, Ace Drywall, Universal Drywall, Manhattan Interior Group and Turbo Interiors. R & J Construction, a firm that is despised by thousands of New York union carpenters (they call the company "Run and Jump", due to the excessive speed that they force their carpenters to work at) is reportedly one of the worst offenders. R & J reportedly has guys do unpaid 2 hour "tryouts" to get a job with the firm, is notorious for making their carpenters work through lunch, allegedly has "enforcers" who watch the foremen, to see if they're pushing the guys hard enough and has an unbelieveably fast 100 board a day production quota. That's a lot of boards. To put that in perspective, in the mid 1990's, the largest union drywall contractor in the city, Nastasi White, only expected 40 boards a day.. In any event, production quotas for carpenters are expressly forbidden by both the NYDCofC bylaws, as well as all of the NYC carpenter agreements, including the ones with the Metropolitan Drywall Association and the Association of Wall, Ceiling and Carpentry Industries that cover the sheetrock industry. Beyond that, on inner city low income renovation jobs, R & J, along with Frank's Home Improvement, have, allegedly, run jobs where they paid no benefit stamps to their carpenters, and reportedly paid wages far below the $ 37/hr union scale...anywhere from $ 30/hr to as little as $ 8/hr. And they're not the only offender. Another very big drywall outfit, Component Assembly Systems, has, allegedly, run apartment house jobs where it paid carpenters a piece rate incentive. Component's supers allegedly made an estimate on how much time it would take to rock up an apartment..and, instead of paying their carpenters by the hour, they'd pay them on a per apartment basis..basically, it was a form of legalized lumping (and Component, despite being a New York-based company, ran it's jobs here under an international agreement with the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America that actually allowed them to do that legally). And it isn't only carpenters getting screwed. For years, contractors in the Metropolitan Drywall Association had an drywall tapers agreement with Plasterers local 530, rather than with the local who taping work belongs to, Painters local 1974. The difference between the two locals was simple....the plasterers let their guys work on stilts (a pratice banned by the painters as unsafe..they use scaffolds instead), and local 530, allegedly, looked the other way when their tapers get paid cash. Also, even for those contractors who pay the stamps, 530 has an almost nonexistant benefit fund, and consequently very cheap benefits..and has neither a functional shop steward system nor any real hiring hall system. That means all company man crews, and the kind of individual dealmaking that you usually see in that kind of situation. These dirty drywall outfits have brought these kind of pratices from residential construction into the market segment that is the bread and butter of the unionized trades in New York City...office interior renovation. And their not the only offenders....allegedly, there are a number of furniture installation outfits that have supposedly gotten in on the cash act, including G & M Installers, OMNI, T.O.P.S., CMI, J.A.D., J & E Enterprises, Al-Lee Installations, Arrow Discount Office Furniture D/B/A E G Sales, L & D Installers, DFB Sales and Vintage Corporate Services. Of course, where you see illegal deals, you will also see legalized givebacks. Like storefront contractors Acme Architectural Walls, Steelcase Architectural Walls and Modernfold/Styles, who run New York jobs under international agreements that allow all company man crews (except for a steward). Or the woodwork contractors in the Manufacturing Woodworkers Association, who allow all company man crews, (again, with only the shoppie from the hall) and allow the lower $ 21/hr shop scale and the 8 hour straight time shop day in place of the $ 37/hr field rate and the 7 hour straight time outside construction day. There's a direct relationship between both illegal deals and legal givebacks, on the one hand, and deunionization on the other. Case in point, the scaffold industry..the contractors who put protective sidewalk bridges around commercial and residential buildings undergoing renovation. Less than a decade ago, this business was all union. But, then Rockledge and Colgate decided to rip up their union agreements with the NYDCofC, Laborers local 731 and Teamsters local 282. Regional Scaffolding & Hoisting stayed union...sort of. They, allegedly, introduced a $ 25/hr wage, and "profit sharing" in place of benefit stamps. Incidentally, when the NYDCofC (at the time under UBCJA international trusteeship) set up it's Organizing Department back in 1996, one of their first initiatives was to try and reunionize the scaffold industry.. Basically the plan was to reorganize the business by legalizing the scaffold industry's subpar wages, abolishing the shop steward system, and ghettoizing the scaffold carpenters. The scaffold guys were exiled out of the building construction carpenter locals, and placed in Timbermen's local 1536, a sewer excavation carpenters local with the lowest pay scale in the NYDCofC (the scaffold carpenters are now the "1536B" division of the Timbermen's local). Initially, the scaffold carpenters only got 70% of timbermen's rate...at that time, only $ 18/hr, making them the lowest paid union carpenters in the city. Even today, they only make $ 31/hr..assuming they get scale. But, Rockledge and Colgate didn't budge, and remain non union. And they're not the only ones..today, scaffold work is dominated by non union firms, outfits like Lakhi General Contractors, City Scaffolding, Hi Tech Scaffolding and Perimiter Bridge & Scaffold. This is especially true in scaffolding work for the NYCHA, SCA, DASNY and, of course, those dirty HPD jobs that I talked about above. Union outfits remain, including companies that actually pay scale, like York Ladder and Scaffold, UBS and American Scaffold, but they are on the decline in the industry. This is typical of the pitfalls of the organizing strategy of the New York building trades..a problem that's turned up in building trades organzing nationally. Unfortunately, there is a tendency to organize by legalizing already existing abuses in the industry... That strategy unfortunately fits neatly into the plans of New York law enforcement, and the city's mortgage bankers, who would like to see a continued decline in New York construction wages..but, don't want contractors to have to pay bribes for the privilige of paying sweatshop wages. This is not to in any way knock the dedicated brothers who work as organizers for the Mason Tenders District Council, the New York District Council of Carpenters or Painters District Council 9. They are a crew of stand up guys who do the best they can under politically limited circumstances. And, what the Building Laborers, Carpenters and Painters do is a damned sight better than the non existant organzing efforts of the Concrete Laborers, Bricklayers and Plumbers unions. The NYDCofC organizers actually have signed up 600 contractors in the last 3 years - although 550 of those outfits were companies entering the already unionized office interior construction market who voluntarily recognized the union so they could bid for those jobs. Only 50 contractors came in as newly organized firms signed up from the bottom up. Also, due to new organizing, there are 2,100 new members in the NYDCofC..competeing with the 17,000 brothers and sisters already here for the same amount of work. The Laborers had a similar, but even worse, experience in Building Laborers local 79.the union signed up 2,000 new laborers..who had to compete with the 8,000 men and women already in the union for jobs. Beyond that, there has been a tendency to organize in non union markets by offering special deals. That's how Laborers local 79 organized demolition work...they signed a deeply concessionary contract. On demo jobs, only the foreman and the steward usually recieve full laborer pay of $ 25/hr. The bulk of the crew get B man pay...which is as low as $ 10 an hour for people who've only recently joined the union. B men with a lot of time in the union only get $ 18/hr. Laborers local 78 used the same method to unionize 90% of the asbestos industry. Contractors were offered deep concessions in wages, and, basically, ended up paying roughly the same wages they did when they were non union. There was a racial edge to both those deals...both the demolition industry and asbestos abatement are almost entirely composed of illegal immigrants, mainly from Poland, Mexico and Ecuador. There was a sexist angle in the asbestos business too..since the asbestos abatement industry is the only construction trade where substantial numbers of tradeswomen are employed. Of course, racism and sexism have long been a reality of our business. I've written about that ugly side of our industry and our unions on GANGBOX before, at : http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gangbox/message/4096 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gangbox/message/7378 and http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gangbox/message/7408 Making deals is really very difficult in low income housing construction, where the wages are so low that there is no way that a union agreement could be signed that is anywhere near the current pay scale...or, I should say I HOPE the unions would never sign agreements that low!!! There's a deeper problem...multiple rates in the same market create a "two tier" union, with some guys in the better paid commercial tier..with others stuck in low paid residential work. Just ask residential carpenters in places like Southern California, Western Washington State, Las Vegas, Pittsburg, New Jersey or New England about that. They make as much as $ 10 an hour less than commerical carpenters, and have grossly substandard benefits. We may get that here too... Recently, a "not for profit" anti poverty agency, the Fifth Avenue Committee, got a special concessionary deal from the NYDCofC, MTDC, Painters DC 9 and Plumbers local 1, according to "City Limits" magazine. The Fifth Avenue Committee is spending $ 13 million dollars to develop the Red Hook Homes, a low income housing development in South Brooklyn near the waterfront. Despite having all that money, the FAC doesn't want to pay union scale... Basically, union carpenters, laborers, painters and plumbers on the Red Hook Homes job will only get 70% of union scale. This is being described by the union as a "market recapture rate", and, supposedly, this job is "experimental", for the Red Hook Homes job only. However, that opens the door to all the "non profits" getting cut rate pay deals...and that's a door that we don't want to open. Remember, special rates for certain bosses creates a two tier union..and we all know what tier that Black, Latino and Asian men, and women of all colors, will end up in..the bottom tier. Beyond that, the cold hard fact is, these "non profits" are swimming in government cash....and don't let the name fool you, "not for profit" corporation does NOT mean that they are broke. It merely means that, as per section 501 (c) (3) of the federal tax code, they merely have to spend every dime that comes in every year. Remember, these "not for profit" anti poverty agencies are, basically, the base of the Democratic Party's patronage system here in New York City, and have been since the riots of the late 1960's. The politicians buy the loyalty of the directors of these agencies with lucrative housing and social service privitization contracts.. Those contracts are especially profitable due to the horribly low wages that these anti poverty agencies pay their workers. For example, the unionized teachers that work for these agencies, represented by District Council 1707 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), get paid as little as $ 18,000 a year. Non unoin teachers are paid even less..often as little as $ 12,000 a year. By contrast, NYC Department of Education teachers start out at $ 40,000/yr. As I've shown, the construction workers employed by the contractors used by these agencies are paid even less...when they even get paid at all. The agencies pay the politicians back by making sure that Democrats get reelected from the ghettos. In other words, what lawyers call a < Quid Pro Quo >. Bottom line, anti poverty agencies like the Fifth Avenue Committee, Los Quedamos, the Harlem Commonwealth Council, Harlem Congregations for Community Improvement, Harlem Restoration Project, East Brooklyn Churches, Phase Piggyback, Mount Hope Housing Company, Banana Kelly, and the literally hundreds of other "community based organizations" in this town are sitting on a major pile of cash. This is because they are backed by deep pockets...mortgage banks like Citibank, Fleet and JP Morgan Chase, as well as governmental entities like the NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development, the New York State Housing Trust and the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. Not to mention the cash these agencies will make on the back end.. A lot of this housing, especially in Harlem, is destined to be luxury housing..despite the fact that it's being paid for by funds intended to build homes for poor people. When these buildings are sold, the anti povery agencies, the developers and the mortgage banks will cash in..while the men and women who build these apartments will barely be able to afford a furnished room. In light of that ugly reality, these Black or Latino "not for profits" should pay the exact same rate and benefits that are paid by their White "for profit" corporate counterparts downtown. One industry - one pay scale... There should be no special "deals" for the "non profit" sector, no sweetheart rates for companies just because their owned by people of color, are based in the 'hood and talk about "social justice" while they pay skilled workers $ 80 bucks a day. That would be second class Jim Crow unionism for the workers on these jobs. Just ask the building service workers employed in the apartment houses these agencies operate.. Local 32bj of the Service Employees International Union went down that same road of allowing substandard pay scales for "non profit" anti poverty agencies. Let's break down the dollars and cents cost of these kind of sweetheart deals for workers. Building porters who work under local 32bj's citywide agreement with the Realty Advisory Board of New York make $ 17 bucks an hour, and supers make $ 35,000 a year. Meanwhile, porters only make $ 6 an hour and supers only get $ 20,000 a year under the special "non profit" housing agreements negotiated through the Association for Neighborhood Housing Development (the trade association for the "not for profit" housing developers) and the local anti poverty agencies. I recently wrote about that sweetheart deal, and the seamier side of the "not for profit" world, on GANGBOX, at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gangbox/message/8770 and http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gangbox/message/11507 In the name of "helping the community", the "not for profits" and the SEIU took $ 11 dollars an hour out of the pockets of the building porters, and $ 15,000 a year from the supers. Do I even have to mention that almost all the supers and porters in these buildings are Black or Latino? In other words, special deals don't help us..or, for that matter, "the community". They're only good for the executives of the "not for profit" corporations, the bankers, the developers and the contractors. That is exactly why we need to unionize every carpenter, laborer, bricklayer, plumber, painter and electrician on these jobs, and bring these sites up to full, downtown-level, union conditions. The question is..how do we get those conditions on these jobs? Is the NLRB method of organizing going to work? No. Is signing special deals with extremely low pay the answer? No. So, what can we do? I would propose that we go back to the method that originally built the building trades unions. That is, area-wide strikes of non union tradespeople, which used to be called "trade movements". That's how Peter J. McGuire and the other socialists, communists and anarchists who originally built the Carpenters Union back in the 19th century did their organizing. And those methods still work today...back in 1991, in what was then the Los Angeles District Council of Carpenters, non union residential sheetrockers organized an area wide strike, and shut down most of the housing construction in Los Angeles, Ventura, San Bernadino, Riverside, Orange and San Diego Counties for the better part of 6 months. They used tactics such as roving picketlines, to go to jobsites and shut them down. That method was originally used back in the 19th century, in the early days of the Carpenters Union.. Similar mobile picketing tactics were used by the coalitions to racially integrate the construction industry in New York City in the 1960's, 70's, 80's and 90's. I've written about "trade movement" style approaches to organizing on GANGBOX before, at : http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gangbox/message/22 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gangbox/message/954 and http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gangbox/message/7966 But, would the current leaders of the building trades unions in New York, and specifically the officers of the NYDCofC, the MTDC, Plumbers local 1, Painters DC 9 and Bricklayers local 1, be willing to do this? Unfortunately...no. Why? Simple. Struggling against the contractors goes against the logic of business unionism. What's "Business Unionism"? Business unionism is the ideology that modern American trade unionism is based on. Basically, it's the theory that workers and bosses have common interests, and it's the purpose of unions to build "labor management partnership". In reality, there are no common interests between workers and bosses. Because of this, business unionism generally leads to unions that tend to be subordinate to management, and undermine the struggles of workers. There are a couple of different types of business unionism. The one that was dominant in the New York building trades for over a century is what I call "Gangster Unionism". Gangster unions sell special deals and givebacks to certain contractors...in particular, those that are tied to organized crime groups like < la cosa nostra >. Other, less well connnected contractors are required to actually live up to the union agreements, thus giving the mobbed up contractors an unfair competitive advantage. There is another form of business unionism, that I call "Corporate Unionism". That is fast becoming the dominant ideology in the AFL-CIO. The UBCJA's international office is dominated by corporate unionists, and that is rapidly becoming the dominant ideology in the Laborers International Union of North America, the parent union of both NYC laborers union affiliates, the Mason Tenders District Council and the Cement and Concrete Workers District Council. The government and the mortgage bankers have been fighting to replace gangster unionism with corporate unionism throughout the building trades. The feds and the financers like corporate unionism for a simple reason..corporate unions give concessions to ALL the contractors, openly, rather than secretly giving special deals to certain mobbed up firms. This pushes down the cost of contracting, lowers the bids that contractors submit, and puts more of the profits of construction directly in the hands of the Wall Street moneymen, rather than the small contractors. Corporate unions are also usually set up as totalitarian dictatorships, where members have most of their democratic rights stripped from them. In many corporate unions, even the right to vote for officers is stripped away from the members, and many officers never actually worked in the trade. The Service Employees International Union is a perfect example of this type of union, and both the UBCJA and LIUNA are fast headed down that road too. So, what's the alternative? I propose that we transform the current construction unions, into what I call "Revolutionary Unions". I've talked about revolutionary unionism on the GANGBOX website before, at : http://www.geocities.com/gangbox/csu1.html http://www.geocities.com/gangbox/downbylaw.html http://www.geocities.com/gangbox/contract2001.html and on the GANGBOX listserv, at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gangbox/message/22 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gangbox/message/954 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gangbox/message/2466 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gangbox/message/2659 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gangbox/message/4738 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gangbox/message/5059 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gangbox/message/7966 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gangbox/message/8649 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gangbox/message/8770 and http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gangbox/message/9027 Basically, revolutionary unionism recognizes the fact that we as workers and the businesspeople who employ us have nothing in common. Our labor enriches them, and we get but a small fraction of what we produce in return. Non union construction in Harlem shows this reality very starkly. We see the spectacle of $ 30 million dollar jobs where the workers only get $ 80 bucks a day. Even on the union side, where we get $ 37/hr in wages and $ 24/hr in benefits, the value of the structures we build far exceeds the pay we get. We only pocket $ 62 an hour..but, depending on the type of work, we add upwards of $ 250 dollars an hour in economic value to the material that we install. In other words, the boss isn't paying us $ 62 bucks an hour..we're paying him, and the bankers and the developers, $ 188 dollars an hour. As long as we live in a capitalistic society, where financiers rule and enrich themselves off our labor, then the fundimental conflict between labor and capital will continue. A revolutionary union fights to make sure that we as workers get as large a share as possible of the value we produce, and that we have the greatest possible job security, the best possible benefits, the most generous possible pension package and the most safe and humane working conditions that we can achieve. Revolutionary unions are set up in such a way that they do whatever they can to fight for these goals..by any means necessary. How would revolutionary building trades unions approach the question of organizng? As I pointed out above, the most logical and efficient way to organize construction workers is by area wide strikes. Also, it would be very helpful if, simultaniously with the citywide strike to organize the non union sector, a similar strike be called against the cash contractors, who are signatory but violate the agreement by paying cash. But, how would such a strike be set up and carried out? For such a citywide residential and Davis Bacon construction workers strike to be carried out, there are certain changes that would be necessary in the structure of the organizing departments in the NYDCofC, MTDC and DC 9. Also, functional organizing departments would have to be created in Plumbers local 1, Bricklayers local 1 and in the New York City Building Trades Council itself. I would propose that these organizing departments be reorganized as organizing committees. These organizing committees would be run by elected chairs, and would be composed of delegates elected from the membership. These delegates, and the organizing committee chairs, would be rank and file tradespeople, journeymen with at least 5 years in the union. They would serve a single, 3 year, non re electable term, and then would have to return to their tools for at least 3 years before being eligible for running for another office. While in office, they would recieve the same rate of pay as a journeyman working 35 hours a week on the tools. Organizing committee members who were actively involved in field organizing would be permitted to use union-owned cars..but only for work directly related to organizing, and not for personal use. The organizing committee delegates would be actively involved in organizing and leading the strike I described, and would be assisted by salaried organizers. The most logical candidates for those organizer positions would be the current organizing department staff, but also, rank and file workers, in particular workers who are currently in the non union sector, would be also added to the staff. The organizers would also recieve a salary based on what a journeyman gets for a 35 hour week, and, where necessary, would be allowed to use a union-owned vehicle to aid them in their organizing work. Each trade's organizers would reach out to non union workers from their own craft, while the BTC's organizers would coordinate the trades, as well as assisting each trade in organizing the non union workers in it's craft. These committees would work together to lead the areawide strike I described above. But, what happens once these workers are organized? How can we assure that they're actually getting the rate and the stamps...especially in light of the fact that the unions can't even assure that for many of the contractors that are already unionized. First of all, we need to strip the employer of the right to hire and fire at will. We need to require that contractors can only terminate a worker for two reasons..a layoff due to lack of work, or firing due to bad conduct. Also, layoffs need to be done by seniority (last hired, first fired) rather than the current system, where they can lay off whoever they want whenever they want. And, we need job security..instead of getting laid off at the end of each job, workers should be moved from job to job by the contractor, as long as work is available. We need to take control of the hiring system. That's why I propose a 90/10 hiring system for all of the trades. That is, the boss would be allowed to hire company men as 5 of his/her first 10 workers, with the other 5 coming from the hall. After the 10th worker, a minimum of 90% of his workers, including all apprentices, would have to be hired from the out of work list, with a maximum of 10% company men. The 90/10 system could be used to correct a lot of other injustices in our industry. Considering the reality of racism, sexism and age discrimination in our business, I would propose that each contractor be required to have at least 25% of the workers referred to him/her from the hall be Black, Latino or Asian, at least 10% be women and at least 10% be tradespeople over age 50. In the case of the Local 79 laborers, they have what amounts to a racial segregation system that needs to be broken up. Irish and Italian laborers mainly do building laborer work, (cleaning up after the other trades on jobsites) the field where the work is easiest and the opportunities for OT are the greatest. African American and West Indian laborers, along with some Italians, are mainly concentrated in bricklayer tending work, (mixing mortar, building and dismantling scaffolds and moving brick for the bricklayers) which is much harder and has less chances for OT that building laborer work. Latino and Polish laborers are mainly concentrated in demolition, where the work is hardest, the pay is by far the lowest ($ 10/hr as opposed to $ 25/hr for other laborers) and there are the least chances for overtime. That trade needs one pay scale for all laborers...the laborers union needs to dismantle the "apprentice" and "B man" pay rates for laborers who've recently joined the union. The laborer workforce also needs to be desegregated, so that the numbers of Irish, Italian, Polish, African American, West Indian and Latino laborers in all 3 market segments are in proportion to their numbers in the general membership. Also, so contractors can contribute to the training of our future workforce, every contractor would be required to have one out of every 6 workers be an apprentice...and not just the low paid 1st and 2nd year apprentices, but 3rd and 4th years (and, in the case of the plumbers, 5th years) as well. The unions need to have out of work list committees to run the hiring hall systems. These committees would be composed of an elected chair, and rank and file delegates, who'd be elected on the same terms as the delegates to the organizing committee. The out of work list committees would also appoint shop stewards to the various jobsites..I'll get into more detail on that below. As for layoffs and firings, I would have those monitored by trial committees in the various unions. These trial committees would be composed of a chair, and delegates elected from the rank and file, elected under the same rules as the delegate bodies I proposed above. The trial committee would also be assisted by lawyers and investigators on the staff of the union. Employers would have to notify both the out of work list and the trial committee in the event of a layoff due to lack of work, and would have to present written evidence proving that the layoffs were done based on seniority, that is, last hired, first laid off. As for firing for cause, I would impose an "innocent until proven guilty" rule, similar to the one that the Teamsters have in their United Parcel Service and National Master Freight Agreement contracts. If an employer wanted to fire a worker, they would have to present evidence proving that the employee had committed bad conduct. Grounds for termination would be violence against fellow workers or supervisors, sexual harassment, arson, theft, wilful destruction of employer's and/or client's property, and unexcused failure to report for work for 5 consecutive days. Other bad conduct could be cause for firing, depending on the circumstances. The worker would be suspended, with pay, until such time as the employer's accusations could be proved, by preponderance of the evidence, before a union tribunal. The worker would be represented by his/her shop steward and/or a Business Agent. The worker would also have the option to be represented by an attorney of his/her own choosing, supplied at the union's expense. There would also be a need to have a strong shop steward system, to enforce these rules in the field. Every contractor would have a general shop steward for each craft. The general steward's job would be to make sure that the contractor is paying full union scale and benefit stamps to every member of their craft that is on the company's payroll, and are otherwise in compliance with the union agreement on every jobsite they operate on. That would include guaranteeing, along with the out of work list committee, that the company has a shop steward on every job, even the little one day 2 person jobs. On large jobs, where 50 or more tradespeople were employed, there would be an assistant shop steward appointed..with one additional assistant steward for every 50 workers. Jobs with more than one shift would have at least one shoppie per shift. The steward would be the "eyes and ears of the union", with the responsiblity of protecting the members on the job from contract violations and safety hazards. If the steward can't resolve the problem by negotiating directly with the foreman or super, then, the shoppie would have to stop the job until the issue is resolved. The role of the general steward, as well as the BAs from the locals, would be to assist the steward on the job in resolving safety issues and contract violations on the job. If the contractor didn't see reason, and settle the dispute to the satisfaction of the members on that site within a reasonable amount of time (say, 3 business days), the general steward would have the authority to shut down every job being run by that company. Also, in the event that another trade had a beef, and called a work stoppage, it would be the job of the steward to make sure that his/her trade stopped working too. Remember, the most effective way to settle a greivance with an employer is to shut down production until they settle...because, if the boss stops making money, you will get his/her undivided attention. The leadership structures of the unions, and the Building Trades Council, would have to be realigned to fit in with this type of union. In a revolutionary union, all political power would come from the membership, as represented by rank and file delegates. That would be a major change from the present structure, where all power comes from BAs and officers, many of whom make six figure salaries and haven't put on the tools in years. In each union, there would be a Council of Delegates that would be the main administrative body. This Council of Delegates would be made up of tradespeople who work on the tools, who would get time off from work (paid by the union at the journeyman rate) to attend delegate meetings. The delegates would be journeymen with at least 5 years in the business, who would be directly elected from the membership, and would serve a single, non re electable 3 year term of office. The Council of Delegates would decide on all union expenditures, make all policy decisions, and supervise the work of all union committees, officers and staff. There would still be union officers and BAs, but they would be subordinate to the Council of Delegates. Those officers would also be elected to 3 year, non re electable terms and, upon completion of their term of office, would have to return to the tools for at least 3 years before they'd be eligible to run for any other elected union office. The NYC Building Trades Council itself would have to be reorganzied along these lines. The BTC would be composed of rank and file delegates, elected from each craft, and the president and secretary treasurer of the council would be elected, by a direct one member one vote election, by the membership of all the building trades unions in the city. The role of the Building Trades Council would be to resolve jurisdictional disputes between crafts, assist unions that have a dispute with a particular contractor, carry out lobbying work at City Hall, in Albany and Washington for the construction unions and, above all, to assist the unions in organizing every single building and construction worker in the city. These changes could also be a model for how our unions should be transformed all across the country, both at the local union, district council and international union level. Now, all of these ideas look really great on paper..the question is, how do we get to the place where we can actually make these changes in our unions and our industry? That's a damned good question... The reality of the situation is, we're going to have a really hard time making these changes. The leaders of the local unions and district councils would be dead set against this transformation, as would be the leaders of the BTC. Also, the international unions, in particular the UBCJA and LIUNA, are sinking deeper and deeper into corporate unionism, and would be fanatically opposed to revolutionary unionism. The contractors would also fight tooth and nail against this..in particular the non union contractors and the cash contractors who would be the first target of revolutionary construction unions. There would be even stronger resistance from the developers and the bankers. This is especially true in the "not for profit" sector, where the anti poverty agencies, the mortgage banks and the real estate developers would have to fork over millions in ill gotten profit to the men and women who build their buildings. Then there's the government. This is where the "not for profits" fit in.. They are the patronage foot soldiers of the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party takes care of them, by letting them profit, tax free, from the grotesquely underpaid labor of non union construction workers...and, in turn, they help the Democrats win elections. It goes without saying that the Democrats would do whatever they could to keep these jobs non union. Beyond that, for the last 30 years, there has been a concerted campaign against gangster unionism in the building trades waged by the New York County District Attorney, the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, the US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, the FBI, the NYPD and the New York State Organized Crime Task Force. Many construction workers actually look upon these government agents as our saviors, the folks who will deliver us from 100 years of gangster domination of our unions. Unfortunately, that's not true.. The goal of all three levels of law enforcement, federal, state and local, is to impose corporate unionism on the building trades. That is, they want to have the unions freely and openly give wage, benefit and work rule concessions to all contractors, rather than secretly selling concessions to mob linked contractors. The NYS Organized Crime Task Force goes even further. In it's report "Corruption and Racketeering in the New York City Construction Industry", the NYSOCTF calls for the destruction of union hiring halls and the apprenticeship system, so union construction workers will be totally at the mercy of the contractors, just like the non union workers are. That really isn't that surprising..remember, the folks who bankroll most of the scab jobs in New York are the State of New York and the City of New York. The government is simply carrying out the marching orders of the mortgage bankers. And the moneymen of Wall Street want nothing less than the cost of construction labor reduced to it's absolute minimum..that is, $ 80 a day, or $ 75 a day, or $ 40 a day, or $ 30 a day, or $ 20 a day...hell, if they could get away with it, they'd have us working for what Bechtel and Haliburton pay their Iraqi tradesmen.. that is, 25 cents a day. The 100,000 unionized construction workers of New York City, and our 100,000 non union brothers and sisters, would seem to be caught between a rock and a hard place...facing off against the government, the political machines of the unions, the mortgage bankers, the developers and the contractors. But, in actual fact, we're the ones operating from a position of strength... After all, our labor creates the money that enriches all these folks. If we put our tools down, the money stops flowing.... They know that..(that's why they secretly fear us) and it's time we figured that out. It's up to us to unite, and fight for the changes we need to make our industry a better place to work in, and our city, our state, our country and our world a better place to live in. Thats it for now. Be union, work safe. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo. http://search.yahoo.com Yahoo! Groups Sponsor GANGBOX: CONSTRUCTION WORKERS NEWS SERVICE GANGBOX homepage: http://www.geocities.com/gangbox/ comments? email: "UNION NOW, UNION FOREVER" Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gangbox/