Question:
While there has been much public discussion about the AFL-CIO's
urgent need to organize, little attention has been paid to the disastrous
decline in the economic power of the building trades unions.
At the end of World War II, 85 percent of the construction
industry was unionized. At present, less than 20 percent of the nation's
construction work is done under union conditions. Today, there are 1.1
million workers in construction unions, compared with 4.6 million who
work non-union.
Answer:
In the new AFL-CIO spirit of giving top priority to organizing, the
federation's Building Trades Department has initiated a unique
campaign to unionize an entire construction market in a particular
region.
Las Vegas was chosen as an experimental target, because it is the
nation's fastest-growing city, where construction is booming. Since
1995, some 20,000 single-family homes have been built, and it is
reported that every hour two acres of land are being developed for a
construction project.
To tackle the Las Vegas construction market, the 15 building
crafts put aside their long-standing jurisdictional disputes to form a
united Building Trades Organizing Project (BTOP). Beginning in January
1997, it began a "bottoms-up" organizing effort among the city's
40,000 non-union construction workers, many of whom had arrived in
Las Vegas in the past five years.
While the glamorous casinos on the "Strip" had been built largely
with union labor, light commercial and residential construction
(schools, retail stores, apartment buildings and family homes) have
remained non-union. It is this market that BTOP is seeking to organize.
A staff of 70 BTOP full-time organizers daily visit non-union
construction sites, make house calls, hold meetings with the workers
and occasionally organize job actions on such issues as lack of drinking
water in the workplace, unsafe working conditions and abusive
treatment. They send union workers into non-union construction jobs
(a process called "salting") to promote their organizing efforts.
A number of crafts have opened their books to admit unorganized
workers. They have also expanded their training programs, offering
non-union workers an opportunity to upgrade their skills.
The purpose behind BTOP's plan to organize the entire market for light
construction in Las Vegas is to establish uniform wage rates and
benefits, so as to eliminate them as factors in the bidding for
construction contracts.
But the problem is a formidable one. There are thousands of non-
union contractors in Nevada who compete for construction contracts by
lowering wages and denying benefits, such as health insurance and
pensions.
If BTOP tries to organize a single contractor and raises wages
and benefits to union standards, the contractor is unable to bid
successfully on new contracts against his non-union rivals, and so he
shuts down his business, leaving his workers without jobs. He may
later open a non-union company under a new name.
To deal with the problem, BTOP has begun a campaign to sign
"trigger" agreements with non-union contractors, with the
understanding that if BTOP organizes better than 50 percent of the
contractors and their work force, they will accept a written contract
that will raise wages and benefits and improve working conditions.
Since BTOP is just embarking on this strategy, non-union
contractors will continue to operate as they have, except that BTOP
organizers will defend workers against illegal and abusive treatment
by contractors.
If there were a contractor association willing to negotiate with
BTOP, it might be possible to reach an agreement by a compromise that
would establish a uniform wage rate for light commercial snd
residential work somewhere between current non-union rates and what
unionized workers receive on heavy construction jobs. But apparently,
Las Vegas non-union contractors are not interested in stabilizing the
industry by providing uniform wage rates. And BTOP leaders are
committed to "bottoms-up" organizing.
I wonder if you ever thought to ask the non union worker why he/she is not
already in the union or why he/she is not still in the union .
What is the real reason that the union sector organized itself from 85%
union to 15%+/- union . Did greed and lazieness have anything to do with it
???
