Sacramento Bee (California), February 15, 2006, Wednesday

Copyright 2006 Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
Copyright 2006 Sacramento Bee (California)
Sacramento Bee (California)

February 15, 2006, Wednesday

HEADLINE: Construction unions to drop AFL-CIO affiliation

BYLINE: By Rachel Osterman

BODY:

In yet another schism within organized labor, two large, nationwide construction unions announced Tuesday they will pull out of the AFL-CIO's Building and Construction Trades Department in an effort to build clout at the bargaining table.
Citing dissatisfaction with the AFL-CIO's construction governing body, the two unions representing laborers and operating engineers said they will form a rival National Construction Association to more efficiently resolve disputes and organize new workers. The Teamsters, as well as unions representing carpenters, bricklayers and ironworkers, also will join the new group, bringing the total membership to 2 million workers nationwide, according to Laborers' International Union of North America president Terence O'Sullivan.
"While the construction economy has grown, living and work standards for construction workers have fallen," O'Sullivan said during a telephone press conference Tuesday. "We're creating a new organization that's committed to change."
On Tuesday, the head of the California division of the AFL-CIO's building trades department expressed concern that the split could actually worsen tensions between different construction unions.
"It weakens all building trades unions; it's in our interest to form alliances and work together," said California president Bob Balgenorth. "If there isn't a mechanism to resolve jurisdictional disputes, there will be chaos on the job sites, and I hope that's not where they are going."
The pullout comes after five other unions quit the AFL-CIO last year to start the Change to Win Federation, in part as a response to the decades-long slip in union membership nationally. The construction unions are not severing all ties to the AFL-CIO but are forming their own construction alliance.
In the construction industry, unions represented just 13.1 percent of workers in 2005, down from the 40 percent it held in 1973, O'Sullivan said.
The AFL-CIO's building trades department and its local councils have historically determined which unions can do which type of work on local construction sites. But the laborers union and others have complained that the department uses outdated criteria for making its decisions.
In Northern California, the largest of the breakaway construction unions -- those representing carpenters, laborers and operating engineers -- already collaborate through a formal alliance. Officials with those groups said the new NCA likely won't change their relationship with other unions or employers.
"It looks to me like the national level is kind of following suit to what we're doing here in Northern California, where we've already found a way to resolve jurisdictional disputes quickly," said Cindy Tuttle, political director of Local 3 of the Operating Engineers.
And it was on the national level where experts predicted that Tuesday's announcement will have the greatest impact.
"If you look at a construction site, the three unions that are pretty much there from the start of the project until the end are the operating engineers, the carpenters and the laborers," said Cornell University labor professor Richard Hurd. "If they coordinate in organizing, they may have control of the (job) site."
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