Times-Picayne (New Orleans), June 25, 2006, Sunday

Copyright 2006 The Times-Picayune Publishing Company
Times-Picayune (New Orleans)

June 25, 2006 Sunday

SECTION: NATIONAL; Pg. 1

HEADLINE: AFL-CIO hopes cash carries a union card;
$700 million plan might aid organizing

BYLINE: By Jaquetta White, Business writer

BODY:
If a plan outlined by the AFL-CIO last week is carried out, $700 million in union members' pension funds will be used to finance a wave of post-Katrina development, including thousands of affordable homes, hotels, hospitals and other commercial enterprises.
But the AFL-CIO hopes its sizable investment also will build something else in New Orleans that might not be quite as welcome to the city's business managers: a strong union presence.
"Our investment there is because we certainly want to be a part of the rebuilding efforts in New Orleans," AFL-CIO Gulf Coast Recovery Coordinator Arlene Holt Baker said. "Certainly at the end of the day, we want jobs to be union jobs."
Baker said those moves signal the start of a growing union movement in New Orleans with the goal being to win support for unions so that workers will push for them.
"At the end of the day, we certainly are hopeful that we will have more people in the region -- having looked at the work done by unions and having seen the lives of the people improved by unions -- saying that unions do rock and can change the economic face of a city," Baker said, borrowing from Mayor Ray Nagin, who, after the investment was announced, exuberantly proclaimed, "Unions rock."
To prepare for the work, the AFL-CIO plans to create a work-force training and job development center in New Orleans. The center would train workers in four or five construction trade jobs so they presumably will join unions and work in the area.
Following Loews' footsteps
Projects developed through the AFL-CIO initiative will be both financed by union money and built using only union labor, a strategy that has successfully bolstered union ranks in New Orleans at least once before.
The Loews New Orleans Hotel was built in 2003 using money from union pension funds and union labor. It is now one of only two hotels in the city to employ unionized workers. The other is the Fairmont Hotel New Orleans.
When the Loews was developed, the unions got the hotel operators to agree not to stand in the way of union recruitment efforts once the building opened.
Though much of the AFL-CIO money will go toward building homes, it's possible some of the commercial construction financed by the latest round of AFL-CIO money will carry a similar agreement regarding union laborers.
"Hopefully we can piggyback (on that idea) with new buildings coming here," said Robert "Tiger" Hammond, president of the AFL-CIO Greater New Orleans Central Labor Council and business manager of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. "We could do the same thing with those buildings that they did with the Loews."
Muted response
Business interests in New Orleans -- as in most cities -- have had an antagonistic relationship with unions, arguing that they hamstring the economy with costs and work rules. But immediate reaction to last week's AFL-CIO initiative was muted.
Darrius Gray, president of the Greater New Orleans Hotel and Lodging Association, said the group's members are digesting the news and have not formalized an opinion of the plan or its implications for their businesses.
"Right now would be premature to discuss it," Gray said. "We'll probably have a statement next week."
Jay Lapeyre, chairman of the New Orleans Business Council, lauded the union investment in New Orleans but said he is wary of investment that comes with strings attached and would want to be sure the investment doesn't come with government privilege. The Business Council has taken no position on the matter so far.
"If the fact is it's their money and they're putting their terms on their money, that's OK," Lapeyre said. "But if they're looking to have laws passed that prevent people from doing things that make good business sense, then I have a problem with that."
Obstacles abound
If the unions are able to get a toehold in the flurry of new construction expected to take place in the area over the next several years, it would be a noteworthy step given that New Orleans has historically been anything but a union town.
"In general, unions have had a very marginal presence throughout the Gulf Coast and throughout the South," said Jeff Grabelsky, director of the construction and industry program in Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations.
That peripheral presence can be explained in part because unions are most dominant in states that had strong industrial development during the 19th century, Grabelsky said.
Louisiana has been a largely agricultural state. It's also what is known as a "right to work" state. That means that to form a union, at least 50 percent of eligible employees in a workplace plus one need to agree to do so, and only workers who sign up join the union. In other states, if more than half of the eligible employees decide to join, everyone automatically becomes a member.
"I would say to you it is certainly not one of the strongest areas for unions," Baker said. "Because the right-to-work laws have simply been more prohibitive."
Union supporters often point to the hospitality industry as an example of the constrictive nature here. Although about one-sixth of the metro area's residents were employed in the hospitality industry before Katrina, the Fairmont and Loews hotels remain the city's only unionized hotels, despite several failed attempts to organize other lodging facilities.
"We need more than a toehold. We need people to recognize that we're not going to rebuild this city without skilled workers and collective bargaining," said Wade Rathke, chief organizer for the Hotels and Restaurants Organizing Council, which led a push to lift the wages paid to hospitality workers in the late 1990s.
But Rathke appeared pessimistic that the AFL-CIO investment would do much to improve opportunities to establish unions in New Orleans.
Hoping to leave their mark
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations represents 53 national and international labor unions and about 9 million people, according to its Web site. Members are teachers, truck drivers, engineers, painters and laborers, among others. Baker said the association is "not dissuaded" by the city's history or "prohibitive" laws.
"Quite frankly, we are encouraged," she said. The investment "gives us an opportunity now and hopefully with that we can change laws."
What could change the tide are the endorsements of grateful residents happy both to have homes and jobs thanks to unions, Baker said.
"Hopefully they look back one day and say this opportunity was given to me through a union," Baker said. "I was able to get this job. I was able to build this home. My children were able to go to college. It was all through an organized labor effort."
It is a reasonable strategy, Grabelsky said.
"When the people of the Gulf Coast see the ways in which unions can contribute to the well-being of their communities, the environment becomes much more friendly to unions and to the right of workers to organize for an effective voice on their jobs and in the community."
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Jaquetta White can be reached at jwhite@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3494.