LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,
THE MAIN EVENT:
CHRISITE vs MCCARRON, CHICAGO ILLINOIS, AUGUST 21, 2000By Gregory A. Butler, local 608 carpenter
On August 21, 2000, there is going to be a big prizefight in Chicago, Illinois, at the McCormick Place Convention Center.
No, it's not one of Don King's HBO boxing matches, nor is it one of Vince McMahon's WWF wrestling events.
It is the 38th general convention of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America, AFL-CIO/CLC.
The "prize" is control over the 300,000 member union. The combatants are: one the one side, the supporters of dictatorial General President Douglass J. McCarron; and, on the other side, the faction called Carpenters for a Democratic Union International [CDUI], and the resolution they sponsor allegedly written by somebody using the name of a long dead labor historian, Robert Christie, Jr.
Who's right, who's wrong and , most importantly, who is gonna win? Let's see.
1 ). DOUG MCCARRON, AND CORPORATE UNIONISM : 5 years ago, Douglass J McCarron became the general president of the UBC. Doug had been the president of the Los Angeles District Council of Carpenters, and presided over it's merger with several other Southern California and Nevada based councils (it's called the Southern California/Nevada Regional Council of Carpenters now). Also, under McCarron, and his brother Mike, who now runs the SCNRCofC, the membership fell from 45,000 to 11,000. And, if it hadn't been for a vigorous organizing program, most likely, the membership would've fallen even further. Even now, a good chunk of those 11,000 members work non union.
As a young carpenter in West Los Angeles Carpenters local 1506, Dougie Mac had been involved in wildcat strikes, and, in 1992, Doug had gotten involved in a very millitant, armed strike by Mexican immigrant residential drywallers. But, even in 92, the strike ended with the carpenters getting piecerates in their contract. [something that the UBC had originally been founded to abolish way back in 1881]
And, as more and more of the work in Southern California went non union, McCarron's reaction was to make more and more concessions to the contractors. The shop steward system in Southern California ceased to exist. Piecework became the norm in the small section of residential construction that was still union. Use of the hiring hall became optional.
And, much to the consternation of the officers of smaller locals and DC's, McCarron began merging locals, and taking the funds to maintain the Regional Council on a shrinking dues base.
When Dougie became GP, he and his team decided to implement this policy across North America.
Which wasn't surprising, as the UBC was and is shrinking. The union claims 500,000 members in construction, millwork shops and forest products in North America [in reality, it is closer to 300,000 ] and about 85% of American carpenters are non union.
Dougie Mac calls his policy "restructuring" but, basically, it would be more accurate to cal his faction's strategy "corporate unionism". The goal is to maintain the union by submitting to every demand of the contractors.
So, instead of requiring that contracors hire out of the local hiring hall for 50% of their labor (or, in some right to work states, like Nevada, it was 25%) the companies can run all company man crews, if they wish.
A good example of this is in the New England Regional Council of Carpenters, where they have something called "portability", where contractors do not have to hire anybody from the hall except for a steward. There is an article in the March/April 2000 issue of "The Carpenter", the international's magazine, detailing how they got a ceiling contractor, K & K, who had ripped up it's union contract in the early 90's, to resign by telling them they would no longer have to hire any local men/women.
The article went on to trash local men/women with the usual slander you hear from foremen about them being "incompetent". Also, it goes without saying that even the company men have no protection, the company can dispose of them as it sees fit. Even they don't have a permanent job. That's par for the course in Dougie Mac's brave new world of corporate unionism.
On the other hand, if a contractor only has a few company man slots, but often needs bulk labor for short periods, then Dougie Mac's UBC is ready to help. In another article, on the trade show industry, in the March/April 2000 "The Carpenter", members were urged to get trade show certified, as there was so much money to be made doing trade show carpentry.
What the article left out was the fact that the trade show industry only provides steady, even six figure, incomes for a tiny fraction of it's workforce. And most of those carpenters have ties of a family, friendship or sexual relationship nature to the contractors, and/or union officials.
For most trade show carpenters, there are only a few opportunities a month to work, on the really big shows that need a lot of warm bodies to put up booths and kick out carpet. Typically, they only get 40 hours of work a month, which is insuffient to even be elegible for union health insurance. And, there is a lot of sucking up to management to even get those scraps of work.
But, the decorating contractors like the "flexibility" [read, the dog eat dog competition between carpenters, and the servile kissing of management ass by carpenters] that comes from these day labor like employment relations. So, the brave new Corporate UBC is a willing partner in this superexploitation.
In the same vein, an article in "The Carpenter" late last year, millwrights, and building construction carpenters, were encouraged to get training in installing and servicing a new type of Gas Turbine Generator manufactured by Westinghouse.
Now, this generator takes a lot less time and labor to install, due to it's design, and it takes a lot less time and labor to service. But, Westinghouse, the contractors and the utilities want them installed fast, and they want the down time for maintenance to be over quicly. So, they need lots and lots of millwrights for very short work calls, usually 5 days or so. Of course, the consequences of this for the millwrights [and for that matter, the boilermakers, electricians , pipefitters, operating engineers and laborers in industrial construction] is, a lot less workdays, and more competition for fewer long term jobs.
But, since it is in the interest of the contractors to have it like that, the brave new Corporate UBC is actively supporting it.
Dougie Mac also initiated talks with the now defunct Buisness Roundtable, and the ABC, over providing training for the foremen of non union contractors, and a pilot program was set up in Indiana.
Of course, since these pro contractor policies are likely to be deeply unpopular with the members they affect, all vestige of democracy has to be removed. Carpenters have to lose the right to vote on contracts and elect buisness agents.
And, as the union is still shrinking, what funds remain have to be channeled up to the international. So, locals and even whole district councils have been merged. All of the locals in Northern Florida, for example, are now one local. All of the locals in Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire are now one local. Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, Idaho and Montana are now all one council. Alberta and the Northwest Territories are now all one council.
Basically, McCarron is trying to preserve what is left of a shrinking union by making the UBC an employment agency and job training service for the contractors. Of course, to a certain extent, the UBC has long served that purpose, but, Dougie Mac and his crew have tried to remove every shred of class struggle from the Brotherhood.
2) THE CDUI, AND SOME GUY WHO CALLS HIMSELF "ROBERT CHRISTIE JR." : An opposition has arisen to McCarron's corporate unionism. It is a group called Carpenters for a Democratic Union International [CDUI], and their platform for the convention is a document called "the Christie Resolution", for it's purported "author", an anonymous individual who posts on the Internet as "Robert Christie, Jr", taking the name of a dead historian, who was UBC founder Peter McGuire's grandson, and the author of a history of the UBC in the 1950's.
The core of CDUI's program is direct elections for all local, district or regional and international officers, and membership ratification of contracts. Which is all well and good, and is in fact a necessary starting point for making the kind of changes that rank and file carpenters need.
But, unfortunatly, they really don't address any issues beyond that. Which is a common mistake of union reform caucuses, the same mistake made by the Teamsters for a Democratic Union in the 90's, the Miners for Democracy in the 80's and the steelworkers reform group led by I.W. Abel in the 60's.
These groups have been narrowly focused on getting particular individuals in office, and, once these "good guys" get in, all the job and economic problems of the members will be solved. In practice, what happens is the "good guys" end up doing the same kinds of things to the members that the "bad guys" did, because the INSTUTION has remained the same.
Of course, the reason that these union caucuses make the same mistake again and again is that most of them have their roots in the same union officialdom that bred the "bad" union leaders they seek to replace. So, these "good guy" officials have the same contradictions with the members that the "bad guys" do.
In CDUI's case, despite the presence of some rank and file activists, most notably, John Reimann, the local 713 carpenter from Alameda County, California who led a wildcat strike against a sweetheart contract and got expelled from the Brotherhood for his trouble, the bulk of the leadership of CDUI come from the ranks of local officers. Particularly the officers of the British Columbia Provincial Council of Carpenters, Piledrivers local 34 in Northern California, Carpenters local 131 in Seattle, Lathers local 1170 in Tacoma, Washington, Carpenters local 314 in Madison, Wisconsin, Carpenters local 33 in Boston and Carpenters local 926 in Brooklyn, New York.
A major motivating factor that has turned these local officers against McCarron has been the merger of locals and councils, the transfer of funds from locals to the international and the removal of the elected status of Buisness Agents. The effect of McCarron's policies on the members is secondary to these officers, as it doesn't directly affect them.
Also, in the case of local 926 in Brooklyn, there is a more nefarious reason for the opposition to McCarron. 926's officers are reputed to have longstanding ties to
[the Mafia], and their problems with Dougie Mac have a lot to do with his regime interfering with their illicit activities. In the McCarronized New York District Council of Carpenters, it's a lot harder for 926's officers to let a union contractor, Arrowstar, run non union jobs with union carpenters getting paid cash, it's harder to cover for all the dirty in Brooklyn with an active DC organizing department and it's harder for them to slip jobs out the back door with a centralized job referral system. So, that is why 926's officers are pro "reform" now.
This is also the source of the newfound "commitment to democracy" of some former union staffers who McCarronization has reduced to mere rank and filers in Staten Island Carpenters local 20 and New York/New Jersey Dockbuilders local 1456.
In Dougie Mac's home local 1506, there has been vigorous oppostion not only to Mike McCarron's abuse of the pension fund, but also to the organizing program of the SCNRCC. Some of this is legitimate, because unfortunately a lot of "organizing" consists of signing people up without signing their employers, and that just makes the out of work list longer. But, as one of the major targets of SCNRCC organizers is Covi Concrete, a rat contractor most of who's employees are ACTUALLY UNION MEMBERS, some of this opposition to organizing comes from those who don't want to get busted working for cash.
However, even those officers who sincerly oppose McCarron, and have no nefarious motives, really don't have any answers for the burning questions that face union carpenters in North America today. CDUI doesn't have an answer for wages that are not keeping up with the cost of living, for givebacks to the contractors in the middle of a building boom, for the fact that, even in areas where the union is strong, like San Francisco, New York, Boston, Chicago, we are losing ground. CDUI really doesn't have any proposal for organizing the 85% of our trade that are non union, or for ending the longstanding division in the union between company men who have full time jobs, and local men and local women who are part time casual labor.
These are the burning questions in the mind of carpenters across the continent, and CDUI really doesn't speak to them. Elections alone, as important as they are, just won't cut the mustard.
3) SO, WHAT ARE THE ODDS? : At the convention, I predict that McCarron will prevail. This is principly because he will be able to use his goons and flunkies to supress his opponents on the floor, also his lawyers will be able to find, or invent, technical errors in the resolution itself, most notably the fact that there are at least two versions of the resolution floating around the union currently. Also, the CDUI, to date, do not have any announced candidates for international office, which is a major tactical error.
CDUI may very likely appeal to the Labor Department after this defeat, in fact, as they have strong ties with the Association for Union Democracy, this is almost certain. But, as McCarron has strong ties with the Clinton White House, it is questionable if they will prevail at the federal level (unless Bush wins in November).
However, the real winners are the contractors, as I expect the UBC to continue getting weaker, and the real losers are the rank and file carpenters, union and non union, as nobody is out there campaigning for what THEY need.
Thats it for now.
Be union, work safe.