MIKE FORDE AT 100 DAYS :
how's the NYDCofC's first Executive Secretary Treasurer doin' ? and what's he doin' to us ?By Gregory A. Butler, local 608 carpenter
New York District Council of Carpenters Executive Secretary Treasurer Michael J. Forde is nearing the 100 day mark of his administration. And, seemlingly in honor of the occasion, Mike has had the DC issue a new, quarterly newsletter, similar to the old newspaper format of the NYDCofC newsletter of the Devine era, but that was a bimonthly. The newsletter features 18 pictures of the humble Brother Forde in it's 12 pages, and 16 pictures apiece of President Pete Thommassen and VP Gene Maiello. Also, there is some interesting info on our DC and it's present state.
So, this is a good time to check up on how Mike, and his team, are doing. Is Mike going to be able to fill the shoes of socialist UBCJA founder and "father of Labor Day" Peter J. McGuire, or is he going to follow in the nefarious tradition of former NYDCofC principal officers like the investigated Paschal McGuinnes, the conviceted, but out on appeal, Fredrick W. Devine or the missing, and presumed dead in a < cosa nostra > hit, Teddy Maritas? Let's take a look.
Mike presides over a NYDCofC that only has 17,000 active members, down from the 19,000 members we had during the recession five years ago and over 25,000 members in the booming '80's. This is out of a total of roughly 40,000 carpenters in the city. And there are only 2,050 apprentices in the JAC, down from over 3,000 in the mid 90's. And there are 8,000 retirees, and that number increases every day.
The 17,000 active carpenters only control 37 % of the work in the city, according to the DC's own figures,and that number is declining also. The NYDCofC also has, at the moment, 1,400 carpenters on the out of work list, in the midst of a building boom. This is due to abuse of the out of work list by contractors and the BAs of the locals, and a rampant and growing grey market of "union" contractors who pay their "union" carpenters below scale.
Needless to say, Mike has nothing to say about any of these problems.
He does call for returning our funds from Zenith Administrators in Chicago, which has UBC General President Doug McCarron as a board member. The funds will be moved back to a firm in New York [GANGBOX confidential sources claim that the lucky firm is Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, an old line Wall Street powerhouse who, in recent times, has come to, reputedly, have seedy ties with American < cosa nostra > and the Russian < mafiya >. ].
And retirees who have over 15 credits will no longer have to pay the onerous $180 a month premium for medical coverage for themselves and their spouses. But that reform has more to do with years of campaigning by the NYDCofC retiree activist group MAC-OUT, and a Federal lawsuit that they were on the verge of winning, than to any generosity by Mike. And no word on how exactly the fund is going to pay for this benifit with a declining active membership, and so many active members working for employers who pay cash and do not contribute into the benifit fund.
Much of the magazine was devoted to photos of the "rank and file" delegates to the DC, most of whom are full time officers or staff and only a handfull of whom actually are on their tools. The executive committee has only one rank and file carpenter out of it's dozen members, and that guy, Staten Island Carpenters local 20's Billy O'Neal, is a House Foreman at that temple of union scabbing and favoritism, the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center. Out of the 82 delegates, only 5 are Black, only 1 is Latino [2 if you count Eastside local 157's Mickey Annucci, an Italian American who dubiously claimed to be part Puerto Rican during the 1999 elections] none are Asian and none are women.
The Delegate Body's first act when they were inagurated 100 days ago?
Giving a raise to the BAs !
The McCarron trusteeship, in an economy measure that was one of their few good ideas in their time here, had cut BA salaries to around the level of rank and file carpenters who work year round, about $42,000/yr. The new salary for BAs is $100,000 a year plus expenses. VP Maiello and President Thommassen, who's posts are basically figureheads under the new bylaws, make $135,000 a year plus expenses. And the humble EST Forde? He will now get $175,000 a year, plus expenses. Not surprisingly, right after the increase, the DC became a lot more agressive about dues collection.
Organizing is a vital issue now, since so much of our work is non union these days. But, the Forde team has an interesting take on the question. The centerspread of the NYDCofC magazine was focused on... RAIDING THE WORK OF ANOTHER UNION !
Namely, local 100, Transport Workers Union, who's members in MTA/New York City Transit's Track and Structures Department may indeed make a lower rate per hour, but, unlike building tradespeople, they have full time civil service jobs, better working conditions than us and far superior benifits.
But, the DC has the bright idea of picketing jobsites in the transit system where they used in house craftspeople instead of using us. [Incedentally, the local 100 TWU tradespeople feel that all maintenance work in the subway system is, by rights, THEIR WORK IN THE FIRST PLACE, and, it hurts them when we do that work]. In any event, with all the genuinely non union work out there, it is seriously uncool for us to be going after work which is already union.
There was also a brief mention of three of the many non union jobsites in the city.
These sites are the major targets of our organizing department ;
14th St and 3rd Av, Manhattan, Forkosh Construction Co, GC, the job: a new NYU dorm;
Parker Meridian Hotel, Manhattan, PJ O'Connor, GC, the job: a major hotel renovation;
and
21st Av and 27th Street, Astoria, Queens, Serenity Construction, GC, the job: a nursing home.
But what is more significant is what they DID NOT MENTION.
There is a tremendous amount of renovation of low income apartments in Harlem, the Bronx and Brooklyn, and there is also a tremendous amount of new construction of middle income houses and apartments in Brooklyn and Queens. And all of it is non union. Despite a misguided effort by the organizing department to offer a sweethart $22 an hour contract to the low income renovation contractors.
And, a lot of the $75 a day carpenters on those jobs are actually union members, who couldn't afford to wait out the out of work list.
If that wasn't enough non union work, in the shadow of the union built luxury hirises of the Upper East Side and Upper West Side of Manhattan, there is a netherworld of luxury apartment and brownstone renovation, and storefront work, that is also all non union. Again, often with union carpenters working non union on those jobs.
To top that, much of the city work that used to be our bread and butter is now non union. Especially work by the state of New York's biggest construction authorities, the School Construction Authority and the Dormitory Authority, State of New York. Both these authorities are ideologically committed to building open shop, with an eye towards going 100% non union, or as close to it as possible in New York. And, SCA and DASNY are already 50% non union in the city.
And, as if that wasn't enough bad news, in front of many jobsites, you will find sidewalk bridges built by a couple of formerly union outfits, Rockledge and Colgate. Thanks to a misguided Devine era concessionary agreement, they went totally non union, and, despite a Trusteeship era decision to give a $ 17 an hour concessionary agreement to ALL the scaffold outfits, they still havn't come back to the NYDCofC.
But, none of these facts were mentioned in the NYDCofC paper.
Nor did they mention the fact that many "union" contractors are in violation of the agreements, in particular, non payment of benifit stamps and payment of less than the rate, that is to say, CASH, for example : In the concrete buisness; Manhattan, and Atlas ; In the sheetrock buisness; Arrowstar, Target and S & S; In the furniture buisness; Vintage, G & M Installers, CMI, Al-Lee Installations, E G Sales AKA Arrow Discount Furniture and Tops.
Some of these companies are basically double breasted. Especially in the furniture industry. And, of course, there is that casual, everyday violation of the contract in the furniture industry of requiring carpenters to supply their own cordless drills, when the agreement plainly says that the contractor supplies all power tools.
But, not only was none of this mentioned in the magazine, not even the unpaid stamps, the very department that was used in the Devine era and during the Trusteeship to enforce the contract against the cash money men and collect delinquencies, the Labor Management Fund, will apparently no longer be in that buisness.
Now, the LM fund will be focused on helping union contractors [including, presumibly, the ones I listed above and other delinquent shops] bid on jobs of SCA, DASNY and other state authorities. And that includes using our dues money to provide management training for these contractors. Which is one step away from the "market retention" scemes other UBCJA locals and councils have tried, which tend to degenerate into bribing contractors to stay union, with wage concessions and outright subsidies for contractors.
The paper also mentioned a scheme to have all 17,000 active members be required to volunteer a day for organizing and/or campaigning for the Democrats. In theory this is supposed to include "everybody from apprentices to superintendents", but, for company men and management personnel who don't want to participate, there is a simple $250 fine to pay, and they won't be bothered again for a year.
Another major article in the NYDCofC magazine touched on the steward system, and some changes that Mike's team have proposed. Of course, thanks to the McGuinnes era Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act consent decree with the Justice Department, any changes have to be approved by the US District Court before they go into effect.
But, Mike's proposal would be that, to be a steward, you would have to not only have passed the shop steward certification class, as is the case now, but, also have been in the union 5 years and/or be a journeyman for a year, have passed a 10 hour OSHA class, be First Aid certifed, CPR certified, have attended Sexual Harassment training, be Hilti and or Ramset Shotgun certified, be Laser Certified, posses a Certificate of Fitness from the Fire Department, have gone through some new process that doesn't even exist yet called "District Council Work sessions and ID process" AND attend 75% of the local meetings and all shop steward meetings.
Also, instead of requiring all jobs must have a steward, as at present, jobs MAY have a steward under the proposal. And, there is NO proposed change of the recent rule that contractors now have the right to fire stewards for "incompetence".
But, what does this mean ?
First of all, most carpenters would be ineligible to be stewards under the new rules. The meeting attendence rule alone would disenfranchise about 90% of the carpenters in my local, 608. Which means there would be a very limited pool of potential stewards. Basically, the BA's pets, the guys that they keep working all the time, and who are the backbone of their political base, would get most of the steward jobs. [see a previous GANGBOX article on that subject : JOB CONTROL http://www.geocities.com/gangbox/indenturedservitude1.html ]
And, with the option to not have stewards, a lot of jobs would hve no representation at all. Which is a big problem, because, on a lot of jobs, as it is now, usually the only person from the hall, who isn't a requested company man, is the steward. So, there would be less opportunities for the local man/woman. And more opportunities for the chosen few to work.
Of course, even now, on the big 6 month long concrete and sheetrock jobs, the stewards are usually the BAs buddies, and, many of them are very good at looking the other way at violations, and just worrying about keeping their own job.
Which leads us to the next topic, the out of work list. The paper had a brief reminder of the out of work list rules. But, of course, no mention of the problems with the list for the average local carpenter.
Such as the fact that many contractors do not hire any real local men/women, except for a steward. Everybody else who is allegedly "from the list" is a requested company man, and a company man can be requested even if they have only been on the list a day, and there are a thousand people ahead of them.
Or, the fact that at least four locals, Westside, Uptown and the Bronx Carpenters local 608, Eastside Carpenters local 157, Dockbuilders local 1456 and Brooklyn Carpenters local 926, have an active back door job referral system. Certain chosen members [the BA's pets I talked about above] of these locals get dispatched to work directly by the BAs, sent to jobs that are never reported to the list. In 926's case, the members are sometimes sent to work for cash for Arrowstar, a double breasted sheetrock contractor.
And, needless to say, they did not mention the huge areas of carpenter work that are basically exempt from hiring from the list in any way shape or form thanks to Devine and Trusteeship era concessions. Namely, woodwork, the Javits Center and scaffolding, which are now all company man preserves ruled by favoritism.
The NYDCofC paper did have one significant ommission. They did not anywhere mention that, in a few months, almost all of our agreements from the Trusteeship era will expire, except for the Javits Center and Associated General Contractors Heavy and Highway Construction agreement. And that many of these agreements are deeply concessionary, such as the Manufacturing Woodworkers Association woodwork agreement, which allows nearly all company men (except for a steward from an outside construction local), all cabinetmaker crews (at shop scale, $22 an hour for an 8 hour day) or the $17 an hour local 1536 B agreement with the scaffold contractors.
Nor did they mention the concession that the leading drywall contractor association, the Association of Wall, Ceiling and Carpentry Industries, wants, that is, reducing the pay of sheetrockers from our current scale of $32.22 down to $25 an hour, and cutting their benifits by $3 an hour, from $21 to $18, with all three dollars coming out of the health benifits. A concession which, if granted, would, by law, have to be extended to the Metropolitan Drywall Association and the big sheetrock contractors who work under UBC international agreements, like Nastasi White and Component Assembly Systems.
Or, it could get worse. Wall, Ceiling and MDA could copy an idea from the sheetrock contractors in the Southern California/Nevada Regional Council of Carpenters, the British Columbia Provincial Council of Carpenters and the Baltimore and Vicinity Council of Carpenters. That is, dispensing with hourly wages for sheetrockers alltogether, and paying them by a straight piecework system.
Of course, even now, drywall contractors are violating the current agreement. Component has a piecerate incentive rate that they pay, Nastasi White and A & M are seriously delinquent to the funds, Nastasi White, Nordic, Component, Prince Carpentry and Woodworks have adopted that rotten practice pioneered by R & J Construction of working through lunch, but not paying time and a half for the worked through lunch, and/or letting the carpenters leave a half hour early and the biggest violation of all, that almost every drywall outfit does, having a production quota, which is forbidden by our contract and the constitution of the UBCJA.
That rule is supposed to be, as long as you give the contractor a fair days work, they can't impose a particular quota of how many boards you are supposed to hang. But, they all violate this rule, ranging from 60 boards for contractors like Nastasi or Eurotech all the way up to R & J and Prince's 100 boards a day. And, if you don't make it, out the door you go.
Needless to say, the NYDCofC's paper didn't talk about that.
In conclusion, Mike Forde's first 100 days, as presented in the magazine, do not look promising. Now I can imagine what it must've been like, many years ago, when the union was collapsing in what are now totally scabified areas like Southern California or North Florida.
I hope I'm wrong, but I'm afraid I might be right.
Thats it for now.
Be union, work safe.
email Gangbox at gangbox@excite.com