NEW YORK CARPENTERS 1999 where we are, and where we ought to go
by Gregory A. Butler
Union carpenters in New York City in 1999 are at a crossroads. For the first time since 1915, we have a District Council leadership that do not have ties to la cosa nostra, but we are actually worse off than we were under the wiseguys.
There is a building boom, and only 1,300 or so brothers and sisters on the list out of 20,000, but there are also about 20,000 non union brothers and sisters out there in our trade.
Not only are the non represented carpenters doing virtually all the new houses in Staten Island, and all the apartment renovations in Harlem, the South Bronx, South Jamaica, Bedford Stuyvessant and East New York, but much of the storefront work in the Financial District, Midtown, the Upper East Side and the Upper West Side and even high rises on W 40th street and that big MTA command center on 54th street. And, even the sidewalk bridges around a lot of sites are non union, and we owned that work just 4 years ago.
What answer does Doug McCarron's New York faceman, Supervisor James Slebeska have?
Well, James has set up a functioning organizine department, which is better than convicted embezzler and former District Council President Fredrick W. Devine ever did. The problem is, their approach to "organizing" involves giving wage concessions to rat employers.
For example, Colgate and Rockledge are two scaffold contractors that were union until just a couple of years ago. Freddie Devine gave them the right to not hire out of the hall and to not have shop stewards in 1995, and they immediately went non union.
And, one company that stayed union, Regional, decided to stop paying the "stamps" (benifits) for it's carpenters, and to unilaterally reduce their wages to $15 hour.
What's James's plan? To reward these companies by giving them a deal that their carpenters would no longer get full carpenter scale of $30.97/hr plus stamps, but 70% of Local Union #1536 timberman scale. The timbermen only get $25.hr plus stamps, so the new "1536 B division" scale would be $18.50/hr plus stamps.
James also has a similar plan to organize the renovation contractors in Harlem, the South Bronx, Central Brooklyn and Southeast Queens. They'd get a scale of 70% of regular carpenter scale, that is about $20/hr. Since these contractors have an overwhelmingly Black, Latino and Asian workforce, it would basically be a "minority" rate.
Since non union minority carpenters don't trust the union much anyway, it would really hurt organizing.
And, under the most favored nations clause in the contract, contractors that are already union would get to pay the same rate. The last time the District Council tried this, under now missing and presumed dead District Council President Teddy Maritas in the 70's, a lot of new construction jobs magically became "renovation".
Well, that's how James plans to screw the non union carpenter, what does he plan to do to the brothers and sisters in the union?
One of McCarron and Slebeska's long term goals is to eliminate 50/50 hiring rules in the District Council, and to give the contractors the right to bring in company men from anywhere, and only hire from the hall when they want to.
They have already done this in a lot of places including the nearby North New Jersey, South New Jersey, Eastern Pennslyvania, New England and Suburban New York Regional Councils. In other words, New York is surrounded.
The brothers and sisters in Long Island and Westchester, Doug's new local union #7 and Suburban New York Regional Council, are already getting kicked in the ass by the loss of 50/50 hiring and the "market retention" program that allows newly signed rat contractors to have a crew that's half union carpenters getting 70% of scale and half non union carpenters getting whatever the boss feels like paying. Guess who gets the OT, and guess who gets laid off first?
They weren't able to impose it here, because of a lot of static from the old guard opposition, who's power base was always in the hiring halls. There was a compromise. The District Councils would take over the seperate local lists, run them centrally, and they would "reconsider" abolishing the 50/50 rule in 2000 and 2001 when the contracts are up.
The big question is, how has this impacted the working carpenter, and how is he/she responding?
Well, there has kind of been a delayed reaction because, for now things have been very busy. Most of the concrete guys and gals are working with the 2 Trump jobs at Riverside South on the westside, the Trump job on the east side, the dozen or so other luxury highrises and all the highway work.
And most of the sheetrockers are also working, with all the highrises, the office renovations in midtown and the residential conversions in the financial district. Also, most of the woodworkers are working, and the floorlayers, ceiling guys, dockbuilders and timbermen.
So, since it's hasn't been this busy in years, a lot of folks havn't been directly affected by restructuring yet.
But of course some folks have been hurt. In trade show, the District Council lost control of carpenter hiring at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center to the State in 1995, and the union barely clings to shows at the hotels and the piers. Carpenters at the Javits Center are under the control of an employer dominated system of favoriteism, where there is no pretence of fairness or of rotation.
At the Piers, Local 791 of the International Longshoremen's Association has $10/hr Longshoremen doing the work of carpenters, teamsters and housekeepers. To make it even worse, these brothers and sisters have to kick back part of that $10 an hour just to get a job!
And carpenters in furniture installation have found that the union has lost control of a lot of the work. It is not unusual to see all company man crews installing office furniture, especially on Tops Furniture jobs. Even the outfits that still use the hall fill their calls with requested carpenters.
In interior steel partitions, most of the outfits use International Agreemens with McCarron to circumvent the hall, and only hire a steward, or 2 from the hall and 4 from the company.
And the Scaffold contractors that stayed with the union, Regional, U.B.S. and York, take advantage of that agreement they signed with convicted former District Council President Fred Devine, in 1994. They don't have to hire from the hall unless they want to, in fact they don't even have to have a steward.
Some contractors abuse this agreement. Mike Mazucca of Regional pays his carpenters $15/hr and they don't get benifit stamps. This would actually be funny if it wasn't so sad because Mazucca is on the board of the Welfare Fund he defrauds! Of course Mike is , by some accounts, also a capo in the Genovese family, so I guess that means he can do that.
Some of these abuses have begun to creep into the more mainstream areas of carpentry, as could be expected, and it will probably get worse when all these big jobs are done next year and work slows down.
Drywall outfits like All Star and A & M continue to flood their big jobs with company men and requested carpenters off the list. In fact other than outfits like Nastasi White, Nastasi Associates and Prince Carpentry, which always more or less respected the list, the only contractors who use the list are scumbags like R & J, who have long had a 75 board a day production quota, and play musical chairs with the list to find people they can push that much production out of.
Concrete outfits like Laquilla, Yonkers, Slattery and Northberry also play the same games with the list (especially Northberry, who beat out Laquilla for all that Trump work). Also, Atlas still has it's crew of Polish carpenters, who are "union" but only get $15 with no stamps, and Felix Industries still does it's Con Ed work with it's all Greek Cypriot workforce, and not one person from the hall, except a handfull of Black women laborers from LIUNA highway construction local 731, who they use as flaggers.
And, I predict, when work slows down, we'll see all the contractors playing the request game, or ignoring the list entirely.
In 2001, the agreements with the Association of Wall, Ceiling and Carpentry Contractors, Metropolitan Drywall Association, Cement League of Greater New York, the Manufacturing Woodworkers Association, Building Contractors Association and the other interior contractors associations come up, and the contract with the Associated General Contractors of New York comes up in 2002, and they get a shot at not having to even go through the motions of hiring through the hall.
Then I expect to see the really ugly open favoritism become rampant throughout our trade in New York. This will especially be true if 2001 and 2002 are slow years.
Then, the sheetrockers, concrete guys/gals, ceiling guys/gals and woodworkers will feel the same pressure that the brothers and sisters in furniture, trade show and other specialties have had to deal with the last couple of years. A few company men will have 2,500 hour years, and the local men and local women will have 300 hour years.
But, for things to get better, there has to be leadership, planning, organization and a positive goal. And those things, especially a positive goal, are in short supply in New York.
There IS opposition to McCarron, but what KIND of oppostion is it?
Sal Zarzana and his crew from the former local union #902 [now part of local union #926] are probably the most vocal, but there is also Shaun Toner, Charlie Phipps and Kenny Palmenteri in the former local union #17 [my old local,now the northern part of local union #608], and the administrations in local union #608 and Dockbuilders local union #1456, among others.
Althoug it was good that Sal and his guys they called the July 1 "ROCK THE BRIDGE" rally at the Brooklyn Bridge in support of the brothers and sisters in San Francisco, and for one member one vote, Zarzana and the other guys have some credibility problems. When THEY controlled the hiring, they played favorites and the good jobs never came near the dayroom. They screwed a lot of people over, and they played a lot of games with the contractors at the working carpenters expense.
For guys like Toner, Phipps and Zarzana, there is the feeling among many working carpenters that they miss the 6 figure salaries and the Lincoln Town Cars, all the perks of being a BA. They hate having to get up at 4AM to go to work like we have to. They miss having guys kiss up to them for jobs. And the guys who run 608 and 1456 don't want to lose those perks.
It doesn't help that most of the oppostion in New York only complain about McCarron's election policies, which, when it comes down to it, only affect BAs and BA wannabees.
McCarron's JOB policies, like getting rid of 50/50 and cutting "market retention" deals with contractors is what hurts the working carpenter, and you don't hear a lot about that from the reformers.
So, the members are in the position of having a bad leadership and a bad opposition. You often hear the reformers complain that the members "don't care as long as there working" and "don't want to do anything". Well, it's hard to support the oppostition when there almost the same as Doug. And, maybe, "reformers" who are more concerned with getting BA jobs for themselves so they don't have to hang rock, than they are with the welfare of the average working carpenter aren't really "reformers" at all.
But, what can carpenters who want to take back the New York District Council of Carpenters, to make it a true brotherhood, do?
Well, we can look at what our brothers and sisters did in California. McCarron and his stooges gave them an awful contract, taking away their hiring hall, with even the stewards coming from the ranks of company men, giving them a lousy raise in a booming market. [Regional Council President Casey claimed they couldn't get a big raise because it'd "hurt organizing"].
But these brothers and sisters stood up and called a wildcat strike, shut down most of the big jobs in the Bay Area, and are now in the process of taking back their union.
This is what we have to do here. In 2001, Doug and Roger are going to try and destroy the hiring hall. What has already been done to the trade show carpenters, the scaffold carpenters and furniture installers is going to be done to EVERY carpenter. You'll have to go hat in hand to a boss, and you'll be lucky to get the rate.
A lot of brothers and sisters on the job don't think there's an answer, since things were no picnic in the days of Fred Devine, Pascal McGuinnes, John O'Connor and the late Teddy Maritas. That's why so many brothers and sisters are "apathetic" and don't want to get involved with the reformers.
But, there is a third way between McCarron and the old guard.
Every 4th Tuesday of the month, except November, December and August, at 4:30 PM, there will be a meeting of CARPENTERS FOR A STRONGER UNION, New York City. It'll be at :
the hall of Local 802,American
Federation of Musicians*
322 West 48th Street, room B
between 8th and 9th Avenues.
*organization for identification purposes only, Local 802 is in no way affiliated with CSU,nyc, we just rent a meeting room from them
Every rank and file carpenter who belives in organizing the unorganized carpenters without cutting below scale "market retention" deals with the rat contractors, in not cutting any deals with either the rat contractors or our so called "good union contractors", in fighting for the rights of every carpenter, union or non union, instead of defending the "market share" of our bosses, and in one member one vote union democracy, with all officials elected by and all contracts ratified by the members, should be at this meeting.
CSU,nyc can be reached by mail at:
1580 Amsterdam Av,#46 or by email at keysersoze608@hotmail.comNew York NY 10031
email Gangbox at gangbox@excite.com