THE END OF 50/50: McCarron's plan to whack the "guys on the bench"
by Gregory A. Butler
As part of United Brotherhood of Carpenters General President Douglass J. McCarron's plan to "streamline" the union, the 50/50 system is to be eliminated. This has already been done in a number of Doug's new Regional Councils, including his home council, Southern California/Southern Nevada. Soon, we in New York will feel the brunt of the loss of this system. Many of us who work out of the hall may find ourselves displaced from the buisness.
WHAT WAS 50/50?: Let me stop for a minute and explain what 50/50 is to those readers unfamilliar with it. In Carpenter's union contracts, the contractor is permitted to select the foreman and up to half the crew. The boss can hire whoever he wants for those jobs, as long as they are in the union, or agree to join in 7 days. The shop steward and the other half of the crew have to be from the local in whos territory the job is located. They can either be whoever is at the top of the list and has the right skills for that type of job, or the contractor can request specific members from the list.
As most carpenters know, 50/50 as practiced wasn't nearly as fair as it sounds on paper. Lots of contractors had more company men than local men, and the local men usually were the last hired and the first laid off. Contractors, through the request system, could decide WHICH particular local men they wanted.
Even if you got the referral for the job, as every carpenter knows, that only guaranteed you 2 hours show up pay, and you only got to stick around if you "proved yourself". And, lots of times, the Buisness Agents played favorites over who got the 6 month shop steward jobs, and who got the 10 day bottom of the list specials.
But, for the majority of union carpenters who are local men or local women, those of us who aren't connected to a company, at least we had a shot at working. And, it was a "safety net" for company men who got on the wrong side of their boss, or who's outfit went bankrupt.
Under Doug's system, if you work out of the hall, you'll only work if the contractors are out of company men, and VOLUNTARILY go to the hall for extra labor (of course, they could just as well hire off the street, as long as the new carpenters got in the union in 7 days).
Probably, on the little jobs, like 2 or 3 days of furniture, they'll just send 2 company men, instead of hiring a mechanic from the hall, and only on the biggest of the big jobs will we get a few days (and even then, most likely we'll just be there for the push).
"FLEXABILLITY": But, Doug think's it's "inconvenient" for the contractors to have to hire from the hall. The General President thinks the bosses should only hire from the hall if they feel like it. It's actually not surprising that Doug's first priority would be the convenience of the contractors, since, as member of the board of directors of Perini, one of the biggest heavy construction contractors in America, he is actually a boss himself.
Under Doug's system, only the steward would have to come from the hall. Companies could take their company men from job to job, even into other local's territory (Doug calls this "flexabillity").
McCarron and the general office have not openly said that they would allow contractors to transport carpenters from low scale areas to higher paying territories and still pay the lower scale, but that would be the next logical step (and, I've personally seen a New Jersey woodwork outfit, Morgan Woodwork, pay New Jersey shop pay to company men on New York jobs, even under the old system, where that was illegal).
It seems to me that this is the general idea, especially in some of the bigger regional councils, like Eastern Pennsylvania or New England, where there are major pay differences between locals.
I HAVE SEEN THE FUTURE, AND IT SUCKS: Even under 50/50, contractors do a lot of dirty deals on their company men in return for a steady job. Outfits like Regional Scaffolding and Hoisting, and Century Maxim Concrete, among others, pay their company men as little as $15/hr, CASH NO STAMPS(that means no benifits, just the money). Since, under the new system, the only viable way to stay working would be to stay on a company's good side, it wouldn't surprise me to see more of this.
The only other ways to keep working would be to suck up to the Regional Council, to get sent out as a steward regularly, or to try to live off what little scraps end up in the hall, or to go to contractors who pay scale, but provide marginal work opportunities (like the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, which pays scale, and always pays the benifits, but can only give at most 40 or 50 hours A MONTH to the average carpenter).
BUT, WHAT CAN WE DO?: Doug likes to present himself and his "restructureing" plan as unstoppable, this is the future, we have to do it his way or die. But that's just not the case.
It's time for us to stand up, to the contractors and to union misleaders like McCarron, to fight for ourselves and the next generation of carpenters coming up. Leaders like Doug feel that they are in the buisness of selling labor, and labor peace, to the contractors. They are only concerned with the problems of the bosses, and couldn't care less about us, the members. But, we have to struggle to take the union away from Doug and people like him, and fight for a better life for the working carpenter.
email Gangbox at gangbox@excite.com