HUMPIN' ROCK :
how contractors abuse apprentices as cheap delivery laborBy Gregory A. Butler, local 608 carpenter
I just finished being steward for Vintage Corporate Services, at 55 Water Street, 48th Floor, in 157 country. And, we had an enormous number of apprentices on the job. We never had more than 8 journeymen carpenters, 3 from the hall, 5 company, but, we had 3 apprentices for most of the job. The last day, we had SIX apprentices.
And, although a couple of them did get to do some installing of keybords, and some got to do base and trim, Vintage basically used them to hump material around the site. Which was only necessary because Vintage doesn't have the carpenter foreman and another carpenter on the delivery to tell the local 814 Teamsters where to put everything, so all the panels, peds, surfaces and trim were in the wrong place and had to be moved. And, it works out cheaper to use apprentices to move this material.
Eddie, the owner of Vintage, was very happy to have so many apprentices on the job. In smaller buildings, Vintage will use non union installers and movers, some getting as little as $ 8 an hour, or they will have some of their company men work for less than scale. But, they couldn't do that here, 55 Water St is too high profile a building, and Eddie has all 23 of his company men busy on jobs from Conneticut to Delaware. So, he did the next best thing.
One of Eddie's foremen, Richie Tedesco, who ran the job the last two days, was also happy to have so many apprentices. He actually told me that he would prefer to have an all apprentice crew, and not hire any journeymen from the hall, as local carpenters are "the reason this union has gone to shit" (because we expect to be paid on time, with the stamps, we expect to have our check in hand an hour before wrap up time when we get laid off, and generally we don't kiss contractor ass like he, and many other company men, do. Richie also told me that I should "loosen up" about enforcing the contract.)
Of course, our contract says that there is only supposed to be one apprentice for every 5 journeymen, and no apprentices on jobs with less than 5 mechanics. But, this job was loaded with apprentices with the full knowlege of local 157 BA Lawrence D'Errico.
But, Vintage isnt the only furniture outfit to overload on apprentices, L & D Installers also likes to use heavily apprentice crews.
But, by far, the worst offenders are the sheetrock contractors. One of the apprentices on this job, a 2nd year, had just come from working for Prince Carpentry, a 70 board a day, work through lunch slavedriver type of contractor, where all he did was hump rock all day. He wasn't even permitted to ask any questions to the mechanics about what they were doing.
Another apprentice, a 3rd year, had just come from an even more abusive contractor, the 100 board a day whip crackers R & J Construction, who's owner got his start as a foreman for Prince.
A third apprentice, a 1st year who was the only woman on the job, had spent most of the last year on one day jobs at Macy's in Brooklyn, unloading display cases from the truck and bringing them to the floor, and had only had one opportunity to work on her tools since she's been in the union, on a job doing woodwork in an apartment building on the Upper East Side with Woodworks Construction.
Now, if all apprentices do for the first 2 years of their apprenticeship is hump rock, and then they hardly work as 3rd or 4th years, does this really contribute to their learning our trade ? Of course not.
That actually happened to me as an apprentice. I spent my first two years humping rock, carrying metal studs, insulating and caulking for Drywall Associates, R & J Construction and P & M Sorbara. I also moved wood panels, molding and base for John Langenbacker. The only time I got to actually work with my tools was when I was working for Kiewit, a heavy construction contractor [ concrete outfits have laborers to do the material handling, so, carpenter apprentices actually get to work with their tools] .
So, when I went to work for Island ADC and Nastasi White, as a third year, I really knew next to nothing about rocking. Island just gave me my check in a week, at Nastasi, foreman Horace Jones just spent the whole summer of 1994 at Chase Manhattan Plaza yelling at me because "you are a third year, you are supposed to know how to do that !" And, like a lot of apprentices, I spent much of my 3rd and 4th years on the bench.
And this happened to a lot of carpenters I went to school with. The only exceptions were some apprentices who were lucky enough to get with one particular sheetrock contractor as an apprentice, and spend the rest of their apprenticship as a company man/woman with that company. They actually got taught how to rock, rather that being used as delivery labor as a first and second year. Even some of those guys and gals still got cut as third years, and spent the last half of their apprenticeship on the bench.
There are also a large group of carpenter apprentices who exclusively work at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center. The New York Convention Center Operating Corporation, the state authority that runs the Javits, has a policy of hiring as many apprentices as they can, often half a call will be apprentices. The reason ? Simply, cheap labor. And some apprentices there are going on into their 5th 6th or even 7th year in the 4 year apprenticeship program, because they know, once they become journeypeople, they will hardly ever get work at the Javits. As for working outside the Javits, those apprentices who have never worked anywhere else in the trade except there have very limited carpentry skills, due to the specialized nature of tradeshow work.
But, why does this practice continue of using apprentices as cheap labor for humping, rather than having them be helpers for mechanics to enable them to learn our trade ?
There is a loophole in our agreements, negotiated in the last contracts former NYCDCofC President Fred Devine bargained, in 1993, that encourages the contractors to use apprentices as cheap delivery labor. This concession is still in the agreement, Article II Section 3 which says that "The handling, unpacking, distributing and hoisting of materials to be installed and/or erected by employees covered by this agreement shall be done by apprentices" The section goes on to exempt lumber for concrete work from this clause, as that work belongs to locals 20, 6A, 18A and 731 of the Concrete Workers District Council of the Laborers Internationa Union of North America.
The big problem with this language is that it allows contractors to misuse apprentices. The fundamental purpose of the apprenticeship system is to provide a trained workforce to replace mechanics as they retire. It is not supposed to be about giving union contractors cheap helper labor to unload trucks, like the non union contractors have.
However, that is exactly the kind of situation that Art II Sec 3 has created. Also, although the rule that restricts the number of apprentices to 1 for every 5 mechanics still exists, it is, in practice, not enforced by the DC and the locals. Just like the 50/50 rule.
Also, it has reduced opportunities for journeypeople to get OT, since a company can use apprentices for the deliveries. And, some contractors, like Nastasi White, actually have a roving crew of apprentices who go from job to job unloading trailers, until they get to be 4th years, and, as they know nothing about rocking, they get cut.
What we need is to reorient the apprenticeship program back to it's original purpose, that is, training young men and women to be journeylevel carpenters, not providing cheap labor for contractors.
Thats it for now.
Be union, work safe.