Union organising in construction in the USA

north america / mexico | workplace struggles | interview Thursday May 05, 2005 18:35 by Firebrand - NAF

Interview with Ken Little of Carpenters For A Democratic Union

Ken Little of Carpenters For A Democratic Union talks about conditions and union organising in the USA construction industry.

Carpenters For A Democratic Union And Fighting For Rank And File Power

Members of the Firebrand Collective met with Ken Little to discuss the fight for rank and file power within the United Brotherhood of Carpenters

Firebrand: Ken, can you explain your job, how you got involved in the Carpenters Union and your back round?

Ken: My back round is as a residential carpenter. I joined the carpenter's union in 1969 and I was a laborer before that with Chuck Tendor on the Eisenhower Tunnel (which means I got to actually stuff dynamite down holes which was a great thing after just getting out of high school ,blowing things up). I became an iron worker before I became a carpenter. I tried to get into the IBW, the electrician's union, but I had shoulder length hair, a bandana, and an attitude to boot (Irregardless, of my second highest scoring they'd ever seen). My dad didn't raise no dummies. I wasn't allowed to become an electrician's apprentice, so I became a carpenter.

I worked in 12 different states as a carpenter. I was a boomer (a boomer is a journeyman carpenter who travels to cities where construction booms are happening). I finally got married, had kids, and settled down. Tacoma was where we ended up. In 1991 we moved here. That's when I became involved in the organizing.

After moving to the Tacoma area back in 1991 I became involved in organizing inside the Brotherhood. It was very new. They had a program called COMET, Construction Organizing Membership Education Training; god, it got you excited to be a union member. Then we found out you could only do what the top dogs wanted you to do and you had to wait in line before you could bring these new progressive ideas out. A lot of us said, 'well, fuck you', and we created an organizing committee. We created a thing called "To Live In Dignity", in 1993, and this is after we had done a successful campaign against Costco Wholesale, Inc. We got them to recognize the value of apprentice's and the value of paying a worker a premium price for his labor. So we got a 90 percent prevailed rate to recognize an apprentice program and that pissed off the leaders.

After the "To Live In Dignity" rally, they kicked me out of the union for two years. They brought me up on criminal charges, theft and breaking and entering. It opened the eyes of a whole lot of people to what we could be doing, and then Doug McCarron got elected in 1995. We thought that organizing would go forward and it was just going to be great for all of us carpenters, an awakening if you will. Then in 1996 he came down with these mandated bylaws that took away our rights.

It wasn't until 1996 that I actually got a staff position, if you will, but I was hired by rank and filers. I wasn't hired by the staff, which, again it was this rogue group from Montana who decided they wanted to have input into who was working for them. It didn't pay much, I didn't need much. I quit a $55,000 a year job to go take that. I wasn't making the double pension; I was making 25,000 thousand a year, because organizing was new. Today, the organizers make anywhere from 80,000-130,000 thousand a year, plus full benefits and two pensions.

The attitude that Doug put out was very top-down and against all the principles I felt were necessary. I also was a salt at one time. As an organizer, I understood what salting meant-you had to get in there. And so, when I became an organizer in Montana, I got a job working non-union as a carpenter. I knew the job sites and I was able to take on unfair labor practices, so we got ten different charges filed in two different cities. I would take a couple of weeks off and go to Billings and work non-union there.

I got all these charges filed against those companies and we were able to get $12,000 in back pay for carpenters, but it didn't mean anything. But we were raising hell, doing the right things, promoting community values, getting people aware of their rights. We had radio talk shows in the conservative state of Montana asking us to come on to create some controversy. We went back to my old high school and started doing COMET training there. When some of the parents found out a union organizer was at the school, it raised hell. I'm not even sure if my friend still works ther,e at the high school.

Why don't they want to challenge the status quo? I think they're afraid. I think the labor movement is absolutely afraid of where their membership stands. We've become so used to being consumers, that to challenge a local contractor you went to high school with is not in your best interest, if you want to keep your job. So, I think there is a level of fear that's been developed in the minds of many of today's people involved in the labor movement.

We had lunches at the construction sites on the street to talk about community values, and were really building quite a movement of getting better wages for workers. We got the workers from as many as five companies to sign authorization cards that they wanted to be represented by the Carpenters. I turned those cards over to a business agent, and he didn't do a goddamned thing with them. We had a movement going where you had 80 carpenters sign cards all of a sudden. Well, the business agent didn't utilize it and I, of course, spoke up. And that was one of the reasons I was willing to get out of the carpenters and go down to Las Vegas and be an organizer for the National Building Trades. I lasted thirty days there; Doug McCarron made sure that I got fired.

I came back home and got a job with the sheet metal workers as an organizer, and the membership decided that "carpenters can't be teachin' sheetmetal workers how to organize" Their main method of organizing was funding market recovery. (Market recovery is money that comes out of the dues of the sheetmetal worker's union, so when a non-union contractor is bidding on a job, and the union contractor is bidding on it; the union gives market recovery money to the union contractor, so they can underbid the non-union contractor and win the bid on the project. So, basically, it is buying our jobs. This is a practice of almost every building trades union, including the Carpenters.) It's where we buy the jobs, it's anywhere from two to twenty dollars an hour we pay union contractors; it comes out of members pockets. It makes it so they can get a job over the un-represented or non-signatory contractors. It's a sham, that method of organizing.

We started a group called CDU, Carpenters for a Democratic Union back in 1997, and we were going great guns, and we were gearing up for the 2000 convention, and then the EST was a guy by the name of John Steffon. Well, he hired fourteen of the CDU people to his new staff.Tthat's the way you get rid of a movement, you bring members into the fold, and then you know what they're doing. So many of them are still business agents and organizers today, and they have bought into the system, and the system doesn't work. It absolutely will not ever be able to organize anything but contractors, and that's what our union's good at: giving up our members rights.

The organizing that needs to happen has to come from the ground up and those of us who are in the field working with these contractors; we have to make them abide by the contracts, and who better to be a steward than each and every member. Stewards in our union are all appointed because they don't want no trouble with the contractor. My first job as a steward I found that laborers were doing carpenters work. I reported it first off to the superintendent, that this was not appropriate behavior and he says "well, I'll talk to John Stephons (the Executive Secretary treasurer of the Northwest Regional Counel of Carpenters)", and I was fired the next day. This left me that much more frustrated as to what the hell to do. So we started, in 1997, CDU. A lot of different groups autonomously in every area started their own little group, and called it whatever they wanted.

So in 2000, I went around on a six month tour around the U.S., and I started in March and ended up in Chicago in August at the Carpenters Convention. My purpose was to find an individual to run against Doug McCarron. Nobody ever stepped up to the plate. I went to 37 major cities; I talked to over 20,000 workers. But I never found that individual, so I had to run against Doug McCarron. I got ten percent of the vote on no campaign, just the short five minute speech I did about empowering and mobilizing our members. So to me, at leas,t we made our statement known.

Firebrand: What's your take on the carpenters right now in terms of organizing? Are they going to start kicking some ass?

Ken: I don't think they know how to kick ass. I think they have been so put down. They have the contractors thumb of every worker out there. The slightest intimidation will turn off an organizing campaign very quickly. Organizing in the construction industry is harder than most, 'cause it's such a transient group. A carpenter has such an independent mind. Will the residential carpenters in this area adhere to an organizing program? Well, in the Chicago area there's only 50 cents an hour difference between commercial and residential. Out here, it is $6.50 an hour difference. Everybody is striving to get the most they can make. We don't organize that market because we decided to go after the bigger commercial contractors, and just let residential go by the wayside. It was the biggest mistake they ever made. That is the training ground for every commercial carpenter. I would put a residential carpenter against a commercial carpenter, as far as skills any day. That residential guy is much smarter. He takes it from the footer all the way to shingles on the roof ,sometimes. On a crew you learn drywall. You do it all. That is the basis for a career in construction anyways.

Firebrand: I hear that folks who get organized into the union get kind of upset because they want residential work, but they only get commercial work. What about the diversity of your work, and enjoying what you are doing everyday?

Ken: And I agree with that. I think we have to take away the stigma that you have to work out of the union hall. You can still be a union member and work non-union, but you're out there and the purpose is to spread the education (maybe get others to come on board). It only takes 50% plus 1 to turn that company union. So building that power in those residential guys is really going to build power in a lot of other places of our community. I don't see that they have enough stamina to do it right, now.

Firebrand: What suggestions do you have for organizing around everyday issues at work? For example, at my job the foreman does not allow us to write down on our time cards the half-hour it takes to roll up the tools.

Ken: Document everyday exactly what was said and create yourself a daily log that goes over a time period of say 30 days, and then go up to the boss or the owner of the company or whatever and say, "look- you guys have violated this many labor laws right here in America right now.' Show 'em where it was violated, who did it, and get him to admit it. It takes only two of you to walk up and do that. One guy can' t do it. You gotta have some people behind you.

You've got to get them believing that they are deserving of that half hour pay everyday. You do that through explaining how much money you lost. You could have bought your entire Christmas package with that. You could have taken your wife on a cruise here. Just because of that half hour a day ,your kids could have had better shoes. Get the workers to realize what "the boss" is stealing from them., and just document it.

You don't have to be a union person to bring an unfair labor practice to the NLRB. You might need to have somebody walk you through the steps. But that's what they are there for at the NLRB. I would say that I would get a carpenter organizer and see where it goes. Take pictures. Have a camera with you on the jobsite.

There are times that you can and cannot speak about union on a jobsite. Okay, so usually it's before work, lunch time, and after work. Those are safe times you can talk union. So what we did was; we started a conversation about basketball. Well if we can talk about a non related work subject like basketball, then we can talk about a union. And this was on a non-union jobsite, but we just keep talking and they'll say you can't talk about union on this job. Well why, you talk about your basketball game? You talk about your son's graduation from high school. Why can't we talk about our livelihood?

Just knowing your rights will intimidate them further. And if you get two people doing the same thing, the boss is not going to want to fire either one of you. You know, intimidation works like a two- way street. And the more people you have with you understanding their rights, and if you get your members to sign authorization cards, and be right out in the open that we want to join a union. We want our rights. We want a good pension. Show how his being non-signatory is devaluing the community standards. Appeal to him one-on-one sometimes, rather than confrontation. I've used tape recorders in the past. Legal or non-legal, it really doesn't matter. You can use it as documentation as to what was said as long as it's transcribed rather than just that tape being submitted. State laws are different. I don't know what all the state laws are that pertain to a number of workers rights in that state, but you have them.

Dewey Dagrod, a rank and file member of Carpenters 247 helped edit this interview

Firebrand is a newspaper for rank and file workers in Portland. It's aims are building the power of rank and file workers and fighting the bureaucrats, bosses, and politicians who are our enemies.

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Firebrand is a publication of the Firebrand Collective, a member collective of the Northwest Anarchist Federation.