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From the January-February 2006 issue of Union Democracy Review #160
The eternal quest for fair hiring in construction
NYC plumbers’ job rights ignored
Despite the promise of a fair job referral system, now over two years old and backed by government authorities, New York plumbers tell us they wait in vain for its implementation.
As far as anyone remembers, plumbers in New York City metro area could never boast of a fair referral system out of a union hiring hall. Contractors can hire or reject any dues payer as they please, a system which allows employers and union business agents to put whomever they want on the best jobs without worrying about annoying contractual and legal obligations.
For a short time, there was a break in Plumbers Local 2, George Meany's old local, which had jurisdiction over Bronx and Manhattan. After a corruption scandal, the local came under international trusteeship. Members were surprised when the trustee did a good union job. He negotiated a contract which required contractors to hire at least some workers out of the hall and even more unusual, specified that contractors could reject union referrals only for good cause. It didn't last long. For whatever reason the big Local 2 was dissolved and its members placed under the jurisdiction of the smaller Local 1, which until then, covered Staten Island. In Local 1, plumbers reverted to the old system which turned hiring over to the employers.
In Local 1, all went badly. In June 2003, three Local 1 business agents were arrested on corruption charges. Six months later, the local and the international signed an agreement with the NYS Attorney General and the U.S. Labor Department aimed "to uncover and deter corruption of or criminal influence over Local 1." Toward that end the Kroll consulting company was selected as an Independent Private Sector Inspector General [IPSIG.]
Among the IPSIG responsibilities was "to interpret the job referral rules to ensure that they are implemented in a fair and non-discriminatory manner," Last June, Local 1 members complained to AUD that no fair hiring rules had ever been adopted and that their business manager indicated that he had no intention of doing so. AUD referred their complaint to Attorney Walsh, who represents the NYS Organized Crime Task Force; and he promptly requested a report from the IPSIG. Six months later, however, nothing seems to have changed. In mid-January, AUD's research director, Jim McNamara, alerted Walsh: "It is reported that Business Manager George W. Reilly continues to ignore the agreement he signed with the NYS attorney general."
McNamara reminded him:"Typically in the building trade where unscrupulous, highhanded union officials control job referrals, independent-minded members are starved out. Favoritism becomes a device for building an authoritarian political machine. Inevitably, would-be opponents can't muster much of a following in an organization dominated by the politics of patronage."
Judge kills carpenters’ job rights
In rejecting a federal prosecutor's motion to hold the New York District Council of Carpenters in contempt, Federal Judge Charles Haight displayed a familiar lack of understanding of how important a fair hiring system is in the war against corruption in the construction industry. In 1994, after a federal suit aimed against racketeers in the council, the union signed a consent decree; it was subjected to a federal monitorship, and Walter Mack was appointed as investigator by the judge. As in most other such monitorships, the decree provided, not only for measures against corruption, but for safeguards to protect workers' rights in their union. (Elsewhere in the nation, the Carpenters' union does not permit its members to elect council officers. In New York City, by court order, members elect officers.)
At the time of the consent decree, a 50/50 contractual hiring rule allowed contractors to hire half their carpenters at will, but it required them to hire the other half out of the union hiring hall. But, according to Mack, the union never enforced the rule; he reported that its observance was "meaningless"; he documented other hiring abuses. Finally, the union simply abandoned the rule entirely. It was that failure which prompted Federal Attorney David Kelley to ask the judge to hold the union in contempt. He argued that that union's action, or lack of action, was an unauthorized change in violation of the consent decree which deprived workers of job protection. "Carpenters who are at the mercy of employers for job assignments know that if they stand up for the enforcement of union rules or legal requirements or refuse to work off the books for cash…they run the risk of being laid off." This, he noted, will encourage corruption.
When the union surrenders formal control over hiring in construction, it makes it simpler for unscrupulous union officials to arrange collusive deals with employers. .Union hiring halls are subject to rules of the National Labor Relations Board [weakly enforced, it is true.] Union members who face discrimination in union hiring halls, can seek recourse at the NLRB. But when the union has no contractual rights in hiring, union officials, disclaiming all responsibility, can make mutually satisfactory deals with employers, sometimes corrupt, that permit union incumbents to put their cronies on the best jobs.
And so, a fair hiring system is the key to democracy in the construction trades and indispensable in combating corruption. All this however, apparently made no impression on the judge. He ruled that changes in the job referral system were part of the collective bargaining system and not subject to a consent decree which presumably aims to end corruption and promote union democracy.
See also:
Information on legal rights of union
members in the construction
trades.
Information for women in
the trades.
AUD's Bill of Rights for the Building Trades
Other articles on the UA:
UA Local
375 hiring hall rule provides for member recourse
How
the Ironworkers and Pipefitters rig trusteeships
Hiring
hall procedures in the construction trades
The
eternal quest for fair hiring in construction
Last
year's scandal hangs over next Plumbers convention
Top
Plumbers international officers expelled
UA's
Maddaloni and Patchell ousted after disastrous pension investments in Florida
hotel
Interview
with UA reformer Frank Natalie
New voices at AUD construction
trades conference
Court orders Plumbers
and Fitters to remove anti-democratic rule
Pipefitters win
points in battle for democracy.
Links to UA member sites.
Articles
on the Carpenters union:
Carpenters
Mystery
Blocking Carpenters move for more bureaucratic power
In
Detroit: Carpenters corruption is centralized and efficient
The
eternal quest for fair hiring in construction
Carpenters win right to elect regional council officers
Consolidation
in the Construction Trades
Carpenters
form National Reform Group
Reformers
Jolt Carpenters Convention
Carpenters
Reformers Win in New England
Court
challenges DOL on Carpenters Regional Council
Harrington v Chao: Judge
Stearns's "memorandum and order" (pdf)
AUD Bill of Rights
for the Building Trades
AUD brief opposing stay of
order
Sample letter requesting direct elections
Letter to Carpenters from Carl
Biers
Court deals setback
for democracy in Carpenters union
At
the Carpenters Union convention in Las Vegas
Links to Carpenters rank-and-file websites
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