Labor Research Review, Volume 1, Number 12 (1988)
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Labor Research Review, Volume 1, Number 12 (1988)
Up Against the Open Shop: New Initiatives in the Building Trades
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Item California Pipe Trades Protecting the EnviromentBedford, Chris (1988-09-01)[Excerpt] Combining traditional union political clout and job-site actions with intervention in the building and environmental permit process, the Job & Community Protection Program has already had a significant impact on preserving both union jobs and environmental quality in California. But more than that, this unusual alliance establishes the potential of union-initiated coalitions to resist the corporate and developer blackmail that has been so successful elsewhere in pitting various community interests against each other.Item Labor BookshelfMetzgar, Jack (1988-09-01)[Excerpt] As everyday labor reporting has deteriorated, an alternative labor media has begun to emerge. The publication of these four books is evidence of this trend, as they exemplify the need for detailed and sophisticated analysis of labor's many problems and possibilities.Item Labor Film Shelf: Collision CourseLeRoy, Greg (1988-09-01)[Excerpt] The ongoing battle between Machinists District 100 and Eastern Airlines is one of the most scrutinized labor-management struggles in recent U.S. history. Publications ranging from Labor Notes to The Harvard Business Review have covered it, and Labor Research Review #4 was devoted exclusively to it — the first major coverage of the subject.Item Organizing for Prevailing Wage In FloridaFine, Janice (1988-09-01)[Excerpt] The Broward AFL-CIO had spent a great deal of its time and member unions' money helping to elect several county commissioners. Now it posed the prevailing wage ordinance as a litmus test: Would county commissioners who had benefited from labor backing and had pledged their support to labor at election time, support it? Or would they side with the Board of Realtors, the Associated Builders and Contractors and other anti-union forces?Item Sharing the Pie: The Boston Jobs CoalitionTurner, Chuck (1988-09-01)[Excerpt] To many it seemed that affirmative action in Boston's construction trades was dead. Instead, these events gave birth to the Boston Jobs Coalition and a struggle that established an unprecedented policy of local hiring requirements in the construction industry.Item BAC's Comeback: The Bricklayers' Renewal ProgramBensman, David (1988-09-01)[Excerpt] The Bricklayers' and Allied Craftsmen's International Union (BAC) typifies the contemporary crisis of the building trades. Membership plunged from a high of 160,000 in 1970 to just over 100,000 in 1986. As a result, the International Union ran a budget deficit five years in a row. Fewer than half the craftsmen in BAC's jurisdiction now belong to the union, and many BAC members can be found working on nonunion projects. Even where union contracts prevail, wage and work-rule concessions have become standard fare. But BAC is not taking its decline lying down. Over the past five years, the International Union has embarked on an imaginative process of renewal, one which combines efforts to revive the masonry industry with programs to strengthen the union through education, organizing, and structural reform. While it is too early to tell whether BAC's campaign will succeed, it is already clear that the effort has brought new hope and determination to a union that desperately needed them.Item Item "Buying the Job" Target Programs & the Elgin PlanMetzgar, Jack (1988-09-01)[Excerpt] A "piss-ant" IBEW local in Illinois is the last place you'd expect to find an innovative program designed to combat the open shop. Most national scorecards estimate that unions now do only about 30% of construction work, with the IBEW doing somewhat better at about 40%. In Illinois about half the industry is union, and the IBEW represents more than 80% of the electrical workers, far and away the best organized state in the country. Don Mahoney, international representative for IBEW District 6 covering Illinois and 4 other Midwestern states, elaborates: "If they don't keep they're hands on it, the same thing's going to happen to them that's happened down the street. I just saw some statistics that in Hannibal, Missouri, union work went from 85% to 10% in just 5 years. Hell, in Portland [Oregon], before they started targetting, they went from 80% to 20% in six months! When it comes, it comes fast." IBEW Local 117, representing some 200 electricians in and around Elgin, Illinois, hasn't been as active in its use of target programs as some other building trades locals around the country. It hasn't had to be. But Smith has worked to establish legal precedents for developing this tactic beyond its original form, and Mahoney has been gathering information on targetting from around the country and spreading it to the locals in his district. With more than a little local pride, they describe funded targetting as evolving from "the Kansas City Plan" to "Elgin I" and "Elgin II." The Elgin Plan has a number of tactical advantages over earlier forms of target programs in the building trades. But it also strengthens important union principles that a beleaguered labor movement has been having difficulty defending in the 1980s— internal solidarity and the inviolability of the contract.Item Dennis Walton's Capital WarsBanks, Andrew R. (1988-09-01)[Excerpt] "If Steven Spielberg were to make a movie on how the building trades are using their pension funds to create work for their members, the film would be called Capital Wars and Dennis Walton would play the part of Han Solo," says Randy Barber, union advisor and director of the Washington-based Center on Economic Organizing. It's been ten years since Barber co-authored with Jeremy Rifkin the eye-opening expose The North Will Rise Again: Pensions, Politics, and Power in the 1980's, which became a best- seller in the labor movement. Since that time, trade unionists have become increasingly aware that if they sit idly by and let others manage the $1.3 trillion of union-negotiated pension funds, unions will in effect be financing their own destruction. Dennis Walton has become one of the most visible proponents in the labor movement of using this pension money as a weapon to further the union cause.Item