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Construction Industry Program
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The Construction Industry Program provides training and education programs as well as research and technical assistance to building and construction trades unionists throughout North America. The focus is on internal membership education and mobilization, external organizing, and strategies to build union market share. Programs have reached over 300,000 construction unionists in the last twenty years.
The Construction Industry Program is now part of The Worker Institute.
Recent Submissions
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Steward Training in the Construction Industry: The United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America Faces the Challenge
Grabelsky, Jeffrey (1993-01-01)[Excerpt] This article examines the development and delivery of the Carpenters union national construction steward training program. It describes the collaboration of the union and Cornell University in the design of the ... -
Standing at a Crossroads: The Building Trades in the Twenty-First Century
Erlich, Mark; Grabelsky, Jeffrey (2005-09-01)American building trades unions have historically played a critical and stabilizing role in the nation’s construction industry, establishing uniform standards and leveling the competitive playing field. Union members have ... -
Serving the Public Interest: Preventing Double-Breasting in the Construction Industry
Grabelsky, Jeffrey (2007-10-17)Excerpt] But the immediate question I am addressing is how the practice of double-breasting undermines the stability of collective bargaining in the construction industry. The simple answer is that it is not exceedingly ... -
Psychosocial Capacity Building in New York: Building Resiliency with Construction Workers Assigned to Ground Zero after 9/11
Miller, Joshua; Grabelsky, Jeffrey; Wagner, K. C. (2010-01-01)[Excerpt] Psychosocial capacity building, which is a more common approach in response to disasters outside of Western Europe and the U.S., was, in part, a reaction against the perceived “traumatization” and pathologizing ... -
Lighting the Spark: COMET Program Mobilizes the Ranks for Construction Organizing
Grabelsky, Jeffrey (1995-01-01)This article describes the COMET (Construction Organizing Membership Education Training) program. Faced with declining membership and market share and an erosion of bargaining strength and political influence, building ... -
Construction Organizing: A Case Study of Success
Condit, Brian; Davis, Tom; Grabelsky, Jeffrey; Kotler, Fred (1998-01-01)[Excerpt] This chapter examines how IBEW Local 611, based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, reversed its decline and between 1988 and 1994 reemerged as a dominant force in its jurisdiction. What the local did, how it did it, and ... -
Construction or De-construction? The Road to Revival in the Building Trades
Grabelsky, Jeffrey (2007-04-01)[Excerpt] The building and construction trades have historically been one of the most stable and secure sectors of the American labor movement. In the period immediately after World War II, their power in the construction ... -
Building and Construction Trades Unions: Are They Built to Win?
Grabelsky, Jeff (2004-12-01)[Excerpt] The evidence of labor's declining power in the economic and political arenas is increasingly clear. Despite the tenacious efforts of talented leaders over the past ten years, the labor movement has still failed ... -
Bottom-Up Organizing in the Trades: An Interview with Mike Lucas, IBEW Director of Organizing
Grabelsky, Jeff (1988-09-01)[Excerpt] Like the bottom-up organizers who built the IBEW 100 years ago by traveling from city to city, working at their trade and preaching the union creed, Lucas has been around the block. From Florida to Oklahoma, ...