LANSING -AFL-CIO Building Trades Department President Mark Ayers took shots at President Bush, Republican presidential candidate John McCain, and the general anti-union culture of conservatives.

But during his March 19 speech before the Michigan Building and Construction Trades Council's 49th Legislative Conference, Ayers made his most pointed vollies at under-performing union construction workers, stressing that they have to earn their higher pay.

"The customer doesn't expect late starts," Ayers said. "He doesn't expect long coffee breaks, extended lunch periods and early quits. And they don't like it when and if just a handful of tradesmen fail drug and alcohol tests. No they expect much more from us."

An IBEW member from Peoria, Ill., Ayers became president of the national building trades on Oct. 1. He told delegates that the Building Trades Department in Washington D.C. will be making reforms, but said the minority of under-performing workers who tarnish the union brand must be weeded out.

Here are excerpts of Ayers' speech, his first in Michigan in his new position:

"First, the Building Trades Department and our affiliates are taking great strides to change the culture of our institutions.

"Owners are witnessing first-hand our revitalized industry. The stereotypes we've been saddled with over the years - lazy, overpaid , bigoted, sexist, featherbedding knuckleheads - are starting to dissipate

"Brothers and sisters, not too soon.

"The growth of the open shop movement did not occur because they were better than us, or better trained than us, or more skilled than us. We actually handed our market share to the open shop on a silver platter.

"Our attitudes, our productivity, our work ethic and our willingness to work as a partner with our contractors and end users diminished over time. To that end each of our affiliated national and international unions has instituted stringent local union accountability and performance standards - performance standards that address productivity and work ethic for a minority of our rank-and-file members who forgot what we once had, and forgot how we got it.

"These programs are a direct response to the times in which we live today.

"It's a wakeup call to those who call themselves "craftsmen" but fail to demonstrate day in and day out on the job. Make no mistake, we are in a business that is defined by a level of customer service and value we deliver consistently.

"We have a product that we sell at a fair price. We market that product as the most highly skilled, and best construction workforce in the world. Our customers, the owners, the end-users, the contractors, who buy our product have a reasonable expectation that comes when they pay that price. They expect a full day's work. They expect a high level of coordination. They expect teamwork. They expect productivity and they expect exemplary work ethic.

"Why? It's simple. Because they are paying for it. For the most part they get what they pay for, with the exception of a few workers who can contaminate any project. We've all seen it happen.

"The customer doesn't expect late starts. He doesn't expect long coffee breaks, extended lunch periods and early quits. And they don't like it when and if just a handful of tradesmen fail drug and alcohol tests. No they expect much more from us.

"Our task in most areas is to overcome a swell of corporate mistrust, which has built up over the decades and has resulted in an adversarial approach to doing business. Now that a robust economy appears to be headed to a slippery slope, some of our corporate customers are becoming even more vigilant.

"We cannot allow them to receive a less-than-adequate return on the investment they have placed in us.

"We are getting on jobs we haven't been on in 25 years. This is most evident in the South. We're back in the game. Jobs where every worker is hitting on all cylinders will stay if we continue to deliver consistent, uncompromised value over and over

"Members who just don't get it need to be purged from our ranks."