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News Briefs

Date Posted: May 2 2008

Ypsilanti highlights school elections
Local boards of education preside over the spending of billions in construction every year in Michigan.
Some of it goes union, much of it doesn't - which should provide an incentive for union members to pay attention to the actions of school board members in their communities.

The Ypsilanti Board of Education is providing a timely lesson. Fred Veigel, president of the Huron Valley Central Labor Council, wrote a letter to union members in that area and explained that the Ypsilanti School Board voted to give a $50 million, three-year school remodeling contract to "notoriously anti-union" Wolgast Construction.

"Here, we have a very serious situation where the local union tradesman who voted for millage and bond issues, many of whom are unemployed due to the recession, watching local jobs going to outside the area nonunion forces," Veigel wrote.

He added that local building trades union leaders tried to arrange a union-only project labor agreement for Ypsilanti schools, but a majority of the Board of Education refused.

As a result, union labor is supporting three candidates for the Ypsilanti Board of Education in the Tuesday, May 6 election.

Laborers leave; alliance dissolves
The National Construction Alliance: we hardly knew ye.

The group was formed in 2006 by the International Brotherhood of Carpenters, the International Union of Operating Engineers and the Laborers International Union as a breakaway group from the AFL-CIO Building Trades Department. The group's main beefs with the department were over voting rights for international unions and the way jurisdictional disputes were settled, as well as how dues were being spent on organizing.

Shortly after the Laborers opted to rejoin the Building Trades on March 13, the group disbanded. Laborers President Terrence O'Sullivan said new Building Trades Department President Mark Ayers had sufficiently addressed their concerns.

A spokesman for the Operating Engineers told the Engineering News Record that the Operators and the Carpenters would form a new alliance outside of the Building Trades Department. "We still have some concerns about its operations," the spokesman for the Operators said.