By Mark Gruenberg
PAI Staff Writer

WASHINGTON (PAI)--Passage of the Employee Free Choice Act could open up residential construction worker organizing to the nation's building trades unions, the head of the AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department says.

The election of labor-backed Democrat Barack Obama to the White House and increased pro-worker majorities in Congress mean "we are finally at the point…where we do not have to fight the battles of the past," department President Mark Ayers told his 3,000-person legislative conference in his May 18 keynote address.

"But it doesn't stop there," he said, referring to past battles against GOP administrations to preserve the Davis-Bacon prevailing wage law and other worker protections. "This president, our president, is backing the Employee Free Choice Act."

That legislation, now the subject of intense lobbying by both workers and business on Capitol Hill, "will do more to strengthen the right to organize than any law since the original 1935 National Labor Relations Act," Ayers added.

"In our case, it would help us organizing in construction markets that have eluded us far too long now. That's why we all share an enormous stake in seeing this legislation become law," he declared.

The law, which would help level the playing field between workers and bosses in organizing and bargaining, was item #1 in the briefing booklet BCTD distributed to each delegate. All headed to Congress to lobby during the rest of their May 17-20 confab.

In an interview after his speech, Ayers said specifically that passage of the law would help building trades unions organize residential construction workers. "God only knows they need it," he said of those workers, many of them exploited immigrants.

"Historically, our hands have been tied" in organizing home construction workers, Ayers elaborated. "By the time we get to a job site, get the (union election authorization) cards signed, and get the election date set, the job is done and the workers dispersed."

A key section of the Employee Free Choice Act, and the section that has drawn the most business opposition, would shorten those steps, by mandating that when the union gets a verified majority of workers at a site to sign the cards, the workers - not the bosses - may choose either to hold a National Labor Relations Board-run election or to demand and get automatic recognition of the union as their bargaining agent.

Bosses, including anti-union construction companies, are afraid of that provision, Ayers told his delegates. "From the ABC (Associated Builders and Contractors) and the Chamber of Commerce on down, every anti-union corporate interest in American made it plain their #1 legislative priority is to stop EFCA," he said.

Ayers had no estimate on how many more construction workers building trades unions could organize should the law pass. He said he heard AFL-CIO-wide estimates of organizing 1 million new workers nationwide in the first year after it's approved. Unions now have 16.1 million workers nationwide, or one of every eight, federal figures show. Construction unions have 15.6% of all construction workers, the data adds. Separate figures for residential construction were not included.

In other points, Ayers:

• Again said construction unions would accomplish more if they were all united under one roof. The Carpenters, who are members of Change To Win, and the Operating Engineers, who are in the AFL-CIO, are not in the BCTD. "We can't create new unionism on our own. It takes all of us. Not only the unions represented here today, but our bothers and sisters in the Operating Engineers and the Carpenters. I say to the leaders of these two great institutions: Come work with us to crate the solutions that will make our country a better place for our industry, our contractors and for all craft unions."
• Said other groups that worked for Obama, and "that have as much skin in the game as we do" are wary of construction unions' past exclusion of women and minorities. "This has the potential to create roadblocks to our success," Ayers added. "For better or worse, our unions have come under scrutiny…The solution is to build coalitions with the communities in which we work like never before" to show them the unions' inclusiveness of all, Ayers said. The result would be both "more union jobs, not less, and more union members, not less."

Other speakers at the conference's opening day included Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Rep. Frank LoBiondo, R-N.J., co-chair of the small House GOP Labor Caucus. Solis touted the construction jobs already created by the stimulus law in 3,000 projects in every state and territory, along with the green jobs, including construction jobs, the law envisions. She also promised "strong enforcement" of Davis-Bacon prevailing wage laws.

All three backed the Employee Free Choice Act, but neither lawmaker said when it would face a House vote. And Solis implied it hasn't come up yet before Obama, who also backs it. "I'm looking forward to working with this new White House to make the strongest case for why we need the Employee Free Choice Act," Solis said.