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Rebuild structure of unionized construction, organizing guru suggests

Date Posted: May 13 2005

After unionized construction in the U.S. has "failed to turn the proverbial corner" toward increased market share after steady declines over the last half century - are the nation's building trades union locals, councils and international unions structured properly for future growth?

Jeff Grabelsky, an IBEW member and director of the Construction Industry Program at Cornell University, said in a recently released report that it's time to start talking about changing the structure of Hardhat unions in order to better address the changing direction of owners and contractors in the building industry.

"Mismatches" abound in Grabelsky's view of the U.S. construction industry, which are impairing the ability of unions to grow and compete. Among the most glaring mismatches: while local unions continue to be predominately guided by decisions made on a local level, construction employers, he said, are "increasingly dominated by regional and national contractors operating in regional and national markets."

For unions, Grabelsky said the mismatches start at the bottom and work their way up the organizational chart. While there is increasing consolidation in the business world, construction unions have been operating under essentially the same organizational model for the last century, with 15 international unions running the show.

"There is a mismatch between the structure of the unionized sector of the industry, in which 15 separate affiliates represent different but increasingly overlapping craft jurisdictions," Grabelsky said, "and the dynamics of nonunion construction work, which now accounts for 80% of the industry and where traditional jurisdictional lines are neither reflected nor respected."

In addition, he said, there are 300 constituent building trades councils across the nation - which are voluntary associations that lack the power and authority to conduct coordinated organizing campaigns - and the enormous challenge of unionizing a multi-billion dollar industry with over 5 million unrepresented workers.

Grablesky said with the overwhelming majority of the industry's workforce unionized throughout the 1950's and 60's, building trades unions once enjoyed "formidable bargaining power."

"But in the last 50 years," he said, "the building trades endured a precipitous decline, as union density in the construction industry fell from a high of over 80% immediately after World War II to less than 18% today. The diminished power and presence of unions in the industry have meant that all construction workers - union and nonunion, alike - work harder, for less, under harsher conditions. In the last 30 years, wages have declined by about 25% in real dollars."

Union initiatives developed in the late 1980s designed to challenge the open shop have failed to recapture lost markets. Unions are not even "in the game" in important work segments, like residential, and in huge areas, like the South and Southwest, he said.

"Building trades unionists cannot merely do what they have been doing - just harder and better," Grabelsky said. "To organize at a pace and scale necessary to definitively reverse the long-term trend of declining union density, they must conduct multi-union, coordinated campaigns that are massive in scope."

Construction unions, he said, now typically work with "regional, national and even global contractors whose operations are no longer confined to local markets. Virtually every local union confronts contractors who operate in multiple local jurisdictions; few locals possess the resources, capacity or strategic leverage to organize and bargain with the corporate builders who now dominate the industry."

There have been a number of varying responses to this trend by unions. Grabelsky said local contracts have been adjusted, and national negotiated agreements have been developed to deal with the reality of regional and national contracts. Others unions have merged "into larger, better-resourced locals whose expanded geographic jurisdictions conform more closely to actual construction markets," he said.

The actions taken have had varying degrees of success. Grabelsky pointed to the Iron Workers, Painters and Carpenters, which created regional councils to correspond to regional construction markets. When this has happened, some areas have seen organizing gains; while in other areas, members resent the loss of local control.

But sometimes long-term local control can be a detriment to the long-term success of a local. He said some locals continue to impede organizing with high initiation fees, restrictive entrance exams and referral procedures that are a disadvantage to newly organized members.

In response, international unions have brought in innovative tools like the Construction Organizing Membership Education Training (COMET) program to persuade both local leaders and members of the need to organize.

"But when local leaders lacked the will or desire, they relied on the tradition of local autonomy to avoid the difficult challenge of organizing," Grabelsky wrote, and improving the situation isn't made easier by the current organizational structure of most unions.

"How can (an international) leader drive a national organizing program, when the union's internal structure is built on and deferential to the tradition of the local autonomy?" Grabelsky wrote. "How can a union conduct a national program in a disciplined and effective way without establishing and enforcing standards of accountability for its constituent local affiliates?"

The situation is even more difficult for building trades councils, where he said affiliate unions "would probably concede that they cannot individually organize their own craft in the nonunion industry and expect to survive as an island of strength in a sea of weakness."

He added: "Building trades councils - like the AFL-CIO department to which they are affiliated - are voluntary associations that have not generally been able to achieve the level of unity and discipline required for such multi-union campaigns."

The report didn't offer any bold proposals - but Grabelsky did suggest that union leaders in the AFL-CIO Building Trades Department establish a "Futures Committee" of leaders from local unions, building trades councils and international unions "who believe dramatic change is needed" and make recommendations about improvements in organizing, structure, and use of resources.

"Any course of action designed to re-establish the power and presence of unions in the construction industry will be fraught with risk," Grabelsky wrote. "But the risk of inaction is far greater."

(This report was excerpted from an article written for socialpolicy.org. Mr. Grabelsky helped create the COMET program and is formerly the national organizing director for the Building and Construction Trades Department, AFL-CIO. He thanked seven international union presidents for "sharing their time and insights" in preparing his article).