(PAI) - The AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department was stunned Feb. 14 when six unions - the Laborers, Operating Engineers, Carpenters, Teamsters, Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers and Iron Workers - announced they would establish a new labor federation, the National Construction Alliance, effective March 1

The presidents of the Laborers and Operating Engineers made the announcement on Feb. 14. The departure is due to dissatisfaction with the Building Trades Department's current structure and because it sometimes did not concentrate on bread-and-butter issues of interest to rank-and-file construction workers, Operating Engineers President Vincent Giblin and Laborers President Terry O'Sullivan said in a telephone press conference.

While O'Sullivan and Giblin discussed their own unions' reasons, they made it clear the other four international unions are joining them. However, International union reps from the Bricklayers and Allied Crafts and the Iron Workers told local union officials in Michigan that those unions would remain in the Building Trades Department - and join the National Construction Alliance. More information is expected at a March 1 press conference - which was after The Building Tradesman's press deadline.

Some Laborers and Operating Engineers locals "will selectively remain" in local building trades councils, Giblin said, assuming the councils are effective. "When the Carpenters and the Teamsters withdrew from the AFL-CIO, a whole host of local building trades councils let them stay to participate and our speculation is that they would continue to do so," O'Sullivan added.

Giblin and O'Sullivan said BCTD's lack of response to continued decline in construction unionization also pushed their unions out. O'Sullivan said unions represented 40 percent of construction workers in 1973 and 13.1 percent now.

"Our unions must change and adapt to today's construction industry," the Laborers' O'Sullivan said. "Indeed, the current model for construction trades unions is rooted in a market and economy of the previous century. We must build a movement that does effectively address the construction industry as it is today…."

Before their decision to leave, the six unions tried to push changes through the BCTD, but did not succeed, the two presidents said.

The breakaway action brought the following response from Building Trades Department President Edward Sullivan.

"Their stated reasons for leaving do not ring true. It goes without saying that the general presidents of the Building Trades do not respond well to ultimatums. Their 'demands' (for reorganizing the Building Trades Department) were eerily similar to the unilateral demands made by the Carpenters almost five years ago. Those demands were considered at the time and unanimously rejected by the Governing Board of Presidents, including the presidents of the Laborers and Operating Engineers."

Giblin of the Operating Engineers said the BCTD's structure - basically a federation of what was once 15 union presidents, and support staff - can't handle the unionization decline and often focuses on issues not of interest to construction workers.

"Efforts to remedy some of the inequities in the BCTD were met with reluctance, ineffectiveness and outright rejection," said Giblin, who has been Operating Engineers president for approximately a year. "As a newcomer," he said he found the department "indecisive, ineffective, with no goals, and a bloated operational budget" and had disappearing respect on Capitol Hill.

He also said the department's present structure gave little help in organizing and increasing market share in the construction industry.

"It's time to go back to kitchen-table issues that made the labor movement," Giblin said. "Issues here in D.C. - such as who is the next Supreme Court justice - are not the issues that workers standing in two or three feet of mud" on a construction site "are talking about."

In a statement released Feb. 15, Sullivan challenged the breakaway unions' assertions, "noting the progress the Building Trades Department has been making toward increasing market share." Quoting Sullivan: "We are working in collaboration with major owners in the United States and Canada and national contractors' associations on several joint programs to improve market share and construction productivity, including a manpower strategy for the next 10 years."

Building Trades Department Secretary-Treasurer Sean McGarvey said the department continues to offer strategic research capabilities to assist affiliates and state and local councils with organizing. "And as for lobbying on Capitol Hill, we had a terrific year legislatively with our task force getting action on highway, energy, pensions and a reversal on the President's Davis-Bacon repeal."

The two presidents also said the new federation would help create organizing strategies both to maintain construction union density in high-density states and metro areas - such as Chicago, New York and San Francisco - and increase it in low-density areas.

But the exact measures the NCA will use to help its member unions achieve those goals are still being worked out, though O'Sullivan provided an example, citing creation of "composite crews" of Laborers and Carpenters at the same job site.

Departure of the six unions is another split in the labor movement, at least at the top. Last summer, the Change to Win federation was created by a group of unions dissatisfied with the direction of the AFL-CIO. The Laborers are part of Change to Win and O'Sullivan reiterated last month that "it is only a matter of when, not if" they leave the AFL-CIO. The Carpenters and Teamsters, also part of Change to Win, have already left the AFL-CIO. Giblin said "the jury is still out" on his union's decision.

(By Mark Gruenberg, PAI Staff Writer)