Glenn Sand's blog

By Peter A. Cockshaw

3/12/2007

The declining state of union construction is a critical issue that must be forcefully addressed. The sobering reality is that this sector is either treading water or close to drowning in many areas of the country.

One of many ominous signs is unions' failure to win back market share even during economically robust periods. Unsettling also is organized construction's desperate struggle to avoid losing current jobs, including traditionally "reliable" public work. This is an alarming assessment to make about an industry that offers project owners such vital strengths as a highly trained, highly skilled and productive work force.

The prime reason for construction unions' failing fortunes is the competitive bind signatories face when competing against increasingly stiff open-shop competition. The question, then, is what specific measures do labor and management need most to get back in the competitive ball game?

There are several issues that top the "wish list" of contractors in all organized sectors. A key one is worker portability. In these times when many contractors have to travel to find work, it becomes even more critical to have the ability to take some valued people with them.

"Contractors spend a lot of time and money training their workers and our bidding price is based on past productivity, which is a function of our craftspeople," says one employer. "When union locals prevent an employer from taking a few key people with [it] to man a job, this often kills the deal."

Another competitive disadvantage is the inability of signatories to use coordinated or composite work forces, especially on smaller projects. Most union employers can do a task in the same manhours as their open shop competitors, but they have a harder time keeping workers performing productive work for a full shift due to jurisdictional issues. It is clear that if union signatories could employ coordinated or composite work forces to eliminate such wasted time, they would become more cost-effective.

No Fluff

For that matter, any contract condition that hinders an employer's ability to compete deserves to be slashed. That includes productivity-inhibiting jobs or positions. In today's fierce competitive environment, contractors must not be forced to put extra people on a job because an agreement mandates them. If a person is not needed to perform a function, an employer cannot afford to add him to its bid price. And every time contractors are forced to absorb unnecessary manpower costs, nonunion employers gain the upper hand.

Ask construction users to name the main obstacles union contractors face in getting their work and most will cite "costs" as the prime factor. Others add "attitude" and "performance" to the list. One user sums up the opinions of many when he states:

"We're not going to give contractors work based on the union philosophy or how skillfully they run their training programs. All our company cares about is fair cost and quality performance—period. Anything less in this cold, cruel economic world is not acceptable. Moreover, unless union craftsmen show up on time, look presentable, have the right attitude and truly put in eight hours work for eight hours pay, we'll settle for nonunion people with lesser skills."

The vast majority of industry insiders I talk to offer similar views, including a growing number of union leaders who now are actively urging their locals to make positive changes. One is Ed Hill, president of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.

"All we have to do is listen to what too many customers or potential customers say about us," Hill says. "They stress that poor attitude by many craftsmen is a root cause of our union's problems. It is the contractor who risks his business and his livelihood on the work we do. He needs us. We need him. And it is that combined productivity that determines a project's financial success. That's why the sooner our members realize that we're all in this together, the better off we will be."

It is crystal clear that cost-effective contract changes and changes in worker attitudes represent a winning strategy—a strategy that is desperately needed for the union sector to regain market share and ensure a promising future. But that strategy must be adopted today. "Tomorrow" will be way too late.
_________________________________________________________________________

Peter A. Cockshaw is a veteran labor analyst living in Pennsylvania. He can be reached at 610-436-7553

Union officials "condone and endorse" attacks on members' internet free speech

By Matt Noyes

Since the first member forum caught their attention, some union leaders have tried to put a lid on member free speech online. They haven't had much success. Internet free speech has spread like a weed, with independent member-run websites, blogs, and forums popping up in all the unions. Many union leaders probably share the frustration expressed by IBEW International Vice President Phil Flemming, "while we do not condone or endorse the use of independently operated websites...as places for members to express their opinions, there is little we can do to stop them."

This coming February will mark 5 years of my running IBEW Forums websites. I started out knowing nothing about the internet and even less about the mechanics of forums programs and thought I knew everything about the IBEW. I now know more than I could ever have thought possible about building websites and modding forums programs but...I've come to realize that I know nothing about the 'new' IBEW and its members. It's not the same IBEW anymore that I spent 35 years working under its umbrella.

I'm a salmon...swimming upstream to spawn...and die...dodging the fish hooks thrown in the water by all who would drag me ashore and eat me...or worse, and now, I've run into a dam without fish ladders. But, I'm too dumb to know it and I swim in circles day after day looking for the falls to leap and swim over the top of...but, they're just not there. And, all the while, the very life is draining from my body in this apparently futile effort. I've just come to the realization that the spawn of all my brothers and sisters from bygone days have thrown up this dam to block my journey. I think I'm doomed...I'm part of something that I don't recognize, I don't know, don't understand and probably never will. Can you spell 'white flag?'.

IBEW members (?) demonstrated their support for progressive change by unanimously electing International President Edwin D. Hill and International Secretary-Treasurer Jon Walters to five-year terms at the 37th IBEW Convention which just concluded in Cleveland, OH yesterday (09/16/06). They ran unopposed and won by acclamation. (like who were they gonna allow to oppose them?)

Let's clear the air here. That opening paragraph, taken off the IBEW company website is so full of bullshit that it makes me want to puke! Hill and Walters were elected by elected rank and file delegates who regularly piss their pants and prostrate themselves and genuflect in the presence of International Officers for fear of some unknown retribution if they don't strictly toe the line and support without question 'anything' the IO wants to say and/or do. Make no mistake about it, there's no democracy in the elections of IBEW officers and they (the IO) are going to continue to do anything and everything in their power to preserve the status quo.

We've Been HAD!...Again!

Once again, an aging IBEW President with absolutely no intentions of finishing out his term, uses the power of his office and the incumbency advantage, to secure with absolute certainty that his hand-picked successor will be virtually guranteed several years of a 'free ride' as President of the IBEW. Don't believe it? Just take a trip down memory lane. It's the way of things in the IBEW and has nearly 'always' been that way. What a CROCK of bullshit and we keep allowing it to happen. This is the 'very' reason so many members like myself support with vigor OMOV (One Member One Vote) direct-elections of IBEW International officers and why the International uses all the means at their disposal to fight it.

This country is a "Representative Republic" and yet we "direct-elect" our Presidents, Congressmen and Senators right on down to and including in some cases the local dogcatcher. The founding fathers of this great nation knew that nothing less would pass muster with the citizens who fought and died to establish this country and that they couldn't trust politicians to elect each other. I ask you very simply then, why should IBEW rank and file members be expected to live and work under less standards? The rank and file fought for and won the wages, benefits and conditions that we enjoy. It wasn't any part of a closed-door backroom deal made in the inner sanctums of the 'Good Ole Boys Club' in Washington, DC or anywhere else. The history of our fights and struggles were on the job and on the picket-lines and is ours to brag about, not theirs! It not only chafes my ass that they would rob us of that glory but pisses me off that they use those hard fought for and won rights as chips in their elitist poker games with the opposition.

Perhaps you should really take a little history lesson about Ed Hill to understand the status quo in the IBEW. It's revealing of the mentality of just whom we're dealing with.

IBEW Roundup
Billy N. Chadwick v. Edwin D. Hill
Danger of democracy on the internet? Kill it!
Social Security Fright

Good Luck Brothers and Sisters, you're gonna need it!

Organize or Die
Book Preface – The Management SOB

I am a management SOB.

I have been threatened, picketed, spit at, defamed, sued, harassed and generally made to feel unloved. I represent employers in terminations, sexual harassment, strikes, lock-outs, jurisdictional disputes and other sudden death games. My winning arbitration record is Cy Young quality. My Italian and Irish bloodlines cause occasional loud and unruly outbursts. I have broken phones but never promises. When provoked I can laugh or froth like a junkyard dog.

I have taken an eye for an eye, gone nose to nose and matched drink for drink. I have no formal legal training but I can find the obscure contract loophole. I have no guilt about using the mangiest choke-chain lawyers to bare fangs at a labor dinosaur. And I confess to have just recently given up the amusing pastime of “taunt the first year business agent.”

I am, by trade or situation, a negotiator, mediator, father-confessor and sympathetic arm twister. Yes, I am a management SOB. But at the same time, I have been honored by local and international unions. I have made conducted seminars for thousands of business managers, agents and organizers across the United States. I was even the recipient of one of the highest honors granted by an International Union. As a result, I now own more plaques, shirts, watches, pins, jackets and pens with union logos than I will ever need or use.

You see, despite my obvious lack of charm and my abundance of serious character flaws, I am a very effective and successful union organizer. I am a wolf in wolf’s clothing. It’s just that I alternately promote and eat the sheep.

Results speak louder than words. One local District Council used the ideas contained in this booklet and signed up 300 new companies on a “top-down” basis in three years; no salting or campaigns or votes required. I have personally brokered relationships and contracts between more than 100 non-union companies and various unions in the last five years. We should all have such productive hobbies.

Now before you finger me as a college “suit” or heartless corporate kill-shot type, without an understanding of an honest day’s work, a little history is in order. I started working when I was 12. To put myself through high school and college I would do about anything for money. I’ve been a paperboy, busboy, waiter, fry-cook, housepainter, drywaller, janitor, bar-back, retail clerk, pump jockey, laborer, carpenter, gardener, foreman, production manager, and on and on. Been paid union, non-union and cash under the table. I’ve had dirt on my jeans. Mud on my boots. Dust up my nose. Paint in my hair. Whatever it took. A man apart from “an honest day’s work?” Hardly. Been there and done that.

I come from three generations of contracting in my family. Great grandfather, grandfather and step-dad. By age 26 1 had put myself through college, and become the chief executive of a contractor’s trade association in California. And also become, without knowing it, the youngest SOB in the nation with this job.

I knew nothing, acted like it and didn’t know that either.

It was then, with a lot of help from some class-act labor leaders and innovative employers, that I began to formulate a different way of conducting labor-management relations.

Since that time, the association has tripled in size. It has become a leading multi-employer bargaining unit and an innovator in labor-management relations in California. The unit currently represents more than two hundred major companies. These companies employs tens of thousands of union workers, for millions of man-hours each year with billions of dollars in secured contracts.

So why now, at the pinnacle of management SOB success, might I compromise my notoriety? What could I possibly gain by promoting relationships between nonunion firms and organized labor? Is there any balance to this risk-reward formula?

My motives are not noble. I am not engaged in a fight for the heart and soul of the American worker. The simple fact is that I represent unionized employers and it is easier to teach you, my opponents, to even the playing field, than it is to get you to take your medicine; the wage, fringe or work rule concessions your members will scream about.

Thus I am using non-traditional strategies to aggressively expand my market share. In fact, I am using labor to bring the market to me and even the playing field for my employers at the same time. Is this a marketing innovation? Maybe. Is this the new labor-management dynamic at work? Perhaps. But the blunt truth is that it is a survival technique for existing union employers. This market is governed by a harsh economic and political environment that does not measure itself by its ideology. Its dog-eat-dog determined by performance and results. It is the American Way.

I have no time to debate the moral merits or deficiencies of this system. But I have invested nearly a decade devising very specific marketing and business development strategies to thrive within it. This book and my presentations are designed to address top-down organizing; marketing and business development strategies up to and including closing the sale on non-union employers. They are about how to conduct yourself as a real professional labor representative in the business world.

I do not address bottom up techniques such as salting, arm-twisting or ass-chewing. Someone else will teach you those strategies; essential for some campaigns but not my style. To me, most business relationships that starts that way will probably lack the trust, loyalty and mutual benefit that is the foundation for any long-term relationship. I know that sometimes you-gotta-do-what-you-gotta-do; but what if you didn’t have to go that far to begin with?

So as we move on, keep an open mind. My messages may not always be easy to accept or digest. I hope you find them provoking and interesting. And you may find in their raw and vulgar nature some compelling in-your-face truths; like a serious car accident you just can’t look away from. One guarantee; if you are willing to try something different, there is at least one thing in my strategies and tactics that will change the way you do business.

Mark Breslin
WebSite @ http://www.breslin.biz/Scripts/default.asp