Unions to focus on training, safety next year

But organizing is always a top priority

By Candace Doyle
Editor

Talk to union representatives about the coming year's issues and the usual suspects surface: prevailing wage enforcement, the skilled-worker shortage and project labor agreements, to name a few.

"I think we'll see more of the same issues," said Mark Reihl, lobbyist and executive director for the Wisconsin State Council of Carpenters in Madison. Michael Engelberger, president and business manager of the Sheet Metal Workers International Association Local 18, agreed and added training and safety to the list.

"Training is a big issue," he said. "We're constantly trying to improve our training for quality and safety. We've got drug programs in most of our agreements across the state.

"We're constantly working with our building trades to get project labor agreements," he added. "Prevailing wage is one of our political issues. We need a little bit better enforcement."

As could be expected, safety is paramount to ironworkers, who lost three men to the Big Blue crane collapse at Miller Park stadium on July 14, 1999.

"Between labor and management, safety is a big priority," said Sam Wilcox, business manager for the Ironworkers Local 383 in Madison. "Any of the steel erection standards we address very strongly. Our purpose is to make sure everyone gets home at night."

Drug-free zone

Bill Roehr, business representative for the Milwaukee and Southern Wis-consin District Council of Carpenters, said the union implemented random drug testing the first week of May to improve safety in the industry.

Roehr said initial results showed Milwaukee area carpenters tested positive for illegal drugs at a rate far below the national average. Only five of the 191 members of the council - or 3 percent - tested positive.

A 1997 federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration survey revealed 14 percent of full-time construction workers aged 18 to 49 said they used illegal drugs the month before.

"We started drug testing this year, and we're way below average," he said. "A safe working environment is what we strive for." Phillip Neuenfeldt, Wisconsin State AFL-CIO secretary-treasurer, named those issues as well as providing access to quality and affordable health care to members.

"That's obviously going to be a priority for us," he said. As will education.

"Clearly, we'll be concerned about education," he said. "We want to give tremendous support to the technical college system. It's inherently important to our way of life. But also, we think it is a very important opportunity for children of working families.

"I think we'll once again be looking at ways to make prevailing wage more accurate," he added. "It's very difficult to say one piece of legislation would take priority over another."

The upcoming agenda

Neuenfeldt said it's difficult to advance a particular agenda as unions typically react to legislation that, from their perspective, is aimed at weakening a union. The unions fought and won a battle to remove an amendment to the state budget proposing a ban on PLAs for publicly funded construction projects even though it had support in the Assembly.

"If someone tries to outlaw them, we'd certainly be working to defeat that," Neuenfeldt said. "We think PLAs work. We believe PLAs make good public policy. Anytime anti-worker legislation is introduced, we'll work to defeat it."

Regardless of the issues a particular union may align with, increasing union membership is a top priority; it is a union's very lifeblood.

"Last but not least, we'll be organizing," Neuenfeldt said. "One of our top priorities will always be organizing. I think it's constantly becoming more of a priority. Union density has an effect on everyone's wages. Everyone prospers when there are more union workers."

Engelberger said a strong economy presents "a window of opportunity" to add members, as the work is there and workers are in high demand.

"We are stepping up our organizing activities," he said. "We have made some progress, and we're looking to make more. In the last three to four years, we really started doing more of it."

Wilcox said he sees unions' efforts to increase membership as a way to alleviate the skilled-labor shortage because union wages and benefits could lure workers into the trades.

"We're much more aggressive than in the past," he said. "Five years ago, we neglected it."

But no union is launching a more aggressive push than the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 139.

The union proposed legislation requiring that crane operators pass a new certification standard before they can operate a crane with a lifting capacity of five tons or more. The legislation, to be introduced in January, would also require that ironworkers be licensed by the state.

The legislation is new, but the issue is one mentioned by many unions.

"There is only one reason - safety," said Mike Lucas, an organizing consultant for the local.

He said the proposed legislation is not in response to Big Blue's collapse, although the accident heightened everyone's awareness of the need for crane-operating standards.

"When Big Blue went down, people became cognizant," he said. "Big Blue got a whole lot of people's attention."

The legislation would apply to union and nonunion workers alike, said Cecil Argue, the union's business manager.

"We're trying to improve safety for union and nonunion workers," he said.

Yet that proposed legislation takes a backseat to the IUOE's main push next year: salting.

Lucas, who is called the Father of Salting - a compliment or insult, depending on who's doing the calling - said the method of organizing workers is "a takeoff from the Civil Rights movement."

Salting, Lucas said, involves having a union worker apply for nonunion jobs while letting the employer know the union member's aim is to organize the place of business. The National Labor Relations Board prohibits employers from discriminating against workers because of their union status. And that puts the employer in a bind.

"The problem is they can't say, 'We can't hire them because they're union,' without convicting themselves," said Lucas, who admitted the practice was controversial. "They're caught between the devil and the deep."

"The employers' favorite squawk about it is that they're saboteurs," Argue said of the union workers.

But he said the union workers never hide their union affiliation - in fact, the idea is to make it well known - and the practice usually is targeted at certain employers.

"The biggest push will be on those violating the prevailing wage law," said Argue.

"We don't set the minimum wage for contractors arbitrarily," said Lucas, who acknowledged that salting has been correctly called a form of entrapment.

Nevertheless, the practice is legal, and to Lucas and Argue, the end justifies the means.

"I've heard contractors say, 'I have a right to live the American Dream,'" said Argue of those who complain about the practice. "I say, 'so do we.'"

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