Topp man for the job

Story by Lawrence Silver

Spend two and a half hours with John Topp and everything his friends and colleagues say about him crystallizes into one thought: He is exactly the type of person you’d enjoy drinking a beer with.

I recently spent that time with him at the Allied Construction Employers Association’s Brookfield office. His warm greeting and the ease with which the conversation flowed made it easy to understand why management and labor think he should lead contract negotiations as chief executive officer of the organization.

In what was supposed to be a magazine interview, we discussed a friend of his who rides a bike through the backwoods of Jamaica and his own snorkeling explorations through reefs off the coast of Hawaii.

But Topp’s basic congeniality only scratches the surface of what he requires to pilot management and labor through disputes.

Topp spends his days navigating the murky waters between the wants of the signatory contractors he represents and the needs of unions.

To be successful, Topp must interpret, in an inoffensive manner, the messages sent back and forth so a common understanding can be reached.

His members construct buildings. Topp builds consensus.

The empathy he developed for management as a business owner and empathy for laborers that began as a 14-year-old working for his father’s chemical company guide him through mediation efforts.

But he’s the first to admit he cares to a fault.

Philosophically, he said, it’s only fair that workers who provide value to their employers earn a livelihood to support their families.

But Topp’s definition of a fair wage contributed to the demise of his own company and could lead to the downfall of the signatory contractors he was picked to work on behalf of less than a year ago.

He sees changes need to be made in the way signatory contractors employ, pay and insure union workers. But it remains to be seen if the ACEA can make those changes and maintain the fundamental approach that a reasonable days’ work deserves a reasonable days’ pay.

“We’ve always been fair, been driven to be fair, sometimes to a fault at the expense of the business,” Topp said. “But if all employers in the country just decided to just stop this, where is that going to leave us?

“It’s going to leave us in not a very pretty situation as a country.”

Topp's relatively placid demeanor during the majority of our discussion struck me. Many people I sit across the table from put both elbows down, bend their upper body toward me and try to make constant eye contact, as if to make sure I hear their point.

Others lean back, cross their arms and squint, as if they’re trying to defend themselves from my questions.

Topp, a father of three boys, sat upright with his hands folded over his belly during most of our conversation. The tone of his voice stayed so calm, you’d think he was reading a bedtime story to one of his four grandchildren.

That lasted until he brought up the topic of health care.

The well-known issue that culls national attention because of rising costs elicited a physical reaction from Topp unseen during the rest of the interview.

His hands jerked left and right while he explained why unions were formed to protect workers, and those hands flailed up and down as he discussed how health care benefits save people from bankruptcy.

Many nonunion shops, he said, circumvent protecting workers by offering zero or little coverage or encouraging employees to get insurance from their spouses.

Employers have a responsibility to give workers who provide value the best health care possible, he said.

If employers don’t do it, he wondered, who would?

“It goes to government, and government is us,” Topp said. “Now we are going to tax ourselves more because the private sector didn’t find out a way to do this.”

The conviction and clarity Topp exhibited on the insurance topic made me wonder if I was hearing a sales pitch he’d used before.

Topp admitted he recites his health care rhetoric almost daily since taking the CEO position with the ACEA after Ed Hayden’s death in July 2007.

Providing union benefits, he said, has become a tough sell.

“They’ll say, ‘You’re nuts,’” Topp said of ACEA member companies. “They say, ‘You’re living in a dream world. … You don’t understand. We can’t compete with this anymore, and the only way to do this is to cut it out.’”

Topp understands firsthand, though, how paying for union benefits can create a competitive disadvantage.

Reliance Electric Co. Inc., an electrical contracting firm he ran for almost 30 years, closed in 2003 after it lost major accounts to nonunion contractors.

“Ultimately, it got to the point where I was getting increases every year in union contracts,” Topp said. “The gap [between what he could charge and nonunion firms could charge] got wider, and it goes to the fundamental philosophy of how you support labor.”

Topp said his commitment to the worker stems from his father and the time he spent sweeping floors, cleaning tanks, pouring chemicals, shoveling sidewalks and unloading boxcars while he worked for his father’s company, Topp Oil and Chemical Co., as a teenager.

Topp said the job gave him appreciation of manual labor and perspective for running Reliance Electric.

“I think the history of my family of both my dad’s business and the businesses that we started and carried on with Reliance Electric is the same thing,” Topp said. “We always had this sense of responsibility that people will come to work, and if the marketplace will bear it, they should be compensated fairly.

“They are human beings just like us.”

Topp already uses his humanistic approach to convince two unions to add more flexibility to their worker contracts. The agreement covers topics such as working four, 10-hour workdays instead of five, eight-hour days and eliminating overtime requirements for Saturday jobs.

Terry Ullsperger, business manager for Operating Plasterers & Cement Masons Local International Association 599, one of the Milwaukee-area unions to sign the contract, said Topp put the compromise into terms both sides could understand.

Ullsperger said the deal should help signatory contractors recapture some of the market lost to nonunion businesses.

“He was a positive force,” Ullsperger said of Topp. “He understands the overall outlook of the construction industry.”

Topp can take some pride in the agreement, but he knows more work needs to be done.

He said the war for new projects is being won by nonunion contractors, and if a consensus isn’t reached on pensions and health care, signatory contractors and unions could begin to die off.

“Competition is competition,” Topp said. “If the customers decide that they are not going to buy this model anymore because they just can’t afford it and somebody over here has found a way to let somebody else pay for the obligations of their employees, then how can you beat that?”

Not all hope is lost, though.

Topp said the value that could be added by increases in union productivity can offset the rising costs of health care. It’s an old-school method, he said, but taking care of the worker is still the best way to get the most out of them.

Perhaps if Topp can get everyone together for a beer, he can convince them.

“I’ve always been an advocate for the worker, and I think that has something to do with me pushing the broom as a kid and liking the people I was working with and having an appreciation for work and what people do,” Topp said. “I think that’s at the core and I guess that’s just the way it’s always been.”