Now Is the Time…
For too long, the doors to leadership and full inclusion have not been fully open to women. Unions have made progress, but it is time for ALL Unions to push together to throw those doors wide open. Our union cannot meet today's organizing and political challenges and opportunities until ALL our members, including women in the building trade unions, are engaged and contributing to end our struggle. Together, we can make our movement even stronger.
As of today, woman in the building trade unions still are not included in this movement, specifically in the UBCJA union. Women are continually asked to volunteer their services, but not appointed to leadership positions as Business Representatives and/or Organizers at the bottom or top in the Chicago Regional Council of Carpenters (CRCC). I have heard of greater strides in other parts of our country, but in only small numbers, which still do not reflect today’s membership of women in the carpenters union. Since 2001, I have heard the Doublespeak by the General President Douglas J. McCarron, but have seen no significant results across our country or more specifically in the Chicago Regional Council of Carpenters, of which I am still a member.
Despite decades of progress, the union movement acknowledges they have not met their goals: unions should reflect the diversity of our communities and union movement leadership, and should reflect the diversity of our members. In too many cases, women still are underrepresented among union leadership. It is understandable that many women—the workers who are among those with the most to gain from union membership and who are most actively organizing today—do not feel welcome. We continue to see male dominated leadership without women representation at the top. Women continue to be intimidated at local meeting halls in many building trade unions. And again, I know this is a fact here in the Chicago area unions.
It is incumbent within the global world today for our union movement to stand before employers and governments in every part of the world as a model of openness, fairness and opportunity. Unions must not allow women (people of color, gay or lesbian workers, or those with disabilities) to be denied the fruits of their labor in the workplace. Unions cannot be less vigilant and demanding of themselves out of misguided historic conditioning. Building a stronger union movement to improve the lives of working families will require all of us, working together, not as a Corporate Union without the voice of its members all inclusive.
The UBCJA has been sitting on the fence since 2001, not really going one way or the other. Information has been kept back from our members and we continue to hear nothing but rhetoric and doublespeak. Even some of our local officers and administrators are upset and speaking out, going so far as to write the UBCJA.
If the UBCJA union continues failing to hear every member’s voice, and if the corporate leadership continues to speak for ALL members, then we will see the destruction of our Carpenters Union as we have known it within the next few years…
Here is a sampling of some articles posted across the United States and Canada.
Affiliation of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters
Article posted August 6, 2003, Chicago, Illinois
For the past two and a half years, the United Brotherhood of Carpenters has been disaffiliated from the national AFL-CIO, and until recently, from the Building and Construction Trades Department of the Federation.
This issue has caused significant concerns for members of the building trade unions whose jobs depend on working closely with the union members of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters.
Every attempt to convince the Carpenters to re-affiliate has failed, despite extensive good faith efforts by the President and other officers of AFL-CIO and by the leadership of the building trade unions.
In February 2003, the Executive council unanimously instructed the President of the AFL-CIO to seek, once more, a reconsideration of this position by the Carpenters. These attempts failed.
This disaffiliation now causes significant problems for the construction unions and for the Building Trades Department, because they must choose between enforcing the requirements of the AFL-CIO constitution and causing enormous discord at the jobsites, or permitting the Carpenters to continue to violate the basic principles of trade union solidarity.
The President of the AFL-CIO has taken every reasonable step to try to remedy this problem. We applaud his efforts and his patience. We once again call on the leadership to the Carpenters union to rejoin the house of labor.
The Executive Council will monitor this situation and reconsider this matter when appropriate.
– In 2000, the rank and file members were asked to vote on a percentage of our money to come out of our wages. We were told many things that encouraged us to vote yes for this move. We came to find out most of what we were told was lies. Now we have 3% of our wages being deducted from our paychecks. With a larger deduction to be put in place very soon. We got sucker punched by our own union…– CJ
Five Unions Create “Change To Win Coalition”
Article posted June 15, 2005
Five unions – SEIU, Teamsters, UNITE-HERE, Laborers and UFCW – announced Wednesday in Washington, D.C. creation of a “Change To Win” coalition. The new coalition is aimed at building worker strength through more aggressive organizing.
Laborer’s President Terry O’Sullivan:
“We believe that without a radical change we cannot continue to survive as a significant force.”
Unite-Here’s Bruce Raynor says that without working families we are in serious trouble and a stronger labor movement is the answer.
“We believe workers in America are undergoing a crisis. A crisis in their ability to support their families, a crisis in their ability to raise their dreams for their children, a crisis in their ability to retire with dignity after a lifetime of work.”
SEIU’s Andy Stern says the Change To Win Coalition will go regardless of what happens at the AFL-CIO convention in July.
“Our goal here is to build something stronger. And that’s just what we did today.”
Three of these unions – SEIU, UFCW and UNITE_HERE have authorized their officers to disaffiliate from the AFL-CIO if they think it necessary.
– The UBCJA is nowhere to be found in any activities associated with either AFL-CIO or Change to Win Coalition. The issues and progressive diversified movement by other unions in America and Canada is being completed without the UBCJA’s input or assistance. The UBCJA has gone in a completely different direction. Our money is being used to organize the already organized unions and employees. We are repeating history with the ONE BIG UNION concept, it is all about the power the UBCJA administration wants over other unions, no longer will the UBCJA be here to support the working carpenters and their families. So ask yourself, who will they be here for?– CJ
Drywall Finishers Reaffirm Their Support of Painters Union
Article Posted April 29, 2008
A unit of 580 drywall finishers in New Jersey voted overwhelmingly – 94 percent to stick with their union, the Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT) District Council 71, and rejected an attempt by the Carpenters (UBC), which left the AFL-CIO in 2001, to sign up the workers.
The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) certified the results yesterday. IUPAT General President James Williams says he wasn’t surprised by the outcome because IUPAT drywall finishers repeatedly have reaffirmed their support of IUPAT.
This vote was, as the man says, “Déjà vu all over again.” The Carpenters came at us – again – hoping to raid those who are already organized and we voted them down – again.
They have done the same thing in over a dozen cities in the United States and Canada and they lost every time. The word is out on their empty promises for more work and more money and the men and women we represent in this trade will not be fooled by the UBC leaders in Washington, D.C.
– Comments and articles like this are flying across America and Canada. Do you want to know the funny part? I have not heard one carpenter, besides myself, speak of this in my CRCC. What do you think that means? I happen to know this is true. Our union is using our money to organize already organized union workers. Not only that, but they are also assisting other non-union employers to organize illegal immigrants to become union carpenters in addition to having them become signatory employers. What is wrong with this picture?
Immigrants are uneducated to our laws and are much easier to manipulate. They will not give the new Corporate UBCJA union any problems when they continue to demolish what the other union members throughout our labor movement have fought and died for. – Chris L. Joanet
UBCJA Overrides Rejected Contract in Alberta & Signs Concessionary Agreement Behind Closed Doors
Article posted May 22, 2008
Representative democracy at work - DUH! just more reasons for Canadian autonomy. Click the images to read this typical McCarron shit: to collect air miles secretly sign a new contract and kill the double time to match the non-union and un-union CLAC-heads in the Oil Patch. The UBCJA theory is that if more Local 1325 members had voted they would have voted FOR the agreement so it wasn't really a real vote but a protest vote, so Let’s Make a Deal with the company.
Go to URL Link: http://cmaw.blogspot.com/2008_05_01_archive.html and read the Open Letter to Local Union 1325 Members…
– The UBCJA is continuing to harass other unions to join in their Corporate UBCJA Union plans. In fact, this plan is not any different then the current George W. Bush and Company plan. Lie to the rank and file members and keep them ignorant to what the UBCJA is really about today. This is a secret society after all…and the members here in Chicago Regional Council of Carpenters have been conditioned not to speak out. They are the ones that get appointments to top leadership positions within the unions.
Workers were in fact helped from the forming of community based organizations emerging in the past, by the help of independent political parties sensitive to workers rights. That’s unheard of today in an age where no effective political party stands for working people despite both the Democratic and Republican parties saying they do.
Workers are now on their own…they are left to struggle in a global marketplace with pathetically little help the weak unions of today can provide.
Today, the AFL-CIO is still the country’s largest federation of unions. Its website claims a membership of around ten million workers, even after the other five unions broke away from the federation in 2005. The United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America (UBCJA) did as well in 2001, and the International Union of North America (LIUNA) left in 2006. They were purported to have formed the new “Change to Win Coalition.”
I have not read anything in the past year about the UBCJA being part of this new coalition…
AFL-CIO’s state is a metaphor for the times. Organized labor today is weak in the face of declining membership and corporate dominance with workers losing out in a globalized world. Its decline has been long-term and painful with worker rights being ignored since the 1980’s.
Its not all the unions fault…
Early in 2001 and new in office, Bush showed his anti-labor stripes immediately. He invoked the Railway Labor Act blocking a threatened strike by 10,000 mechanics, cleaners and custodians at Northwest Airlines set for March 12. He acted again against United Airlines’ 15,000 mechanics in December. He also took management’s side in August 2006 against Northwest’s 8700 flight attendants’ planned job action against the bankrupt airline’s unfair demands for huge wage cuts and increase in hours worked. Bill Clinton was just as unfriendly invoking the Railway Labor Act against American Airline’s pilots and to prevent strikes 13 times.
Laws like these, and Presidents’ willingness to use them, crushed the spirit and legislation currently enacted (Wagner Act). This began a process of gradual erosion of union power to bargain collectively.
Employers can fire workers today for any lawful reason like incompetence or no stated reason at all. Even the right to strike is neutralized with employers able to hire replacements or they threaten to ship jobs overseas. With our government on the employers side, not the workers, they are empowered to fire union workers and legally replace them with lower-paid illegal workers who are uneducated to our laws, and pretty much these illegal workers do not care as long as they can feed themselves and their family. Is this any different then what American union workers want?
The Reagan administration started the fiasco between the corporate government and our now corporate UBCJA union. Other unions are hurting bad by all of these events, but they and their members are fighting back. The UBCJA and some of its members are not…
For the past eight years, Bush and company has aggressively supported corporate interests. His plan has been to crush unions so the employers have free reign to treat workers any way they wish. They can tell workers to find another job if they do not like the wages or benefits offered them.
Our UBCJA has also basically been telling our members the same thing. They have taken away our right to vote for our Business Representatives. We do not vote for the organizers, they also are appointed and word is very soon our UBCJA will be taking away our right to vote for our delegates.
If we lose our right to vote for delegates, then we lose our complete voice to the UBCJA Corporate union and they can do whatever they think is good for us, the working carpenter…this includes reducing our hourly rate, increasing the 3% dues from our pay and manipulating our apprenticeship to have virtual apprentices for signatory contractors to hire indefinitely…
One of the excuses the UBCJA will use as to our wage rate per hour freezing or being lowered is the fact that Chicago's labor rates tend to be higher than most other union cities' but not out of range, a report by Jennifer Halperin found. In 1995, the national average for general laborers and decorators was $42.87 an hour. In Chicago the rate was $54.80 an hour. Chicago's carpenters and riggers averaged $10 an hour higher than the national average, and the forklift operator's hourly wages were more than $20 higher than the national average. So in order to be more competitive with the amount of jobs we will have to work on, things will have to change.
This deceit has been occurring for many years, just by the fact that carpenters have been apathetic to the politics that occur in our government and at the local union halls. Carpenters continue to stay away from attending their local meetings.
Is this because no one tells the new or existing working member the truth as to why they should attend there meetings?
This is what I have been told; UBC members only attend their union meetings for the pizza and beer…is this true? Working members are only aggressively approached by officers to attend the meeting, only when it is time to vote at the local hall…
Think about this, if a local union has 10,000 members and only 25-50 members routinely attend; the question is; what happened to all the other members? Some of our locals today do not want to change, using intimidation and harassment tactics to keep some members away…thus if not forced to stop these tactics soon, they will in fact be part of the destruction of UBCJA.
At the UBC International Sisters in the Brotherhood convention in 2005, one of the sister carpenters overheard General President Douglas McCarron state, “Chicago is going to be a tough nut to crack,” speaking to one of his administrators. What do you think he meant?
Maybe, the Chicago Regional Council of Carpenters is not going for the New Corporate UBCJA plan as easily as some of the other Regional Council’s have done. I do not know, just hypostasizing…
One thing I do know now is the time for ALL proud union members to take a stand against our new Corporate UBCJA union. – CJ
Citations & Resources
Railway Labor Act - signed by President Bill Clinton - Calls for an End to Airline Strike, September 01, 1998, New York Times
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