Union Perspectives

We have an election in two months, where the hell are the building Trade Unions? Members and organizers should be touting their wages, benefits and seeking out new members and union shops. So far, I’m only hearing crickets. While the Trade Unions sit back, the UAW have been striking and winning big benefits for their members. Then there is the Teamsters, who have taken on the Holy Grail—Amazon, the corporation. Again, just crickets from the Trade Unions. Then there is the Minnesota State model—-we can win more together than we can on our own. So why are all unions not working together? Why are all unions not talking with each other? There are two months left until the election—an election that could conceivably be the death null of unions. If we lose this election to the GOP, Trump and Project 2025, our unions will be destroyed and we’ll be back to the days of trying to make ends meet as the GOP will cut our wages, benefits will be eliminated and there will be nothing we can do abou...

To build our trade unions up we must get more jobs, which means more hours and then we can expand our unions by encouraging non-union shops to join unions and creating jobs for new apprentices. We have a process to do this and one way is the Project Labor Agreements and tools that are helping with this are the prevailing wage laws, which must be supported by certifying pay rolls. The other is ensuring that responsible contract language (RCL) is written into an agency’s bylaws. RCL means a government entity does not have to accept the lowest bid for work done. This takes people, time and knowledge of labor laws and politics. Prevailing wage jobs just about put us on an even ground with non-union contracts, and if we can take the government jobs from non-union shops this will weaken them in private bidding for their workers depend on the highest prevailing wages. If we keep them from getting these wages this opens the door to organizing non-union shops or taking their workers as new me...

As the strikes continue to catch on as a means to gain better wages and working conditions, it’s important to keep history, lessons learned and prior efforts in mind so as not to repeat them. Strikes have worked best when all workers sit down or walk out at once. Strikes are lost when just part of the work force leaves and the rest keeps working. In the construction trade this is called being covered up by other trades, which makes the trade out on strike in a disadvantage when workers go back, such as T-bar ceilings have been put up before the electrical, plumbing, fire sprinklers or air conditioning ducts have been put in this situation. This is the disadvantage of crafts unions who have different contracts that end at different times. Unions and workers must change the rules to where all workers can support each other. The new minimum wage fast food, box stores and restaurant workers should not fall into the trap pf setting up their craft-specific union, like the trade unions fell f...

The best unions for workers are the way trade unions are set up. They are an in-house organization. They have their own pension plans, which they control. They have their own healthcare plan. They set their wages. They do their own training, such as apprenticeship programs. They set their retirement ages; in short, they provide the labor for a price, which covers everything. The contractor pays a set price per hour for a tradesman and when the work is done the worker goes back the union hall to be put on the out of work list until the next job. If the union man or woman moves their pension follows them. The other types of union are governmental: federal, state, city, special district, corporations, businesses schools. These unions just have people who negotiate on their behalf for benefits and wages, but pensions and healthcare are paid for by the agency and employees, and not paid by the unions so the workers’ do not have much control. In cases of corporations selling out to another...