Carpenter groups in NY and NJ split from UBC

For the first time Douglas McCarron, international president of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters, faces rank-and-file resistance to his authoritarian reorganization of the union that he cannot simply dismiss with a contemptuous shrug of the bureaucratic shoulder.  In June, a group of carpenters in New Jersey announced on their website that they were leaving the UBC to form their own independent union, New Jersey Carpenters United,  and would seek to displace the UBC as the recognized collective bargaining agent in New Jersey. A few days later, in July, carpenters in upstate New York -- around the Albany area -- broke away to take the same road.  Richard Dorrough, who had been a member of UBC Local 370 (just dissolved), formally resigned from the UBC to help lead the new independent carpenters union. 

 

The breakaway was provoked by an abruptly announced UBC decision, this spring, to establish a new Northeast Regional Council of Carpenters. It is a monster of a creation, that apparently exceeds in bureaucratic complexity anything invented earlier by the UBC top leadership.  Two regional councils, one in New Jersey the other in upstate New York, were dissolved and merged into one representing 30,000 carpenters. Members of thirty-five locals were notified that their locals had been dissolved and replaced by eight geographically defined locals and five specialty-skill locals. Members were directed to make bewildering choices: In which of 78 NJ/NY counties are you willing to work? In which of 39 skills are you qualified? They were advised to sign an extraordinarily sweeping check-off authorization, one that would mandate  payroll deductions to the union even after a worker had ceased to work in the industry.

 

Resentment reached a level of outrage so intense that the disaffected carpenters saw no avenue of recourse within their union. Leaving their established international can be risky because in ‘normal’ times it is discouragingly difficult -- virtually impossible  -- for any new independent union to supplant an established building trades union. 

 

However, these are not ‘normal’ times in construction. For one thing, the Carpenters union has gone to extremes in authoritarian concentration. Its leadership has wielded power, unchecked and confident, even though resentment in the ranks has been simmering throughout the country. But events in New York, New Jersey, and elsewhere reveal that there is a new element that alters the power balance.  The Carpenters union seceded from the AFL-CIO years ago, to be totally unrestrained in its operations. It joined Andy Stern's Change to Win coalition, apparently to strengthen itself against the AFL-CIO, but  it pulled out when  C-t-W went nowhere.  At this point the AFL-CIO Building Trades unions look upon the Carpenters as a dangerous rival, fearing that it harbors imperialist ambitions against the other trades; a special BTD website, “Respect our Crafts,” announces its objective bluntly: "“To prevent the spread of an insidious and poisonous plague of ‘raiding’ the work of other crafts... by the United Brotherhood of Carpenters under the leadership of its General President Doug McCarron."” And so, the dissidents breaking away from the Carpenters union, at least for now, can count on a measure of support from the AFL-CIO. 

 

In St. Louis, the Carpenters union has charted an electricians local that offers friendly terms to electrical contractors. When Andrew Price, a member of the Carpenters Local 638 and a St. Louis council delegate campaigned publicly against the establishment of an electrician's local, he was charged with “dual unionism.”  But Price beat off the charges;  an experienced  law firm that represents AFL-CIO construction unions sued on his behalf in Federal court; the judge voided the charges.            

 

When 68 carpenters met on July 11 in Albany and voted to establish a new local union independent of the UBC,  Richard Furlong, of the firm of Lipsitz, Green, Scime, and Cambria was there to provide legal advice. The Lipsitz firm has represented the AFL-CIO Painters union in Buffalo for over 40 years. Jimmy Williams, Painters international president, is especially vigorous in his public denunciation of Douglas McCarron, Carpenters president.

 

The new unions will be canvassing for recruits. They have a tough job ahead; because, even with AFL-CIO endorsement,  carpenters will think carefully before taking the risk of signing authorization cards. But this is one challenge that McCarron cannot simply ignore. However it may finally turn out, he is in for a fight.