Florida Carpenters decry total disregard for democracy

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Three skilled Carpenters in Florida will not watch passively while their union is turned into a super centralized  machine dominated by an autocrat who can rule in total disregard for the membership. Their caucus, Members for Democracy, hopes to restore some elements of democracy in the Florida Regional Council of Carpenters. Huge changes over the past years, they write, “have not only diluted our voice in our working conditions in the field, but they have also stifled our voice in the internal business of our union. The founders of this newsletter want to create an avenue where all of our members can collectively engage in open discussion without the fear of retaliation by our leaders.”

The three sponsors are no ideologues-come-lately; and they put their names and job security on the line. Before the Carpenters restructuring disemboweled the locals, Douglas MacCartney served 4 1/2 years as an organizer, during which he studied in classes run by Mike Lucas. (Earlier, Lucas had made a powerful insurgent run for president of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.) Wayne Harley has been a member of the Carpenters union for 30 years. Carl Barnes has been a union Carpenter for 46 years and served part time as a training instructor until he was dumped, he says, by an official who told him, “You're not on board with us 100%.”

In their early days as union carpenters, they were active in their locals, spreading the union message to the unorganized, training newcomers, pumping vigor into the union. And they still try, but now they say that the ruling officialdom expects them, like all working members, to be quiet, pay dues, and follow orders. The union, they insist, doesn't bother to inform members about what's coming up, because the officials--all out of control--intend to take care of everything while the dues-payers are to take it, go home, and watch TV or play games on their computers. 

The three Carpenters know how hard it is to turn the tide in their union. They confront a state of mind that infects not only their own union but one which seeps throughout the whole labor movement. It is the notion that, in order to restore its dwindling power and meet the challenge of global capitalism, unions must concentrate power in the hands of an all-powerful centralized-- and hopefully wise--top officialdom and free it from control by an untutored rank and file. Beatification of the leadership! Contempt for the membership! 

When Andy Stern was still SEIU president, he faced resistance when he tried to shift this major union in the same direction. The Carpenters union has embraced this philosophy so fully that it would be a parody if it was not so real. The story of its Florida Regional Council is typical.

From the standpoint of the membership, the laws governing the council, imposed by the international, could have been molded in high-chrome stainless steel. The bylaws are almost impossible to amend. If by some procedural oversight an errant amendment could miraculously slip by, it would be subject to international veto.

Because the Florida council was a newly formed labor organization, International President McCarron was permitted to appoint its top three original reigning officers: executive secretary treasurer, president, and vice president. The duties (and authority) of the president are disposed of in three lines:  He has nothing to do except preside at meetings. The vice president gets two lines as his helper. (A warden gets one and a half lines. A conductor, a half line.) 

But the Executive Secretary Treasurer! The EST powers are so extensive that they require 51 lines of detailed elucidation. Those long lines of type are appropriate because the EST reigns as the Florida king of Carpenters. A lesser king, lesser only because he owes allegiance to the greater international king, but a king within his own Florida domain. 

Among those 51 line-listings of powers, the EST receives “all monies paid to the Council,” issues “quarterly work cards to the affiliated Local Unions,” takes “charge of all the ballots cast in any election of the Council,” acts as Recording Secretary and Treasurer and serves as Chief Executive Officer. But nothing is so dominant--actually so oppressive--as the EST's total personal control over the entire staff of the council. Top to bottom, no one --not one single individual--can hold any paid position of any kind in the council without permission of the EST. Locals are not permitted to pay any of their own staff, except clerical employees--not even their own elected officers. The bylaws are explicit:

On clerical employees:  “The EST shall have the authority to hire, suspend, promote or terminate all clerical or custodial employees and shall determine their duties, assignments, compensation, hours of employment and conditions.”  

On staff union representatives:  “The EST shall have the authority to appoint, hire, suspend, promote or terminate Council representatives and organizers, subject to the approval of the executive committee of the Council.” While this provision seems to limit the appointive power of the EST, it is actually an illusory restriction. The six-person executive committee consists of three elected members plus the three top officers. But since no one can hold a paid union position without selection by the EST, he holds the whip hand over the very people who are supposed to limit his hiring authority.

After council officers serve out their original appointive terms of office, subsequent elections to a regular four-year term are by council delegates elected by the membership in their locals. It would appear, then, that the Executive Secretary Treasurer is dependent upon the local delegates. But in real life, that appearance is a constitutional fiction because those delegates, like every other member of every council-affiliated local, depends upon the EST for a paid union staff job. Think of it this way: what would be the state of democracy in America if every member of Congress had to please the President before they could hold any paid position at any level of government, local, state or national?
Disintegration of local unions: 

Collective bargaining: The EST, by appointive power, takes control of every phase of collective bargaining. The bylaws make clear how sweeping and authoritarian that power is: “The EST shall have the power and authority to appoint and remove representatives for and on behalf of its Local Unions to act as Trustees for all negotiated Employer/Union Trust Funds including, but not limited to, annuity, health and welfare plans... Accordingly, all trust agreements and/or plan documents shall be amended by the authorized representatives of the Local unions to reflect the foregoing appointment and removal process.” And just to make it crystal clear: “The Council shall have the exclusive power and authority to negotiate and execute Collective Bargaining Agreements for and behalf of its affiliated local unions, except to the extent the International Union exercises its jurisdiction or authority.”

Local officers powerless: Locals are not permitted to pay salaries to their own elected officers. As bylaw section 3 puts it, "No person shall be an employee of an affiliated Local Union except for persons employed in clerical positions." And just to make sure there is no loophole or misunderstanding, section 27 repeats the ban: “The Local Unions shall not be allowed to employ anyone other than clerical employees.” If elected officers want a paid staff job, they must please the EST who alone can hire them for the council. 

Local unions impoverished:  All the big money goes into the council treasury. The main source of union income in most of the construction trades is the working dues, the tax on members' hourly earnings. The council, not the locals, collects 4% of gross wages. In addition the council has the right to impose an additional monthly dues payable by all members, regardless of their actual working income. These dues can be increased, and special assessments can be imposed, by vote of council delegates. No membership referendum required. All this money is funneled to the council, nothing to the locals. To finance any of their own activities, and to pay clericals, the locals have to impose additional local dues upon their members.

In any event, there's no danger that locals could somehow become wealthy and financially independent--joining together in winning bets on horse races, lucky lottery tickets, investments in gushing oil wells--because the council can easily siphon off excess local cash. Bylaw section 12 allows the council to levy special assessments on the locals, to increase local working dues payable to the council treasury, and impose a per capita tax on locals and increase the amount. All without a membership vote, all decided by those delegates who must look to the EST for any paid job with the union. The council has a free hand with all that money, but not the locals. Bylaw section 13 bars locals from increasing monthly dues payable to the local, without permission of the council.

Add it up: Carpenter local unions have been transformed from union collective bargaining organizations into ineffectual social clubs or fraternity lodges.

The Carpenter council structure does more than allow union officials to ignore the membership; it allows them to evade Federal law. The LMRDA requires that local union officers be elected by direct, secret ballot membership vote and provides that local dues and assessments can be increased only by secret ballot membership referendum. But after fifty years of experience under the LMRDA, power-seeking union officials are learning how to duck around it. The law permits “intermediary” bodies--that is, neither locals nor internationals--to operate free of membership control. Carpenter councils have arrogated all the functions traditionally performed by locals, reducing them to powerless shells. Like the human appendix, locals have degenerated into vestigial organs which serve no real purpose. But because councils can be classified as intermediates, power can be concentrated into the hands of a high voltage kingfish, members are deprived of the right to elect officers; and they lose control over their union money and their collective bargaining. For some, this may be the dream of labor restored to full power. For unionists like our three Florida Carpenters, it is a nightmare.