CAWP News Issue 6-09

Delegates Urge Carpenters to Return to AFL-CIO or Face New Union Challenge

AFL-CIO delegates September 16 approved by voice vote a resolution urging the Carpenters and Joiners of America to re-affiliate with the federation or face the prospects of a new AFL-CIO certified union for carpentry workers that would compete with the Carpenters. Proponents of the resolution accused the Carpenters of raiding the members of the building trades unions. The Carpenters have “acted in a manner inconsistent with the principles of solidarity, to the detriment of other building trades union and the organized construction industry,” according to the resolution.

The vote came during the AFL-CIO convention in Pittsburgh, where several general presidents of the Building and Construction Trades Department, AFL-CIO, spearheaded the push to urge the Carpenters to return to the federation.

In a written statement after the vote, Carpenters President Douglas McCarron stated, “The AFL-CIO resolution is a solution in search of a problem. In the field, construction projects are manned and completed in a timely fashion with all of the trades working together. We firmly believe that the energies of the Building and Construction Trades unions should first be directed to organizing the craft workers in the markets they used to represent, before they divert their members hard earned dues in efforts to reach out to workers they lack the knowledge to represent and the skills or resources to train.” He added that the Carpenters were barred from Building Trades membership not because of issues among the trades, but at the direction of the AFL-CIO.

The origins of the resolution have come from a number of jurisdictional and organizing disputes that have arisen between the Carpenters and several of the building trade unions, including the Cement Masons, Painters, Laborers and Iron Workers.

Source: BNA Construction Labor Report, Vol. 55 No. 2736