Organized Labor

Some who attended the recent hearings by the San Francisco Unified School District Board of Education on the project labor agreement (PLA) we have just achieved with it may have been surprised to hear us insist that non-union contractors were free to bid on and obtain work under the PLA. They might be even more surprised to know that we have told those contractors on those and other occasions that we welcome their participation in work under public sector PLAs.

This stance is first of all a function of public sector contracting law, which forbids consideration of whether or not a contractor is signed with a union in awarding that contractor work. While we can and do mandate that a project be all-union under private sector PLAs, under public sector PLAs we must accept the possibility of working with non-union contractors. What we are allowed to do and what we insist on doing is to oblige them to pay union wages and benefits, to hire workers from our halls, and to let us represent their workers.

Our stance is a function also, though, of the opportunity to represent their workers, and of something most construction union organizers understand: Although our first and highest duty of representation is to our members, we cannot represent them adequately unless we strive to represent everyone working in our trades, member or not.

The more successful we are in raising the wages of non-union workers, for example, the better our signatory contractors can compete against their employers, especially given the generally higher level of skill in the union sector. Everyone benefits except the non-union employers, who see their profit margins squeezed. Some of these employers even reach the point at which they decide they are better off becoming union signatory, and then they, too, benefit. Or the more successful we are in raising safety standards for non-union workers, the fewer corners their employers can cut, and, again, the better our contractors can compete with them, and the fewer pressures our contractors themselves face to cut corners and endanger our members.

And compete they must, at one level or another. No one should be under the illusion that this "union town" is not under constant assault from non-union contractors, whether local or from beyond our bridges and county line. To see what can happen even in a strong union town, they can look at New York, where even some high rises are built non-union.

The workers a non-union employer itself brings to a project under a PLA are called "core employees." All three public-sector PLAs in San Francisco now – with City College, with the Public Utilities Commission, and with the Unified School District – allow for core employees. The number allowed, the period of time they must have worked for the non-union contractor before being considered "core," and the order of dispatch between them and union members – and core employees must go through our dispatch systems – these all vary from PLA to PLA and result from different sets of negotiations.

Core employees are a subject of considerable controversy in our own ranks. Some unions believe that no core employees should be allowed to work under PLAs. Some union members see every job that goes to a core employee as a lost union job. As with any negotiations, though, realistic compromises have to be reached. If faced with a choice between PLA work with a few core employees and non-PLA public sector contracting where non-union contractors can bid on and obtain work while employing no one at all from our halls and while shielding their workers from any contact with our unions, few among us would balk at the PLA.

At the same time, we can view core employee provisions as an opportunity to represent workers not yet our members and to acquaint those workers with the advantages of union membership.

The opponents of unions often speak of worker "choice" in advocating such anti-union policies as "right to work" laws. Maybe they have a point. Maybe workers would choose to earn less money. Maybe they want jobs where healthcare for themselves is scarce and for their families is nonexistent. Maybe they prefer piddling and risky 401(K)s (if they have any retirement plan at all) to solid defined benefit pension plans. Maybe they like having few defenders if they are asked to perform unsafe tasks. Maybe they are glad to empty their pockets to pay for additional training. Maybe they believe they are stronger in negotiating one-on-one with employers, with their only leverage a trip with their tools to their pickup trucks and home.

Or maybe not.

Maybe, instead, those workers know little about us. Maybe they know only the slanderous stereotypes they see on the television – the supposed shirking of work, the allegations of mob ties, the thuggery. Maybe they have never seen our pride in our skill and productivity. Maybe they have never seen our mutual support. Maybe they have never seen the active democracy of our locals.
Maybe they need to have the real choice that working side-by-side with our members can show them, the choice that working as core employees under a PLA can give them, the choice that will benefit us all.