Organized Labor

Those who argue for expulsion say, "Why have a constitution, why have rules if we don't insist on their being followed?" They say, "If unions are not involved and paying per capita fees at the national level, why should they enjoy the benefits of local affiliation?" They hope to compel somehow the reaffiliation of the Carpenters and Teamsters with the Department.

These are strong arguments and a legitimate hope. Constitutions and rules always have overarching purposes, however. The purposes of the Constitution of the Department are listed in twelve sections under its second article, "Objects and Principles." These sections speak of coordination and harmony between unions, of organizing the unorganized and promoting union growth, of advancing apprenticeship, of promoting health and safety, of maintaining the continuity of the Department, of adjusting disputes, of encouraging local councils such as ours, of promoting peace and harmony between employers and employees, of helping to secure better compensation and conditions for workers, of advancing our interests through legislative activity and through research and public relations, and of protecting the jurisdiction of each union.

None of these purposes can be said to be served unless very obliquely by expelling the Carpenters and Teamsters from local councils.

And the Department has traditionally been flexible in the application of the Constitution. Article XIII reads, "All Building and Construction Trades Local Unions of National and International Unions affiliated with the Department in the geographical jurisdiction of Local Building and Construction Trades Councils shall affiliate with said Local Council." All the building and construction trades locals in San Francisco are affiliated with this council, but this has not been true everywhere. With some reason, the Department will not insist on universal affiliation.

It can be similarly flexible in the converse, by allowing Carpenter and Teamster affiliation in local councils.

The "benefits of local affiliation" that the proponents of expulsion would like to deny the Carpenters and Teamsters are the very fields in which we should continue to labor together. We should not deny them sanction and respect for their picket lines. Unless we have specifically committed not to picket, as in Project Labor Agreements, to habituate ourselves to crossing picket lines is to assure that our own will be crossed.

We should not deny them political action in unity with us, because disunity serves neither of us. And it is a hollow request to ask for unity in political action from those we have denied a voice in determining that action. We should have them at the table with us when we negotiate project labor agreements and public agency contracts. We should have them standing with us when we address community organizations, developers, politicians. We should include them in any discussion of the many external threats we face. We need each other in all this.

The leaders of our internationals have no easy path to reunification. Whatever the solution to the disaffiliation of the Carpenters and Teamsters may be, though, it is not the dismantling of local building trades councils. The daily battles of our movement are local. It will be success in these that will encourage the continuing involvement of our present members and that will serve as the best arguments for new memberships. The best chances for success in these battles are in those areas that we all recognize still, despite the challenges even they have suffered recently, as strongholds of unionism -- such locales as New York, Philadelphia, Detroit, Chicago, Boston, and San Francisco. To allow the cracks that have entered our movement at the national level to extend all through the movement is to invite political disunity, disrespect for picket lines, even outright conflict on job sites. It is to invite old jurisdictional disputes to be reinterpreted as new instances of raiding. It is to undo the daily cooperation that has kept San Francisco a stronghold.

If the Carpenters and Teamsters have no say or only a limited say in local building trades councils, if they become primarily spectators in council actions, what will be the point of their participation? Such limitations may undermine the position of those local Carpenter leaders who have stressed cooperation with the other trades, often in defiance of their national leadership; if that cooperation has led them only to be ostracized in the same way as less cooperative Carpenter leaders, how can they argue to their members, their peers, or their superiors that cooperation is justified?

The Building and Construction Trades Department of the AFL-CIO is exploring constitutional mechanisms by which the Carpenters and Teamsters can remain involved in local councils. We hope and we ask that the mechanisms at which the Department eventually arrives allow for their fullest involvement.

In the satchel the Department gave to each delegate to its recent convention it included among the resolutions and constitutional amendments and brochures on Boston a book entitled Skilled Hands, Strong Spirits, a history of the Department. Again and again through its pages one or another trade -- often enough the Carpenters disaffiliates, only to reaffiliate some months or years later. Through all these episodes, the Department and the movement survive. Difficulties arise, but the movement survives. Victories are delayed, but the movement survives.

We are under siege from business and government. Our national leaders are fighting each other. We have reason to fear raiding of our work and our members.

But little stands between the amoral forces of the marketplace and the well-being of workers except the union movement. Some workers will always understand this. In time, more will. Our movement will survive. In time, it will thrive. This will require work, of course, and it will require that the movement be kept intact in such redoubts as San Francisco, so that when the siege against us is broken it will be from these redoubts that we will emerge and win.