Fulfilling an obligation to be a voice against what threatens us all

by Ed Finkelstein, publisher St Louis/Southern Illinois Labor tribune

 

It is with great sadness that we have to report on the details of the carpenter/electrician story in this week’s issue. . The Labor Tribune’s historic policy is to avoid jurisdictional issues between unions. What started as a jurisdictional issue between the carpenters and the electricians, however, has exploded way beyond that. For the last two years that this issue has been brewing, we did not report on developments as they were occurring, hoping that cooler heads would prevail and it would be settled “within the family.” But when a face-to-face meeting between the two union’s General Presidents failed to bring a peaceful resolution, we found ourselves standing at a crossroads of conscience asking, “What’s the right thing to do here?” Continue looking at the easier path of anguished, quiet hope, or the more challenging one of speaking out because to remain silent is to let harm survive. The “right thing to do” became obvious when the Carpenters leadership here made several decisions that changed the entire playing field:

• They launched an electricians local within their union, the first time in America (that we are aware of) that one trade has made such a blatant effort to move in on another trade’s traditional work.

• They took in non-union electrical contractors and deliberately created a sub-standard contract for them to undercut long-negotiated IBEW wages and benefits.

• They expanded their raiding efforts for this new electricians “local” by trying to entice union contractors who had existing bargaining agreements with IBEW Local I to join them.

• They launched a brazen assault on the unionized construction industry by publicly degrading every building trades worker with the false charge that because of alleged low productivity here on the part of our building trades workers, it is more expensive to build here than in Chicago. They claimed that St. Louis was losing industry because of it.

However, construction industry experts and the records refute that allegation. At this point, the AFL-CIO Building Trades Department in Washington said “enough” and organized a Unity Rally in St. Louis that is reported in great detail in this issue. With this major turning point, it was not feasible for the Labor Tribune to ignore what had become the biggest St. Louis labor story of the year. As a result of our recent reporting and editorials on this issue, the Labor Tribune has been accused by the Carpenters’ leadership of “attacking the carpenters,” a union that was the founding base of our newspaper 73 years ago. Our reporting is NOT an attack on rank-and- file carpenters. As noted in this issue, the United Brotherhood of Carpenters has been praised as a great union, and they are. What is being challenged is the Carpenter leadership’s tactic of hacking at the foundations of trade unionism that will hurt every union member, whether in construction or not. While it is with great regret that we have to report on this story, we are fulfilling our obligation to be a voice against what threatens us all. We plan on covering this issue until a fair resolution is reached. In labor disputes, wise heads get labor and management to sit down and work towards a resolution. We’ve seen worse fights than this get resolved where both sides walk away with a decision that creates winners all around. Nothing would please us more than to have a resolution to this unfortunate conflict as the next story the Labor Tribune reports.