Building and Construction Trades Department

General Overview of the Department's Key Activities

Environment Within the Industry

The construction industry is doing well and is likely to continue to benefit from increased building opportunities. Similarly, the construction workforce in the United States continues to grow, offering ample opportunities for organizing and growth. The 1998 transportation bill (TEA-21) will provide high levels of employment until 2004. Highway construction has received $175 billion in addition to $41 billion earmarked for transportation construction. Other optimistic factors include a decrease in the cost of construction materials, low interest rates and a generally healthy economy. Although this level of construction activity is not expected to continue indefinitely, the near-term future is positive.

The department has been involved in extensive organizing efforts, most notably in Las Vegas. In addition, the department's Legislative Task Force has worked diligently with key members of Congress to protect the interests of construction workers with regard to such issues as reform of Section 415 of the tax code, inclusion of Davis-Bacon Act provisions in the school construction bill and clean water legislation. It also has worked on fair deductions for travel expenses, long-term health care and the patients' bill of rights. The department assumed the lead in an intensive effort to coordinate the establishment of skill standards for the construction industry and has developed and implemented a standardized safety training program (Smart Mark) for use by its affiliates in their local training programs.

Departmental Structure

The department is operating under an organizational structure directed by the goals of its 1995 convention. Under the new structure, departmental duties have been realigned and assigned to division directors and special assistants who report directly to the president. The reporting responsibilities include organizing, field services, government relations and the heavy and highway division. Also reporting directly to the president is the director of the department's Canadian Office.

Goals and Accomplishments

The department has established four goals:

• Restructure the department to enhance responsiveness;
  
• Plan and coordinate multicraft organizing efforts;
  
• Enhance a grassroots lobbying program; and
  
• Provide focused leadership training for Building Trades Councils, particularly in the areas of grassroots political lobbying and construction organizing.

While significant progress has been made in all four areas, this report focuses on organizing, politics and legislation, the global economy and a new voice for workers in our communities.

Organizing

In recent years, there has been a significant increase in the level of construction organizing throughout North America. At local and national levels, construction unions are dedicating greater resources to organizing and training growing numbers of organizers. This is paying off for many construction unions, which have experienced growth and won important organizing victories.

The boom in construction employment offers both a challenge and an opportunity. Shortages of labor offer a tremendous opportunity to organize unrepresented construction workers and regain control of the industry. The boom in construction employment also means we have to organize hundreds of thousands of construction workers if we are to keep up with the growth in employment and ultimately increase our density.

Las Vegas-Building Trades Organizing Project (BTOP): The Las Vegas-based BTOP campaign was a partnership of the department, the Southern Nevada Building Trades Council, the 15 building trades unions and the AFL-CIO. BTOP contributed to significant organizing gains for individual affiliates and the building trades as a whole.

Between January 1997 and January 1999, Las Vegas union membership grew from 18,000 to 25,000. While the construction employment in Las Vegas grew by about 10 percent, these 7,000 new members represented a nearly 39 percent jump in union rolls. In no other North American construction market did union membership growth exceed employment growth so dramatically. In addition to gains in membership, more than 300 construction contractors became signatories to union contracts during the campaign.

The Las Vegas campaign also served as a laboratory to develop innovative strategies and tactics for construction organizing. Building trades unions worked together to organize multiple employers competing in the same submarkets. One of the most notable BTOP victories was brought home by the United Union of Roofers and Waterproofers, which demonstrated the effectiveness of creative tactics and comprehensive strategies when it successfully organized Willis Roofing, the largest roofing firm in the Las Vegas market. More than 200 Willis workers engaged in demonstrations, vigils, strikes and other jobsite actions. With the assistance of the department, the union involved building trades councils and central labor councils from around the country in leafleting, mailings, press conferences and other actions aimed at Willis's most important customer, Kaufman and Broad (K&B), the largest home developer in the country. Particularly effective was the "bag of dirt" campaign, during which more than 1,800 bags of dirt were mailed to K&B chief executives. The combined pressure of bottom-up worker action and well-chosen, top-down tactics forced Willis to recognize the union and sign a contract covering 250 roofers.

BTOP offered an opportunity to train organizers and researchers and to stimulate other building trades councils throughout the country to explore new approaches to multitrade organizing. The Southern Nevada Building and Construction Trades Council, with its 17 local union affiliates and their 40 organizers, has taken over responsibility for coordinating construction organizing activity in Las Vegas.

Milestones to Organizing: Milestones to Organizing is the department's program to support and encourage multitrade, bottom-up organizing through building trades councils. Councils throughout the country are in the early stages of developing Milestones campaigns. In Seattle, the council has researched the market, started internal mobilization and launched outreach to nonunion workers. Affiliates now are targeting contractors. Locals have increased their funding of organizing and are contributing to a multitrade organizing fund.

Politics and Legislation

The department is focused on four important pieces of legislation.

The first would amend Section 415 of the Internal Revenue Code. As it now stands, Section 415 prevents many construction workers from collecting their full pensions, even after 30 years of work. Given the hazards of the construction site and the heavy toll construction takes on a worker's body, the restrictions of Section 415 are inherently unfair. The department's general presidents have met with every senator who would agree to an appointment to explain our need to change this provision. On the House side, more than 150 members have agreed to support us. We are optimistic that legislation will pass in a form the president can sign.

The inclusion of Davis-Bacon provisions in the school construction tax credit bill is another high priority item for the department. The president now lists school construction as one of his budget priorities, and a majority within the House of Representatives has co-sponsored one or both school construction tax bills. To keep attention on the issue, the department and its affiliates are working closely with the administration, the AFL-CIO and the AFT on a series of school fix-up projects across the country to draw attention to the need for major school construction money.

A third issue for the department is our effort to include Davis-Bacon provisions in the reauthorization of the Clean Water Act. During the Reagan administration, Davis-Bacon protections were removed from clean water projects through a series of gimmicks. We hope to rectify this in this session of Congress.

The fourth issue of particular importance to the department is the patients' bill of rights. A true patients' bill of rights respects the special nature of Taft-Hartley multiemployer health and welfare funds and the essential role they play in our nation's health care system for tens of millions of workers, retirees and their families. In the debate on "issues of remedy," the department favors accountability as more productive than litigation. This more flexible approach recognizes that a health plan can be held accountable by means other than litigation. External review of benefit claims denials based on medical grounds can be an effective means of holding health plans accountable. Patients would benefit from a timely review of their claims by independent medical experts. If the plan is determined to have wrongly denied the claim, the patient can obtain the treatment, or payment for treatment received, within an appropriately short period of time. This is a better public policy outcome than lengthy, costly litigation, particularly considering that the decision makers in litigation are lay people (judge and jury) rather than independent medical experts. And this approach is consistent with the trend toward arbitration and other forms of alternative dispute resolution. If a health plan fails to "timely comply" with the decision of the external reviewer and forces litigation, an ERISA-based compensatory damages remedy might then be appropriate if the court upholds the external review decision.

Other legislative items important to the department over the past two years include:

• TEA-21: One of the department's top legislative priorities, this massive, six-year bill was signed into law by President Clinton on June 9, 1998. TEA-21 is the largest public works bill ever adopted, providing $175 billion for highways and bridges, $41 billion for mass transit and $2 billion for safety programs. An estimated 20,000 jobs will be created in the construction industry for every $1 billion spent.
  
  
• Project Labor Agreements: Project labor agreements came under attack by conservatives in both the House and Senate. During consideration of fiscal year 1999 Department of Transportation appropriations, language restricting the use of project labor agreements was inserted by anti-labor Republicans. After intense lobbying by the department's Legislative Task Force, we were successful in deleting the offending language. But the fight did not end there. The House Small Business Committee held a hearing designed to discredit project labor agreements by attempting to show they unfairly disadvantage minority contractors. Through Building and Construction Trades Department testimony and Legislative Task Force lobbying, we were able to show that project labor agreements are both an effective and useful tool for controlling construction costs and a benefit to taxpayers as well as workers.
  
  
• Electric Deregulation: Another issue the department and its Legislative Task Force successfully fought was the proposed legislation to deregulate the nation's electric energy industry. Joining forces with consumers and other labor groups, the Building and Construction Trades Department helped prevent our opponents from securing even the votes necessary to pass electric deregulation out of subcommittee. This issue is a priority in the 106th Congress. It will require a major effort on our part to stop this unnecessary restructuring of the world's cheapest and most reliable energy system.
  
  
• Independent Contractors: A labor working group with strong building trades representation assisted Rep. Jerry Kleczka (D-Wis.) and his staff in drafting a meaningful independent contractor bill. By classifying employees as independent contractors, unscrupulous construction employers often undercut unionized employers.

The Kleczka bill establishes a simplified test for determining independent contractor status, limits retroactive employment tax reclassification and places a statute of limitations for employers. It is important to emphasize that this proposal is not a panacea. If it were ever enacted into law, abuses in the area of worker misclassification would, unfortunately, still continue. However, the Kleczka language would curtail the practice and at least create something resembling a bright line in terms of providing a meaningful and workable definition of employers and employees.

Providing a New Voice for Workers in the Global Economy

The International Construction Institute (ICI), based in Rome, was founded by the department and construction unions from around the world. The ICI coordinates an extensive international network of unions and union-supported institutions and works closely with several United Nations organizations, including the International Labor Organization, World Health Organization, United Nations Center for Human Settlements and the International Social Security Association. Through its network, the ICI monitors developments in workers' rights and labor standards and provides technical expertise, much of which comes through its voluntary program advisory committees. The purpose of the ICI is to strengthen construction unions throughout the world by promoting an exchange of information and technical assistance focused on improving the quality of union member services.

Providing a New Voice for Workers in Our Communities

Under a grant from the U.S. Department of Labor, the department is developing tools for our councils, local unions and joint apprenticeship and training programs to use in their efforts to recruit and retain qualified women and minorities in our apprenticeship programs.

A working group of the department's Apprenticeship and Training Committee has been established to meet with representatives of the military to explore how the department can tap into the pool of graduates from its various apprenticeship programs.

Working with a grant from the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, workgroups from the department's Apprenticeship and Training Committee and representatives from the Construction Industry Partnership (CIP) will develop material to encourage new workers to enter the construction industry through our joint apprenticeship and training programs.

The work done by various workgroups associated with the department, such as our Safety and Health Committee, the Center To Protect Workers' Rights (CPWR) and the CIP, regularly addresses issues of worker safety and health that spread beyond the confines of union construction workers. For example, due in large part to the effort of the department, the funding for the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health was increased over what was requested by the agency.

To facilitate communication, the department has established a website (http://www.buildingtrades.org/). Although still under construction, when the site is finished a visitor to our homepage will find up-to-date information on a number of topics, including the department, organizing, construction news, safety and health items, reports about apprenticeship and training and legislative activities. Affiliates and council members also have access to Davis-Bacon wage rates and a comprehensive, national database of construction projects. Links also have been established with the websites of the AFL-CIO, the department's affiliates and other organizations with services or information important to the well-being of construction workers.

Looking Ahead

We can expect conservatives to continue their attacks on the Davis-Bacon Act, project labor agreements and state infrastructure banks, as well as virtually every program of interest to the department.

Our efforts in mitigating these assaults on labor's programs have been greatly enhanced by our political grassroots program and its successes. We should not assume that our fights will be easier, but we have created additional allies in our fight to protect our programs by virtue of our successful grassroots political efforts. For our continued success in stopping anti-labor initiatives, we will build on our grassroots program.

At the same time, however, construction employment is growing rapidly. It has almost doubled in the past 40 years. Economists predict that 196,000 new construction workers will be needed every year from now until the year 2006. Most of those new workers will be replacing construction workers who will be retiring. The challenge faced by the department and its affiliates is whether we can train that many new workers.

The Department of Labor's Bureau of Apprenticeship and Training notes that between 1989 and 1995, fewer than 50,000 new apprentices were enrolled in programs that taught building trades skills. Four out of five of those apprentices were enrolled in our programs.

These shortages are felt in some areas of the country and some trades more deeply than in others. To deal with this, the department is developing a project that will quantify and locate the shortages and then direct resource materials into those areas to help local building trades recruit and retain qualified candidates for our apprenticeship programs. This project should have materials ready by the middle of next year.

To facilitate the transition of new workers to the higher skills and training levels of union-trained apprentices and journeyworkers, the department and many of its affiliate unions have instituted the Smart Mark safety program. Smart Mark, now provided as part of most apprentice training programs and journeyworker upgrade training, is also available to newly organized workers. This is especially important because many workers are hurt on construction sites because they are unaware of the hazards inherent in the work of another craft.

(Activities summarized in this report are compiled from departmental reports on: Apprenticeship and Training; Blueprint For Cure; Canadian Activities; The Center To Protect Workers' Rights; Disney World Agreements; Heavy and Highway Division Activities; International Construction Institute; Plan for the Settlement of Jurisdictional Disputes; Legal Activities; The National Coordinating Committee for Multiemployer Plans; Organizing Activities; Project Labor Agreements; Safety and Health Activities; Tennessee Valley Authority Activities; and activities related to the agreement between the department and the Steelworkers.)