Brother J.C. Turner’s white paper, entitled The Business Round Table and American Labor and written in 1979 (http://www.laborcombat.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/The-Business-Roundtable-and-American-Labor-2.pdf), provided the Building Trades with a road map of the motivation & strategy that the Business Roundtable was planning & implementing even back then – the total destruction of union construction.
LaborCombat’s research this past 5 years, in writing a book, has independently confirmed this ongoing destruction of the Building Trades led by the Business Round Table. The primary group of end users we deal with in construction are all represented by the Construction Users Round Table (CURT), which is part of the Business Round Table.
The Building Trades’ ongoing message of “Value” has not raised net market share in any environment, in any place, over time.
Consider the message of “Value” in the real world of construction through the perspective of the wingtip shoes of the open shop.
Skills – The open shop has access to all of our training materials for our apprenticeships & journeymen, from many sources. Why would you pay for this extensive training when you can access it for free? The Business Round Table (CURT), thru entities such as the Tea Party, RTW groups, AGC, Chamber of Commerce, Alec and others, has prevented much needed infrastructure from advancing for several years. Their strategy is to starve out the Building Trades and the American Labor Movement. Because of the lack of work in Heavy & Highway, and other public sector prevailing wage jobs; highly skilled building trade’s members have been forced to take their skills to the open shop. And as technology and modularization rapidly advance the need for heavily skilled tradespersons declines.
Safety – Union contractors have to pay their fair share in workers’ compensation and fairly report accidents & incidents. Union contractors are at a huge disadvantage because the open shop absolutely abuses and/or ignores paying their fair share through misclassification, under-classification and 1099’s, just to mention a few. If they are caught, the penalties are no more than a cost of doing business in most cases. Enforcement doesn’t even rise to the level of a joke.
Politics & Legislation – A huge part of our problem is our over reliance on entities that have zero integrity and only go where the money & votes are. Organized labor’s job is to take on organized capital directly and not put it in the hands of whores – even if they are supposedly our whores for the moment. As long as we are knocking on the doors of politicians and organized capital, we are in an inferior position and will continue to complain about what we get & the process!
Concessions out of Fear & Weakness –Within the entire Building Trades market – low wages, under-par benefits & poor working conditions correlate with low market share 100% of the time!
Perception – The American public likes winners – period! They like and respect entities that show up for the fight and demand their rights. That is how we create the necessary environment for all parties to sit down and hammer out agreements – we call them CBAs in our world. We continuing to go “hat in hand” to “junk yard dogs” and wonder why we get bit – that is just not improving the lives of workers, union or not! “if you see a good fight – get in it” This is shaping up to be the cage match of all time!
The Business Roundtable (CURT) is not buying the “Value” message. They send generation after generation of building trades leadership on never ending misdirected missions to create subterfuge to their clear and real agenda – the total destruction of union construction!
In Solidarity,
Danny L Caliendo
LaborCombat
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