It is asked all the time – what is the difference between Labor Rising/Labor Combat and the training currently being offered by the trades?
The difference is like night and day. Here is one of several differences.
What is stunning is what isn’t taught to organizers and market reps in the classes now taught for years at the respective trades training and other venues.
One of the main differentiators of the Labor Rising program is we do not believe in “talking to everyone” unless you know precisely why you are doing so; and furthermore, done your homework upfront to confirm it.
The culture the trades have established for over 2 decades now is let’s talk to everyone – and this is happening daily in the field:
- The union finds out the job is going non-union – response of union is to “talk” to end-user, developer, construction manager etc. and plead our case to them to reconsider and use the union trades.
- To “partner” with anyone!!!
- To “talk” to politicians and community types to help us get on the job.
- To “talk” to the non-union sub or general and try to get them to use union.
- To “talk” to media and explain/educate public on using unions.
- To “talk” to non-union workers about being union and perhaps running a campaign.
- Endless meetings to “talk” about concerns and issues.
- Endless meetings to “educate” and collaborate with the non-union.
This and more collaborative approaches not listed have yielded “NET” market share losses over the corresponding 2 decades for the trades.
It has gotten so bad that the existing Building Trades leadership use POST 2008 market crash numbers of hours and membership as the benchmark they cite in their meeting. They claim with straight faces that things are improving. Even using the lowest benchmark available we are treading water with back to back years of record construction spending.
The correlations are now easy to see and research – what they overwhelmingly demonstrate is that the more the trades “talk”/collaborate – the more market share we lose!
Here is a link to the executive summary of that research. https://1drv.ms/w/s!AmKOi71GyLcgr3k2DDi–j6XBXd4
The entire non-union element and their surrogates are using the very information we provide in endless collaborative settings, to box our collective ears in! They collectively learn how to beat us, get concessionary agreements and limit us, along with how to play union against non-union, and union against union from us!
Collaboration would be a good thing IF both parties acted in good faith. While the end-users, developers and construction managers talk about collaboration – their very easy to read actions of the past 2 decades reveal another agenda.
Knowing who to talk to and why and when, is the subject of the next Blog on developing an organizers/market rep’s strategy to winning outcomes. We call it a Compression Zone. Making sense out of a maze of bs in the world of construction.
Most organizers get very inaccurate info from paid services that use estimates, preliminary estimates, dollar weighted estimates which favor the reports outcome decidedly in favor of union market share. Select samples, qualifiers of all types and more in the formation of the report. Just read the fine print and ask how this report is arrived at?
Many times they list the non-union construction firms that should be considered in upcoming campaigns. What they never show is the entire markets players, and this is extremely important to winning. Why – because the non-union world also knows who we get our reports from and know who active organizers will develop campaigns around. So put your non-union hat on – the world of non-union world of construction will have a few backup plans to go to.
So organizers/market reps have to know where the next move(s) will be and develop campaigns that take the legs out from the non-union. Labor Rising instructs on knowing the market and those successful organizers/market reps have done a couple of hundreds of hours to determine this.
Compression Zone(s) development and formation is the foundation of knowing who and when to talk to the players in the non-union. What most org/market reps find and learn is if we learn to discipline ourselves and quit “talking” to everyone in nearly all situations, then UNCERTAINTY of the project’s outcomes favors the trades. We will learn how vital this is to winning!
In subsequent Blogs after Compression Zone(s) development, we will deal with the other main differentiators of the Labor Rising/Labor Combat training.
- Hiring and controlling/impeding the non-union in getting workers for their jobs
- Opposition Research – digging the dirt with the expressed purpose of using it in many ways
- Secondary and Recognition law as it pertains to today’s environment – what isn’t taught in those other classes is critical to success
- 21st century communications platforms to link together and leverage entire memberships
- 21st century use of social media, not the passive bs we pass off today as involvement, but structured and aggressive membership wide use of social signals
- Membership as sales engines for our union contractors – instead of the failed Valve on Display impotent plan now used
- Contraction of the world of construction – Consolidation and the world of construction – Roll-ups and what these specific terms inside of construction mean to winning outcomes
- Politics with social signals on steroids – looking big and playing big with a small number of members –
- Labor Rising structure – https://1drv.ms/w/s!AmKOi71GyLcgkRDGsNrLWiSeduGk
Time to win and jettison what so clearly isn’t working!
“if you see a good fight – get in it”
Danny L Caliendo
Organizer
Labor Rising/Labor Combat
