- Both use workers to advance issues for themselves! Both exploit workers in the name of business! McGarvey – concessions and business friendly International and Building Trades Agreements on behalf of the BT’s; Trump – demonstrated history of not paying workers and contractors. Both fancy themselves as world class negotiators, just ask them! Both have a habit of saying everything is/will be great, especially the trades when there aren’t any numbers to support that statement.
- Both like to use Alternative Facts. McGarvey and the Board of IP’s insist Value on Display has been a winning strategy. EVERY number, in every economic situation, over the entire tenure of VOD, in context & NET, demonstrates in absolute numbers that it is a loser! Similarly, Trump can take demonstrable facts and hard numbers and create an alternative set of facts to fit the narrative.
- Both run meetings with a heavy hand! Trump will throw out dissenting voices from his events in a heartbeat and then relishes the removal. At least they were his events during the campaign, so he could! He will not be as fortunate to do so as President in public, except for real security reasons. McGarvey, et al, shut down peaceful alternative views during the Legislative Conference where Trump spoke – peaceful, almost entirely quiet signs of protest. In this case RESIST! Those who protested did so well within what has been acceptable standards. It wasn’t a security threat to the Prez, because the Secret Service let those with signs into the meeting. This wasn’t McGarvey’s party or even the IP’s event – case closed! Membership PAID for everything done at that event – everything! For all R&F on either side of the issue, should the leadership decide what can be said and/or protested at OUR OWN event? If so, then we all lose! This was a classic “good ole boys” move of intimidation! Those who don’t want to understand the freedoms at stake here are exactly the issue! No person of Labor, regardless of the side of the issue, should tolerate that. Better to leave with protestors you may not agree with than be complicit with a heavy-handed leader. Men & women died at every juncture of OUR history to protect free speech, especially at one’s own event. Those members who think they were compelled to stay at the event because it was a “business meeting” and/or they represented locals may want to ask themselves what side of history they want to be on: freedoms being trampled right in front of them, or complicit with excuses! NOTE to RESIST: you should know you are marked R&F, and should you think you are safe from purging – well, consider yourself warned. Here’s an alternative – be the lighting rod of the change needed in the trades!
- Both think business runs the show. This statement speaks for itself. The Building Trades “MISSION” once upon a time was to be a balance to Organized Capital – not its punk! Collaboration carries with it RISK, anywhere other than at a Collective Bargaining Table! The trades have long ceased being a MOVEMENT representing workers – union or not. We are far more than a BS brand selling skills. Organizing today means RECRUITING to keep a workforce pool available for management’s needs on management’s terms. No more than a temp agency! Senior level officers have to keep the R&F thinking they belong to a union. Senior level Organizers still run company blitzes, are out teaching COMET classes yet again, still have discussions on bottom-up, top-down and corporate campaigns – all losers by and large. They conduct workshops of all forms that are endless by design. The Trades cannot organize and raise market share without substantial doses of Labor Unrest. They can’t just take the workers and have nowhere to put them – unless we are a temp agency with the design to purge old high paying jobs with benefits, to lower paying classifications with minimal benefits – GET IT! TO Organize a union must take the non-union company regardless if they want to or not and sign them to a CBA! And put anti-union companies down and/or out of business! This isn’t a statement to be bad ass or a thug. It carries with it a huge responsibility. For a capitalistic society to run well requires a strong, free and independent labor MOVEMENT. Middle class is the result of both labor and capital doing their roles and being in balance. With the trades collaborating and deferment to everything management and price driven – the formation of working poor has taken hold! Every poll shows that workers want a union, but not the current Building Trades union model that exists today – precisely because of the lack of unity and an underlying MOVEMENT. The comradery of a MOVEMENT, which is cited by the non-union directly, “trumps” money and benefits. Most of those who have joined unions in recent times via recruitment do so because they want a check for as long as they can get it! It is a business decision by them. What goes around – comes around. A business brand does not inspire any type of loyalty, and yet we wonder why workers go back and forth from non-union to union.
For the above reasons, along with many more demonstrable reasons which Labor Rising/Labor Combat have clearly worked to change, we now move to work with entities to craft a vision of a MOVEMENT! True REFORM of the Building Trades. I have permission to state that we have been working formally with a National group(s) to do just that!
Our mission is to bring no-nonsense pressure on capital and broker agreements on behalf of workers. The existing trades structure will NOT be used, and a new Building Trades structure will take hold. It’s not that hard to become a UNION streamlined in contemporary use of technology, with old school representation of workers, and with a one worker – one vote governing body. With 88% of the work non-union, with people of color & women historically locked out and now being used, and solid existing R&F support that is fed up – plus some national muscle that sides with workers and citizens – it is time to move the dial!
The agenda of the Freedom caucus is ACA, Supreme Court, Tax Reform, Labor Reform, Entitlement Reform in roughly that order per their own information. Infrastructure is not on their agenda! It may be on Trumps agenda, but not there’s. So, with the ACA back in negotiations and Gorsuch confirmed, look for anti-labor legislation proliferation by the feds and the states soon!
The existing version of the trades will not fare well in the upcoming environment; and our current leaders will forever be etched into history as those leaders who lost it because of the BS culture we ALL find ourselves in; and are too afraid to do what is needed to change it!
Labor Rising knows who the current champions of workers are, and will continue working with and for those Locals and Building Trades who can’t be told what to do. Connecting those genuine leaders to a greater MOVEMENT is our mission now!
“if you see a good fight – get in it”
Danny L Caliendo
Organizer
Labor Rising/Labor Combat
