@LaborCombat/#TechCombat is a strategy to fight for what is ours – our jobs!
If any strategy or combinations of strategies and tools currently worked, we would know it by now. Strip away all the rhetoric, egos, spinning of facts and BS, and the numbers speak for themselves. Market share continues to drop across the board.
@LaborCombat is a strategy that reflects what has been learned from our dwindling market share numbers. It also has looked critically, not politically, at the numbers. @LaborCombat has researched only the numbers, to distill what works and what doesn’t work, and most importantly – why!
@LaborCombat is not regurgitated BS. It is a standalone strategy that, together with the #TechCombat component, will regain market share in a compressed time frame.
Ironies that can no longer be ignored:
- We are more productive and can make the non-union contractor more money. While we are more productive, the irony is that we do not offset the bad contractors’ bottom line costs. They have low pay, little to no benefits and either misrepresent, under represent or use 1099’s and cash on workers compensation and other overhead costs to have a low price that our fair contractors cannot compete with!
- We are safer. The Building Trades and their fair contractors send more workers home every day in one piece; however, the irony is that because the bad contractors under report, or do not report injuries, they have the lower overall costs on safety.
- We are highly skilled – absolutely correct. However, the irony is we are now in a time where technology & modularization are erasing jobs and CONTRACTORS at a pace that has no parallel. Also, the bad contractors have access to all of our training materials and, even more importantly, our union workers because of our collapsing market share.
- Our use of technology is current and in line with the 21st Century – that is absolutely NOT true. The irony is that social signals are the currency of day. Its people that WILL dictate which companies prosper and which ones die. The Building Trades are sitting on a treasure trove of raw power – our members! What does it say about scores of highly paid communication directors, IT staffers & consultants up the wazoo that the Building Trades to date, have not trended one Tweet, blogged to keep what we (Unions & Contractors) do in the limelight of construction, or employed any structured use of social signals such as U-Tube, Twitter, Facebook for both our on-the-job skills & our apprenticeships – just to name a few. Having talked with 2 senior officers from 2 different major search engine providers; #TechCombat has long ago discovered that the respective unions that comprise the Building Trades are viewed as individual entities. We have not brought to bear the collective raw power that resides even in one connected international; much less that combined power of the whole of the Building Trades. We spend millions upon millions with providers advancing a “Brand” when we have the sheer power to not only propel any brand we choose, but dictate winners & losers in the construction world with structure use of the internet. Measure the ROI and fire some vendors!
- The politicians will solve this if we keep up the pressure and dialog. The irony is you need both numbers (members) & money (power) to get favorable workers’ legislation. The Labor Movement is rapidly losing both. While politics is important, if we do not raise numbers – we die!
- Labor-Management is important. The irony is if we continue to put hundreds of millions of dollars into this as we have been doing, when that money would better serve increasing market share via organizing and the work for union contractors, then we are not looking critically at the numbers. The ROI on the Labor-Management spending is that we have LOST more market share since the inception of these arrangements. It basically is unions selling to unions and is an endless spending of critical money needed for hard core organizing.
- Reports and more reports. The irony is the more organizers report on their activity, the less the sustained activity! Paperwork will not sign one contractor.
@LaborCombat/#TechCombat’s mission is to train an army of organizers to take back what is our heritage – our jobs, fair benefits, safe working conditions and respect. We built this country.
“if you see a good fight – get in it”
Danny L Caliendo
Organizer
Labor Combat Organizing College
