ON THE LEVEL May 2001 Issue - excerpts
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UBC out of AFL

Dave Flynn

Len Embree

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BC Carpenters vote yes for freedom
Autonomy: plain and simple

Results of two recent membership referenda conducted by the Provincial Council of Carpenters reveal the future path for the Carpenters Union in British Columbia. That path is an autonomous Carpenters Union in the province, free of edicts and directives being issued from Washington. With over 4,000 ballots returned, more than three out of four members want an autonomous, Canadian Carpenters Union.

The International spent tens of thousands of dol-lars on propaganda letters trying to discredit autonomy through vilification of the leadership and the Carpentry Workers Pension Plan. It did not work. On these ballots, the members indicated their desire to have a new Provincial Council constitution, free from interference from Washington, and an autonomous union.

These referenda results are the latest evidence that the members do not want General President McCarron’s “vision” of a restructured union in British Columbia. Since assuming office in 1995, McCarron has gutted democracy at the local union level and imposed a regional council structure with appointed leaders. These councils have an executive hierarchy with tremendous powers. Recently he imposed new bylaws on these regional councils empowering each council’s Executive Secretary-Treasurer, its supreme commander, to have full signing authority on their pension plans. This is another indication of McCarron’s plan to extend authority to his appointed leadership while reducing members’ involvement and democratic rights.

The language of Ballot No. 1 sought support for the Provincial Council Executive Board recommendation to accept proposed amendments to the British Columbia Provincial Council of Carpenters’ Constitution, making it a stand-alone document. These proposed amendments remove McCarron’s authority and transfer the highest decision-making in the union to British Columbia carpenters.

Ballot No. 2 asked for authorization for the British Columbia Provincial Council of Carpenters, on behalf of its affiliated Local Unions and District Councils, to negotiate an agreement with the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America (the “International”) that would result in the Provincial Council having (a) the authority to govern itself; (b) the authority to hold property and assets in its own name; and (c) the authority to make laws and amend its constitution without the approval of the International.

The ballots were handled exclusively by the firm of BDO Dunwoody, chartered accountants and consultants, who were responsible for collecting and counting them. The number of ballots returned far exceeded that of previous mail-in ballots.

In 1991, our membership voted on autonomy in a mail-in ballot. That ballot sought authority for the leadership in this province to obtain autonomy with the precondition that British Columbia carpenters remain within the International. The actual wording of the 1991 ballot was: “Are you in favour of authorizing the British Columbia Provincial Council of Carpenters to pursue and negotiate with the International Headquarters for a Canadian section within our International Union?” Many members at that time considered this a “milquetoast” position.

Results of the 2001 referendum on autonomy will be utilized to seek a negotiated settlement to the current impasse. A letter has been sent by the Provincial Council seeking the International’s position on this matter. If a negotiated settlement is not possible, the delegates to this year’s Provincial Council convention — and, ultimately, the members — will decide on the next steps towards achieving autonomy.

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Carpenters can no longer belong to Building Trades Councils
McCarron pulls UBCJA out of Federation

On April 4, 2001, AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department President Edward C. Sullivan sent a letter to the secretaries of all State, Provincial, and Local Councils affiliated with them. In that letter, President Sullivan wrote that on March 29 this year, Carpenters Union General President Douglas McCarron had notified the AFL-CIO and the Building Trades Department that the Carpenters had disaffiliated from the AFL-CIO Federation.

Sullivan noted that, “Accordingly, by disaffiliating from the AFL-CIO the Carpenters knowingly removed themselves from the Building and Construction Trades Department as well as from every Building and Construction Trades Council in the United States and Canada. Let me make sure you understand that it was the decision of the Carpenters to leave, not ours.”

In his letter, Sullivan outlines the steps decided upon by the Governing Board of the Building Trades Department:
“1. Local Unions affiliated with the Carpenters may no longer remain members of State, Provincial, or Local Councils. No type of alternative membership arrangement is permitted.
“2. Delegates from Carpenters’ Local Unions may no longer serve as Council delegates.
“3. Any elected Council officer who is a member of the Carpenters is no longer eligible to continue to serve as a Council officer if he or she remains a member of the Carpenters.
“4. Any vacancies resulting from the above should be filled in accordance with the Council’s Bylaws.
“5. In order to allow for an orderly transition, the Governing Board of Presidents has authorized 6a 45-day period to accomplish the above.”

Jurisdictional turf wars predicted for Trades
The AFL-CIO, the main labour central in the United States, plays a comparable role for the American labour movement as the Canadian Labour Congress does for the labour movement in Canada. The Building Trades in Canada, made up of American “international” unions, take their cue from the Building and Construction Trades Department of the AFL-CIO.

The Carpenters’ disaffiliation from the AFL-CIO and the Building Trades Department likely will spawn a jurisdictional turf war in most of North America. The new General President of the International Association of Bridge, Structural, Ornamental and Reinforcing Iron Workers sent a letter on the Carpenters’ disaffiliation from the AFL-CIO to the Iron Workers’ local unions in the US and Canada. In that letter, Brother Hunt pointed out that the jurisdictional dispute procedures in the AFL-CIO constitution would not apply for Carpenters. He cautioned the local unions that, despite the fact that there has been no raids or jurisdictional challenges, nevertheless “given the apparent attitude that the United Brotherhood of Carpenters has expressed, it appears that there may be very shortly such attacks for jurisdictional claims.”

Boilermakers claim Millwrights work
On March 29, Boilermakers’ General President Charles W. Jones sent a letter to all signatory contractors in North America, declaring all “jurisdictional trade agreements between Boilermakers and the Carpenter/Millwright are hereby null and void.” He went on to say that all work previously held by Millwrights “must immediately be reassigned to the Boilermakers.”

This may have deep repercussions in other parts of North America, but not likely in British Columbia. This province has laws that require disputes be resolved at the Jurisdictional Assignment Plan of the British Columbia Construction Industry.

However, the Boilermakers’ General President states, “The Boilermakers are currently in the process of recruiting members of the Millwrights trade into our union. We are in contact with individual Millwright locals in hopes of having them affiliate as a whole with the International Union.”

The split from the AFL-CIO is shaping up to be a war involving jurisdictional poaching. McCarron, in the April 9, 2001 Engineering News Record, a trade publication, is quoted on jurisdiction as stating “It really is a matter left up to the contractor employing the workers.”

An article in the AFL-CIO publication The Labour Educator speculated on McCarron’s strategy with regard to the Carpenters’ AFL-CIO pullout. The author of the article wrote:

“While McCarron said very little to Sweeny (President of the AFL-CIO) about his (McCarron’s) organizing plans, he was more forthcoming in a March 23 address to the National Erectors Association convention in Hawaii. He told the contractors, “You need the freedom to assign the work based on what makes sense, what makes all of us competitive on the job. If there’s a dispute, let the owner settle it. It’s his money and his job. Surely, we’ve learned that much.”

“While industry was demanding more for its construction dollar,” McCarron said, “our answer was to shut down your job while we argued over whether an iron worker or a millwright did your rigging. We not only refused to help solve the problem, but we refused to admit there was a problem.” He concluded by saying, “We’re serious about reorganizing the industry. We’re serious about customer service.”

In McCarron’s letter to the United Brotherhood member-ship, he denied any plans for “wall-to-wall” units or organizing other crafts into the Carpenters Union. McCarron accuses the AFL-CIO of operating “under rules and procedures of an era that passed years ago.” McCarron boasts, “We’ve done the hard work of restructuring our union and making real changes. As a result, our membership has begun to increase for the first time in decades and we’re in a stronger financial position than ever.”

Despite McCarron’s boasts, no evidence has ever been pro-vided that can be relied upon to substantiate McCarron’s position. The numbers of new certifications have not been presented in a real empirical way that can be verified. Increasing member-ship has not been demonstrated in a verifiable manner. There has been so little information distributed in McCarron’s new corporate union that there isn’t even a telephone directory of local unions and councils published. In the February 26 edition of the Engineering News Record, however, the data presented claims that the Carpenters Union membership dropped by 7.3 per cent between 1995 and 2000. McCarron was first elected General President in 1995.

The reason cited by McCarron for this pullout from the Federation was money — per capita taxes that the United Brotherhood remits to the AFL-CIO. He doesn’t like the way the AFL-CIO operates. At the Carpenters’ General Convention held last September, McCarron stated, “No member of this Brotherhood is going to see the money they work for, sweat for, risk their lives for, used to pay a Washington bureaucrat’s salary.”

In a letter dated April 9, 2001, to Carpenters Union members, McCarron reiterated, “We will not spend our members’ money to support a Washington bureaucracy.”

This refrain from McCarron is not lost on British Columbia carpenters, sending upward of a million dollars a year to support McCarron’s Washington bureaucracy.

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Members have their say
Large majority support autonomy
COUNCIL COMMENT by Dave Flynn
"We want the right to govern ourselves without interference from Washington.”

It has been one year since the delegates to the 57th convention of the BC Provincial Council of Carpenters directed the Council to take some affirmative action against the dictates coming from the International in Washington.

Since 1996, when General President Doug McCarron and his Executive Board introduced their myopic vision of a new structure for our union, the Provincial Council has been fighting for an alternative that is acceptable to our membership. When it became clear that the International was not prepared to entertain any variation from their proposed structure, the delegates to last year’s convention declared that they had enough. They passed a resolution directing the Council to amend its constitution. In effect, they were saying, “We want the right to govern ourselves without interference from Washington.”

Following months of hard work by the Constitution Review Committee, the new draft constitution was presented to the membership last winter at special called meetings throughout the province. In March, a mail ballot referendum was conducted. Two ballots were sent to every member; one seeking approval of the new constitution, and one asking the membership if they support the provincial Council to negotiate with the International for the right to govern ourselves.

Now, one year after the process began, the tally is in. With about four thousand members responding to the mail ballots, over 76 per cent supported the proposed constitution and almost 80 per cent supported negotiating the autonomy the members in this province have long desired.

No one on the Provincial Council is under any illusion that McCarron will look at the ballot results and immediately surrender. He seems to believe that his powers under the General Constitution are absolute, and he almost certainly will resist relinquishing any authority, particularly to some upstarts in the backwoods of Canada. He may simply refuse to negotiate with us. We fully expect that there will be many more hours and days spent in Labour Board hearings and in court before this matter is resolved. But through it all, McCarron will have to face some irrefutable facts. The membership in BC will not accept his proposed structure for our union. They are clearly fed up with being dictated to from a foreign country and are demanding the right to self-government. At some point he has to realize he cannot hold members by force.

In spite of the best efforts of the International and their agents in BC to discredit the Provincial Council, their campaign against the referendum ballots failed miserably. One would expect that McCarron, as a trade union leader, would believe in the fundamental principles of democracy and workers rights to determine their own destiny.

Well Doug, the members in BC have spoken. The prudent thing to do now would be to sit down with representatives of the BC Provincial Council and negotiate the terms of autonomy for the Carpenters Union in BC.

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Ballot gives clear and unequivocal direction
Membership demands Canadian autonomy
by Len Embree, Provincial Council President