Reform Currents in the Building Trades

...A new single scale was established that, with fringe benefits, provided the members with an increase of $59 a week for a two-year period and a raise of pensions from a maximum of $90 to $130 a month...

...The interest of the union thus coincided with that of the public—a public equivalent to that of a city almost the size of San Francisco, for it inhabited 600,000 rooms in the City's housing projects...

...The present situation could make for a social explosion— poverty and racial discrimination on one side, insecurity and anger on the other...

...This figure is higher than the general rate of unemployment among Negroes...

...Schonfeld has taken steps further to integrate D.C...

...There is also a potential for division between the unions and the black community in housing rehabilitation work, and here the painters' union is providing leadership in an ingenious program for organizing minority workers in the building-trades unions...

...Women's Liberation: Two Centuries Ago...

...If successful, it will upgrade the condition of thousands of black and Puerto Rican workers and improve the strained relations between the building trades and the black community...

...As part of this organizing effort, Schonfeld's committee has worked out an agreement with Model Cities community groups in Brooklyn which may serve as a prototype for the rest of the country...

...This is a provisional solution to the new organizational challenge most of the buildingtrades unions are not yet able to meet...

...They wanted a change in the unreasonable weekly painting quota of 12-15 rooms—about twice their work load before the scandal started in 1957...

...The settlement that was reached abolished the doublewage scale through which 80 percent of the work (usually involving repainting) had been paid by substandard wages...

...in Answer to his late Poem, called The Thresher's Labour (London, 1739) 362...

...but little Sleep can have, Because our froward Children cry and rave...

...Schonfeld and other unionists are acutely aware of these problems...

...9, the Housing Authority then promoted a competing union, Teamster Local 237, which CARL GERSHMAN D.C...

...S S CHONFELD'S SENSE of social responsibility has led him to place his union at the service of a broad reform movement that encompasses all of New York City's buildingtrades unions...

...On April 6, 1967, he filed suit in Federal District Court to enjoin the trusteeship of D.C...

...The painters were no longer willing to be subject to speedups that provided contractors and housing officials with cheap work...

...for the present, the plumbers leave the rest of the task to the painters...

...Schonfeld did not need their support: on voting day he out-polled Rarback 3,230-2,529...

...I will not be silent if anyone's democratic rights are violated or if anyone sabotages your decisions...

...The committee is now trying to get government subsidies in order to pay advanced trainees full union wages...

...In another effort to undermine D.C...

...THE UNION NOW BEGAN to rectify the disgraceful conditions in City painting that corruption had brought about...

...Our Children put to Bed, with greatest Care We all Things for your coming Home prepare: You sup, and go to Bed without delay, And rest yourselves till the ensuing Day...

...the real cause is the racial crisis that has gripped the nation and has posed enormous challenges to the building trades...

...So many Things for our Attendance call, Had we ten Hands, we could employ them all...

...The Labor Department admitted that violations of the Act had occurred in an election in 1965 (when Schonfeld ran for chairman of Local 1011), but the only action it took was to warn union officials not to do it again "in future elections," a warning ignored the following year...

...Its president, S. Frank Raftery, had clearly identified himself with the status quo in every district where reformers were active...

...Union officials charged that the Housing Authority was using the hearings to whitewash its own performance by restricting the union counsel's questioning and cutting short testimony critical of the working conditions of City painters...

...Attempts to force such a policy upon them through demonstrations, as in Pittsburgh, will be met with even larger counterdemonstrations...

...9 and to prevent the trustee, who was one of Rarback's stooges, from obstructing an election for a new secretary-treasurer...

...If the new organizing program proves successful, it will represent a major step toward economic justice for black workers, racial integration in the 361 CARL GERSHMAN building trades, and better relations between the black community and the whole labor movement...

...Although the Labor Department urged that the complaints be dismissed, Judge Marvin E. Frankel declared the trusteeship illegal and ordered a new election, to be held under the auspices of an outside agency, the American Arbitration Association...

...Schonfeld also began to print D.C...

...It now attracts numerous contractors who anticipate large profits and pay substandard wages to the unorganized rehabilitation workers...

...An important, often ignored factor is the economic situation in the building trades...

...In contrast, examiners extensively questioned witnesses who offered testimony favorable to the Authority's position...

...Rarback would head off such nominations by transferring enough stooges into the Local on election eve, thus providing a majority for a "dummy" candidate who would eventually announce his withdrawal from the race...

...16, had been indicted and jailed for the murder of Wilson in September of that year, Raftery put the District under a trusteeship whose chief purpose was to protect the entrenched leadership...

...The membership voted overwhelmingly for amendments designed to guard against a resurgence of bossism...

...It will keep their nonunionized workforce and their open shop intact, and at the same time allow them to pose as crusaders for equal opportunity who provide employment for victims of union discrimination...

...If workers protested, they would find themselves unemployed...

...He projects more the image of a Don Quixote than of a Saint George, yet he has been fighting real battles and winning them...

...The Jury failed to reach a verdict on Rarback whose case is now pending before the Appellate Division of the New York State Court of Appeals...

...Schonfeld now put an end to that practice by summoning five such meetings during his first year in office...

...For 14 years not a single general membership meeting had been held...

...On August 1, 1968, Schonfeld led the painters out on a five-week strike...

...Between 1965 and 1968, a period of rapid iniiation, the painters had received an increase of only four cents an hour for the bulk of their work...

...If integration fails to occur, there will be more Pittsburghs where black and white workers are pitted against each other in confrontations that will bring harm to all...

...The bid-rigging racket in New York City's $7 million-a-year painting market involved contractors, union officials, and officials of the City Housing Authority...

...He mailed them two issues of his own newspaper, Painters' Free Press, and an issue of Herman Benson's Union Democracy in Action which carried a summary of the Frankel decision...

...This radical transformation came about not through an attack on the union from without —a practice common of late and a result of many liberals' disenchantment with the labor movement—but through years of struggle by loyal unionists committed to the reinvigoration of union democracy...

...Brennan hopes to organize black and Puerto Rican workers within the building trades under normal union conditions...

...At the same time, these inspectors permitted conspiring bidders to get away with shoddy work...

...when we Home are come, Alas...

...Department of Labor and its Bureau of Labor Management Reports, which under Title IV of the 1959 Landrum-Griffin Act had been empowered to ensure fair union elections...

...As soon as other unions begin to organize in their particular jurisdiction, the painters will step aside...

...There is a tendency to see it as merely a conflict between black and white, or good and evil, and many people who discuss the situation use these racial and moral terms interchangeably...

...thus both the unions and the minority-group workers will be protected...

...Honest bidders often CARL GERSHMAN were subject to fines, or forced to repeat a job after inspection by union and Housing Authority inspectors...

...Only a few years ago, this union was weak and corrupt, exploited by both employers and selfserving union officials, undemocratic, and neglectful of the economic welfare of its membership...

...The advantages of the program to the trainees are obvious—they will be protected from exploitation and will be full-fledged journeymen in the building trades long after REFORM CURRENTS IN THE BUILDING TRADES REFORM CURRENTS IN THE BUILDING TRADES the Model Cities funds have run out...

...Schonfeld lost the election that year, and when he tried again in 1964, he couldn't even win the nomination in his own Local 1011...

...Subsequently, the Housing Authority tried to undermine the union by hiring provisional painters, and even threatened to turn over the responsibility for painting to the tenants, a union-busting maneuver that would have guaranteed the projects' further deterioration...

...So far, the painters' union's organizing program is still in its experimental stages and consists of efforts to organize the workers in rehabilitation projects...

...Moreover, the workers they take in receive on-the-job training and are paid wage rates prevailing in their specific crafts...

...Louis Weinstock, a member of the National Committee of the Communist party, was secretary-treasurer of D.C...

...Yet in others it is not, and here the public has ignored some major efforts of reform...

...Schonfeld now is hopeful that eventually the Authority will be persuaded to accept the 10-room rule, for it is more efficient than the 7-8 rooms a week which the authority admits are done by its provisional painters...

...The union's witnesses testified that the painters were required to use thinned paint, which was cheaper and could spread faster, and that their poor work contributed to the overall deterioration of public housing...

...Time and again he had opposed Dow Wilson and Lloyd Green, the leaders of the reform opposition in San Francisco's District Council 16 who were murdered in the spring of 1966...

...9 for their bargaining agent...

...In this area the basic leadership is provided by Peter Brennan, the Council's president, who is concerned that New York does not repeat the example of Baltimore where antiunion employers' associations brought in nonunion black contractors and workers to undermine union standards...

...A new militancy on bread-and-butter is REFORM CURRENTS IN THE BUILDING TRADES sues resulted from these reforms...

...we found our Work but just begun...

...While we, alas...

...These killings did not receive the same publicity as the recent Yablonski murder, perhaps because there is more public interest in the United Mine Workers...

...The reformers appealed to the U.S...

...BEFORE THE RECENT REFORMS, District Council 9 of the Brotherhood of Painters, Decorators, and Paperhangers, AFL-CIO, REFORM CURRENTS IN THE BUILDING TRADES was dominated for 30 years by leaders with little respect for democratic procedures or goals...

...The Housing Authority officials, however, were of a different mind...

...THE BUILDING-TRADES UNIONS are of concern to blacks and Puerto Ricans demanding entrance into them, to liberals who support this demand, and to those workers who feel threatened by it...

...This, to my knowledge, is the first time such a training program has been proposed for civil service work...

...Slumlords exploited tenants, and contractors exploited nonunionized workers who were usually blacks and Puerto Ricans...

...Journeymen with taping skills are in great demand, and they can look forward to stable work at good wages...

...And from the Time that Harvest doth begin Until the Corn be cut and carry'd in, Our Toil and Labour's daily so extreme, That we have hardly ever Time to dream...

...As the campaign gained support, Raftery and the General Executive Board dumped Rarback who had become a public burden, but adopted a hands-off pol icy in the election...

...The union also charged that the Authority had pressured contractors into filing suit with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) against the 10-room rule and claimed that the Authority, fearing that the 10-room rule would drive prices too high, had warned contractors to keep their bids low—threatening to work otherwise directly with its own painters...

...After Ben Rasnick, the secretary-treasurer of D.C...

...Thus, in their new efforts to organize nonunion workers there is a factor of self-preservation—and a new sense of social responsibility, for the work of men like Brennan and Schonfeld is beginning to affect the unions' leadership ranks...

...In ev-ry Work (we) take our proper Share...

...Any contractor who legitimately underbid the conspiring bidders would be subject to various forms of harassment by union officials...

...In this election campaign Schonfeld was provided with up-to-date mailing lists...

...No strike had taken place since 1945—and in 1962, Rarback had actually ;ucceeded in breaking a strike of paperhangers by illegally importing scabs into the city...

...The trainees (85 percent from minority groups) go through six weeks of classroom drill before they receive on-the-job training...

...Schonfeld does not look the part of a dragon-killer...

...In turn, the unions will become stronger as a result of the full integration of these workers...

...Stephen Dick...

...The old leadership, friendly with employers, had consistently agreed to low wage scales...

...9 on October 19, 1966, the day after Rarback was indicted by a New York grand jury on charges of taking more than $840,000 in bribes from employers as part of a conspiracy to rig bids in City painting jobs...

...With the increasing number of workers in housing rehabilitation there has been a spillover of nonunion labor into areas that traditionally were under their aegis...

...At the time Rarback was a reformer, assisted in his rise to secretary-treasurer by Frank Schonfeld, then secretary of the District's anti-Communist caucus and leader of the reform movement...

...The Authority also prevented union representatives from inspecting apartments and gaining access to evidence upon which to base their remarks...

...One of these stipulated that any member may obtain the services of the American Arbitration Association in future elections...

...Not only is there resistance in the building-trades unions to organizing large numbers of nonwhites, but they are simply not geared to any kind of organizing, for in the past their primary function has been to apportion available work in new construction among those already organized...

...for the first time he could appeal to all 13,000 members...

...Many white unionists are now out of work, which demonstrates that being a member of a union does not guarantee one a job...

...The agreement provides for a higher ratio of on-the-job trainees to journeymen— one to four—than has been common in the past...

...It will organize, in addition to the plumbers, all workers in the mechanical trades, such as steamfitters and sheetmetal workers...

...Union officials allowed contractors to hire nonunion painters, subjected their own membership to speedups and overtime work at straight-time wages, and received bribes amounting to 2 percent of the gross receipts for contracts— about $840,000, Conspiring Housing Authority officials received half that figure...

...Nevertheless, the unions are beginning to adapt to the new situation...

...Rarback had engineered an amendment bylaw abolishing the requirement that members have their photographs published in their union books: without any means of identifying voters, Rarback was able to stuff ballot boxes...

...Before bidding, the contractors would agree among themselves as to who would submit the lowest bid for contracts to repaint apartments in city-owned housing projects...

...One such contractor was Jack Graham, who was beaten almost to death by two hoodlums on March 19, 1964...

...Schonfeld submitted a statement in which he charged that the Housing Authority "avoids investigating its own contractual requirements," and noted that "if the Authority has financial problems, it must face up to them in a responsible fashion and not expect workers and tenants to bear the whole burden...

...They understand that the economic progress of black Americans depends on their full integration into all aspects of the American trade union movement, and that this integration is dependent upon an economy of abundance...

...On August 28, 1969, the NLRB upheld the union's position that 10 rooms a week is a reasonable work index by dismissing the employers' complaint "in its entirety...

...Fundamental economic factors of supply and demand underscore the mutual interest of black and white workers, though that mutual interest is often obscured by racial antagonism...

...The Authority followed through on this threat: on December 27, 1968, it rejected all contractors' bids...

...Many of their opponents feel that their leadership lacks this capacity, and in some cases it seems true...

...T T HE EXPOSURE of gross union corruption and the decision of a sympathetic federal judge ultimately enabled Schonfeld to unseat the Rarback regime...

...9 Newsletter in four languages— English, Spanish, Italian, and Greek—to communicate with his multilingual membership...

...Nor did Schonfeld and his allies find any sympathy in the General Executive Board of the union's International...

...Schonfeld is also the secretary of a committee established by the Building and Construction Trades Council which develops new training programs for minority workers in Model Cities programs...

...The union membership also won the right to choose its own stewards, thus bringing an end to the old system that had permitted employers to veto the workers' choice for collective-bargaining representatives...

...So far, only the plumbers' union is following the painters' example...

...The six-week program has helped them make the transition to full-time work and, as a result, the dropout rate during the succeeding apprenticeship has been low...

...If the job supply remains constant or diminishes while the number of workers demanding jobs increases—a situation that is occurring today—the result will be racial tension, as workers fight among themselves for scarce employment opportunities...

...Yet, on June 24, 1969, in an election supervised by the City's Office of Collective Bargaining, the civil service painters chose D.C...

...If any legitimate opponent was able to run the nomination gauntlet, as Schonfeld was in 1961 (the first opposition candidate in eight years), he had to face new obstacles—denial of the use of mailing lists, censoring of material in the union newspaper, and intimidation of voters...

...Mary Collier, The Woman's Labour: an Epistle . . to Mr...

...And the only beneficiary of such confrontations will be George Wallace or some other demagogue...

...One such effort, effecting all the buildingtrades unions, has been quietly taking place in New York City's painters' union...

...9 claimed was a company-type union, for it admitted to membership supervisors and top Authority officials...

...The volume was soiled, covered with a thick layer of dust...

...It will be a tragedy if this reform movement is to be undermined because there are not enough jobs for the black workers the unions are willing to take in...

...But the reformers met with little success...

...How can large numbers of black workers get into the building trades without the creation of new jobs through expanded construction...

...Dry-wall taping, which consists of filling in wall boards with strips of plaster tape, is today one of the fastest-growing sections of the trade...

...The democratic reforms within the painters union are only partly responsible for these new developments...

...At the present level of construction, black demands for jobs can be met only at the expense of those now employed—which isn't likely to sit well with white workers...

...but the pattern is the same in both cases: a reform movement followed by violence against the leading reformers...

...It also establishes a new classification of trainee journeyman, which will qualify for training those too old to be apprentices and too unskilled to be journeymen...

...In his first report to the membership, Schonfeld gave an indication of the magnitude of the problems that confronted him: I can't truthfully say that I was astounded by what I found upon taking office September 19, but I can report that my worst fears were confirmed...

...We will build a painters union that is respected by the employers, by the public, and by the labor movement...

...That same day, the contractors filed their NLRB suit...

...He established a similar trusteeship in D.C...

...Subsequently, four individual contractors, four corporations, and Nathan Wheatman, the supervisor of the Housing Authority's PaintContract Inspection Division, have been convicted of bid-rigging...

...Instead, by March 1970, cutbacks in federal outlays for construction, which are part of the Nixon administration's efforts to control inflation, had increased unemployment in the construction industry to 8.1 percent...

...This effort is modeled on the organizing systems of an industrial union...

...The confrontations we have seen in the building trades and the attention paid to them by the media have led to an oversimplification of the problem...

...But Schonfeld soon became bitterly disillusioned with Rarback, who took to blacklisting and beating dissidents and conspired with employers to undermine work standards and pay scales...

...Unlike the other building trades which are organized in separate crafts—i.e., plumbers, electricians—the painters are organizing workers across craft lines...

...9 for 10 years, until he was unseated and replaced in 1947 by Martin Rarback...

...When other buildingtrades unions want to take into their ranks workers of their own craft presently organized by the painters or the plumbers, they are permitted to do so...

...Four months of public hearings followed, during which the union defended its demands by pointing to the sweat-shop conditions on the job...

...A second factor involves the capacity of the building-trades unions to respond imaginatively to the present crisis...

...And any group opposing Rarback had difficulty running a candidate for secretary-treasurer, for the aspirant had to win nomination by a vote of his Local...

...Today it is striving to become a model union—free of corruption, democratically run, militant in its demands, and determined to achieve broad social reform...

...9 demonstrated in front of the New York City Housing Authority offices, demanding cooperation in establishing a 10rooma-week work rule...

...Today, rehabilitation of deteriorating slum housing is becoming a major area of public and private investment...

...But the problem cannot be dealt with unless we look at the factors that have brought it about...

...At the first meeting, held on October 16, 1967, he assured the membership that This union belongs to you...

...Apprentices have also been encouraged to stay on the job because they receive full journeyman's wages after only 18 months, which is half the normal training time...

...The contractors in rehabilitation were like the slumlords in real estate— marginal, often corrupt operators who lacked the capital to make it in the big market and exploited their small market for all it was worth...

...Corruption and suppression of democracy went together...

...On April 10, 1968, about 800 members of D.C...

...Until recently, the unions have taken on only work in new construction and have ignored the whole field of urban rehabilitation which, consequently, was a jungle of inferior nonunion work...

...If an agreement can be worked out, Schonfeld will establish a training program —paid for out of a union benefit fund— which will bring the largely black and Puerto Rican provisional painters into the union at full journeyman's wages...

...9 (now about 20 percent black and Puerto Rican) by initiating a pre-apprenticeship training program for tapers...

...The building-trades unions are certainly much to blame for abetting this situation for the unions have been sluggish in entering the rehabilitation field...

...The painters' preapprenticeship program is an experimental effort to train hard-core unemployed...

...I looked over the official District Council complaint book where members' grievances are supposed to be recorded together with their dispositions...

...despite almost 40 years of internecine union warfare, he has managed to retain a relaxed, gentle disposition...

...When I opened it, I discovered that not a single complaint had been entered since 1957...

...These contractors have an interest in keeping up racial discrimination in the building trades...