By Doug Cunningham
The Laborers union and the Operating Engineers union announced today that they are leaving the AFL-CIO's Buidling Trades Council. The unions, together with four others, will form a new construction workers organization called the National Construction Alliance (NCA).
The four unions joining the Laborers and Operating Engineers in the new National Construction Alliance are the Bricklayers, Carpenters, Teamsters and Ironworkers.
For now these unions are not disaffiliating from the AFL-CIO itself. More detail about the NCA will be anniunced on March 1st.
Laborers President Terry O'Sullivan says the AFL-CIO Building Trades Council isn't responsive to the need for change in how the unions address the modern construction industry. O'Sullivan objects to how jurisdictional disputes are handled and he says new approaches must be used to make sure that union denisty in the construction trades stops declining and starts growing.
Vincent Giblin, President of the Operating Engineers, says the AFL-CIO Building Trades COuncil is not effective in political lobbying on Capitol Hill and has no strategy for regaining union denisty. He says issues the council talks about in Washington, D.C., like who the new Supreme Court nominee will be, are not the bread and butter kitchen table issues the rank and file care about in communities across
America.
Both Giblin and O'Sullivan, though, say they will not de-emphsize politics with their newly formed NCA. They say they will increase organizing efforts in an effort to build union denisty and they will create a new model for settling jurisdictional disputes and a new structure for a construction trades council.
The Laborers have decided to leave the AFL-CIO "sooner rather than later". O'Sullivan has long said it's not a question of if but when. But today's announcement means only that for now the Laborers and Operating Engineers are leaving only the Building Trades Council of the AFL-CIO. They say their newly formed construction union organization will create local and state infrastructures. But they also said today that in certain AFL-CIO local and state building trades councils these unions will still be active participants.
O'Sullivan says this move does not weaken the labor movement by further splitting an already weakend and divided movement. He says the Laborers and Operating Engineers were not able to get the changes they wanted from the AFL-CIO Building Trades Department, so leaving was necessary.
The Laborers, Carpenters and Teamsters are also part of the Change To Win federation that split fro mthe AFL-CIO last year. But O'Sullivan says the newly formed National Construction Alliance won't be controlled by Change To Win. And he says the unions involved will remain active with Change To Win.
