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New Web Site Tells Carpenters: Respect Our Crafts

May 25, 2011

The Building and Construction Trades Department, AFL-CIO, has launched a new Web site to promote the unity of union construction workers and to stand up against the efforts of the Carpenters union to raid other trades’ work.

The purpose of the Web site – Respect Our Crafts – is twofold:

1. To commemorate and reaffirm the one singular ideal that gives strength to the union construction industry. And that ideal is unity.

2. To prevent the spread of an insidious and poisonous plague of “raiding” the work of other crafts that is being perpetrated by the United Brotherhood of Carpenters under the leadership of its general president, Doug McCarron.

The site provides information and news for building trades activists to help them stay united in the face of McCarron’s efforts to divide the labor movement while driving down the standards set by the IBEW’s highly skilled electricians and other crafts.

Members of St. Louis Local 1 have been campaigning for the last two years against Carpenters Local 57, which is signing sweetheart deals with nonunion contractors to steal the work of IBEW members and their signatory employers.

The Carpenters have also been active in denouncing project labor agreements negotiated by local building trades councils, refusing to work under any agreement that would hamper their ability to raid other unions.

In Las Vegas, the Carpenters went as far to testify in front of the Clark County Commission against the use of PLAs on three major projects because they did not want to work under any agreement negotiated by the building trades.

Pointing out the need for all construction unions to stick together, Building Trades Secretary-Treasurer Sean McGarvey wrote in a February 14 letter to local leaders:

I know these are extremely difficult times for our members and that your locals are under enormous pressure to get their members back to work. Nevertheless, it is not in the best interest of our members to allow the Carpenters to dictate the terms of PLAs or allow them the ability to steal other trades’ work.

Visit www.respectourcrafts.com for more information.