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| Heavy and Highway contract
signed by Mike Ryan Last month the Laborers’ District Council ratified a new five-year statewide Heavy and Highway agreement that includes total package increases of over six dollars over the life of the contract. In addition, the agreement specifies a sixth year increase of $1.25 for the purpose of certifying prevailing wage rates with the Department of Workforce Development. Special thanks for this agreement must go to the members of the negotiating committee – Charlie Fecteau, Business Manager of Laborers’ Local #113 in Milwaukee; Tom Fisher, District Council; Tom Klein, Business Manager of Laborers’ Local #1086 in Fond du Lac; Kevin Lee, Business Manager of Laborers’ Local #140 in La Crosse; and Business Manager Steve Reimer of Laborers’ Local #237 in Kenosha. Representing very different areas of the state, each member of the committee never lost sight of the common goal of winning decent increases across the state without significant language changes. They should be applauded for their effort. By all measure this contract represents the best agreement ever reached with our signatory road contractors. With union market share of the road construction industry hovering around 90 percent or more, our negotiating committee was well positioned to leverage a fair agreement. But union market share alone does not begin to explain why these negotiations proved so successful. This agreement comes after years of Wisconsin Laborers making a concerted effort to improve our stature in the industry as well as our relationship with our signatory contractors. During that time we have worked closely with our contractors, implementing programs designed to improve work opportunities in the industry. Our legislative and political program allowed us to fight shoulder to shoulder with our contractors and their associations for much needed boosts in state infrastructure investment. Through the work of LECET and the skill improvement opportunities offered at the Training Center, we have demonstrated our commitment to the long term health of the industry. Together we are building labor/management programs that truly level the playing field so that signatory contractors remain competitive as they continue to provide decent wages and benefits to their workers. While it is true there will always be issues that keep us apart, this agreement drives home the importance and value of working with employers as partners, rather than adversaries, when the opportunity arises. DOT begins work zone safety campaign Slow Down! That’s the message in a new work zone safety campaign sponsored by the Department of Transportation, and a broad industry coalition of groups including Wisconsin LECET, contractors, representative of state utilities, county highway departments and law enforcement. "Work zones are dangerous for workers and drivers," Secretary Thompson said. "We’re hoping that by communicating the challenges inherent in driving through a work zone, we’ll raise public awareness to a problem." With one of every four Laborers in the state employed for all or part of the season on road related work, participation in the campaign was important to Wisconsin’s LECET program. Mike Ryan, Business Manager of the Wisconsin Laborers’ District Council, said LECET’s involvement in the campaign was important and necessary. Noting that construction laborers experience higher on-the-job injury and death rates than other crafts, Ryan said road workers are especially at risk. "Road workers not only have to deal with hazards on the site, they often have to deal with angry motorists speeding through their work site, Ryan said. I hope this campaign makes the driving public more aware of the danger they pose to these workers." Since 1987, 149 people have been killed and more than 15,000 have been injured in work zone crashes. Of that number, ten of those killed were workers and more than 100 of those injured were workers. The new work zone safety campaign was designed in collaboration with Wisconsin’s utilities to highlight that utility workers working along highway right of way are now included under the law that doubles fines for violations in work zones. The radio and television announcements for the 1999 Work Zone Safety Campaign ran from May 20 through May 29, and will run again for ten days prior to the Labor Day weekend. Labor History The folks at the local call it the vault but the treasures it holds have little monetary value. Behind its thick walls are shelves filled with long forgotten documents, minutes from meetings that took place decades ago, records of some of the earliest members, and stacks of old photographs that reveal the styles and tastes of eras past. Occasionally, someone at the local gets the chance to search its contents. Recently, on one of these expeditions, Business Manager Charlie Fecteau uncovered a 1919 copy of the Local Union’s Constitution that reminds us of what life was like for those early members. The Constitution recognizes that the Union that had recently chartered with the International Hod Carriers, Building and Common Laborers was first founded on June 18, 1881. Its earliest members were likely participants in some of the most dangerous and militant times in labor history. One can easily speculate that its members and leadership were deeply involved in the earliest days of the 8-hour day movement and were in the crowd May 5, 1886 as National Guard troops opened fire on demonstrators, killing 7, in what is now commemorated as the Bayview Massacre. The members of that original Local were for the most part first generation Americans, recent immigrants from Europe, predominately Polish and German. The early Local grew and by 1908 had become the fourth largest union in the City of Milwaukee. In 1919, the published year of the Constitution, German was still the language of choice for a large segment of the population in Milwaukee – a point reflected in the fact that the Constitution is printed in both English and German. In the early years of the century, many of these members experienced first hand the huge disparity in wealth and lack of opportunity that existed in America. To many, World War I was a war between propertied class interests, more so than one between nations. Wisconsin Senator Robert LaFollette and Milwaukee Congressman Victor Berger were two highly visible and outspoken critics of a war they saw as instigated by and for rich industrialist. At the War’s conclusion even President Wilson conceded that "This was a commercial and industrial war." The Declaration of Principles contained in the Constitution speaks to the unfair economic conditions that existed at the time – conditions that created wealth and prosperity for a propertied class through the direct exploitation of labor. "The means of production, money, machinery, means of labor and land are controlled by the few capitalists," the Declaration reads. "In organization and combination lies the germ of a more just form for future society." We’ve all heard the hoopla over the Dow breaking 10,000. But few people are reporting that most households today have lower net worth, adjusting for inflation, than they did in 1983 when the Dow was still at 1,000. While the top 1 percent of households net worth swelled by 17 percent, what happened to the bottom 40 percent during this period? a) Gained 10 percent. b) Lost 20 percent. c) Lost 40 percent. d) Lost 80 percent. What do you know the answer is "d": That’s right – while the top 1 percent saw their real net worth climb through the 1980s and 1990s, the bottom 40 percent saw their net worth plummet by 80 percent. The boom has been bust for millions of Americans. The inflation adjusted net worth of the median household fell from $54,600 in 1989 to $49,900 in 1997. Today almost 90 percent of the value of all stocks and mutual funds owned by households is held by the richest 10 percent of Americans. Source: "Shifting Fortunes: The Perils of the Growing American Wealth Gap," United for a Fair Economy, 1999. Member-to-member Whenever a new Spancrete plant goes up, Charlie Lippert is one of the guys who gets it running. Charlie Lippert began his Spancrete career in 1962 in his hometown of Valders. He started out working on the gantry there and eventually moved on to the extruder. Currently, Charlie holds the position of Machine Operator and travels throughout the world setting up machines at new Spancrete plants. Charlie's first overseas trip was to Iran in 1977, where he spent three months setting up two machines. Through the years, other jobs have taken Charlie to such far away places as Germany, Australia, Trinidad, Mexico, China and Brazil. He's found that, wherever he went around the world, the people treated him with respect and were very friendly and accommodating. "The best part about travelling," said Charlie, "is meeting different people and seeing how others live outside of the U.S." Despite working long hours and on weekends, Charlie has been able to see the sights and experience a variety of cultures in the countries he has visited. Last year alone, Charlie had been to Brazil twice to assist with insulated wall panel production and stopped in Trinidad to check on the plant there, not to mention hitting Michigan and New York several times. So Far, Australia has been Charlie's favorite trip. Overall, working abroad has been a fulfilling and enriching experience for Charlie Lippert. He has developed good relationships with Spancrete's international customers and remains in contact with quite a few of the folks he's met along the way. Charlie receives Christmas cards from China, and the owner of the plant in Trinidad calls him occasionally for information or sometimes just to chat. When at home in Valders, Charlie enjoys hunting, fishing, shooting pool, golfing, and boating at his cabin up north. Being away so often, Charlie cherishes family time with his wife Myrna, who owners a beauty salon in Valders. He also has a son, Jason, a graphic designer who lives in Manitowoc, as well as a daughter, Lori, who also lives in Valders with her husband and their two daughters. Delegate profile Tom Fisher, Laborers’ Local #464 of Madison, is the Assistant Business Manager of the Laborers’ District Council, and as the elected Secretary-Treasurer serves as a member of the Executive Board. As delegate, he serves on the Skill Improvement Fund, the Political Action Committee, and helps to coordinate many of the programs implemented through the Council. Tom joined Local 464 in August, 1967. Since that time, he has become more and more active in the union and the union has become more and more important in his life. After many years in the field, Tom has been working for the Laborers Union for over 15 years. A past Field Rep with the Local, he still serves as a member of the Executive Board. Tom enjoys not only representing the members of his local, but working with all the locals in the state. He is most proud of the recent Heavy and Highway Agreement and the role he shared with members of the negotiating committee in gaining $7.30 in increases over the six year agreement. In his spare time, Tom spends time with his wife Jan, their son Brad and two daughters, Angie and Sherri. He coaches the girls in softball and basketball and is proud of what they’ve accomplished in the classroom and on the playing field. Laborers’ PLAN Over the past several weeks, a number of bills promoting school construction have been introduced in Congress. Many of these bills use various tax credits or other financial mechanisms to fund disparately needed repairs, renovation or new construction in Wisconsin and school districts across the country. None, however, include provisions to incorporate Davis-Bacon wage and hour standards on any of this work. As you know, the Federal Davis-Bacon Act, like our state prevailing wage law, ensures that workers employed on public projects receive prevailing wages for their work. These laws stop contractors from cutting workers' wages in order to win public work. They also level the playing field for our signatory contractors and make all contractors compete for work based on skill and productivity, and not on how little they pay their workers. It is important that your member of Congress knows and understands how important Davis-Bacon is to construction workers. Please call or write your member of Congress and our US Senators Herb Kohl and Russ Feingold and urge them to: 1) Support school construction, and 2) Make sure that Davis-Bacon (prevailing wage) is a part of any school construction bill. Kleczka bill protects workers, benefits Congressman Gerald Kleczka (D-Milwaukee) introduced legislation in April that will make it harder for employers to misclassify employees as independent contractors. The Independent Contractor Clarification act is a bi-partisan proposal that establishes a three-point test for employers and employees to use to determine the employment status of workers. The three-point test would replace the present 20-point test which many believe has lead to an increasing number of misclassified workers denied protection and benefits guaranteed under the law. According to Kleczka that lack of clear direction has resulted in many businesses misclassifying workers as independent contractors causing various hardships for workers. "Such misclassifications have resulted in workers being denied essential benefits such as health coverage, a retirement plan, or the employer’s share of FICA taxes," Kleczka said. "Workers who are actual employees and who work at the direction of and under the supervision of a superior are entitled to these benefits." The problem of misclassifying workers as independent contractors is especially acute in the construction industry where workers are particularly vulnerable to unlawful employment practices. Not surprisingly, independent contractors represent the fastest growing segment of the construction industry today. Unscrupulous contractors have taken advantage of that fact, at times coercing bona fide employees to work as "independents" thereby relieving themselves of the obligation to pay unemployment and workers compensation taxes and other employment taxes. These tactics lower their cost of doing business and put them in better position to under-bid the competition. These tactics effectively cheat workers out of unemployment compensation when they are laid-off, workers compensation if they are injured on the job, and social security benefits when they retire. To make matters worse, the coerced worker also becomes liable for participating in the relationship. For example, they must obtain federal identification numbers for tax reporting purposes, pay their share of FICA, and make quarterly payments to the Internal Revenue Service to cover income tax payments that, as employees, would have been simply deducted from their payroll check. In addition to clarifying employment relationships, the bill also grants the Department of the Treasury the authority to draft rules and regulations so the law can be fully enforced. Legislative For some time now, third party, private fair-contracting organizations have been supplementing the work of the US Department of Labor and the state Department of Workforce Development. Currently, there are two such fair-contracting organizations operating in Wisconsin – Contractor Compliance (CC) and the Wisconsin Alliance for Fair Contracting (WAFC). Both are non-profit, labor-management sponsored programs, that serve to inform workers, contractors and awarding agencies about their rights and responsibilities under the law, as well to gather necessary information to assist the Department’s Equal Rights Division in conducting actual claims investigations. Third party organizations exist because there is a demand for their services. Since January of 1995, WAFC alone has filed 191 complaints on behalf of victimized workers. These filings have resulted in the awarding of over $200,000 in back pay and benefits to individual workers. These filings represent an additional $255,000 in potential back pay and benefits according to complaints pending with the Department. These filings also represent individual workers who, in all likelihood, would not have sought help under the law, if it were not for the work of the organization. Third party organizations rely on Wisconsin’s open-records law to access payroll records in an effort to gather the evidence necessary to demonstrate a need to investigate a contractor for violating the state prevailing wage law. This activity serves the two-part purpose of weeding out those complaints without merit before they get to the Department, and providing the necessary evidence the Department can use to investigate the claim. The Department of Workforce Development has stated that it is their understanding that public work payroll information is available to workers and third parties under Wisconsin’s open records law. Despite this, and despite the state Attorney General’s office stating that open-records requests for these payroll records is proper, some contractors and awarding agencies continue to challenge these requests, with some success in the courts. Requiring contractors to maintain payroll records and specifying that these records be subject to public inspection under the state’s open records law will end the confusion that currently exist concerning the relevance of this information both as a public record and in the enforcement of prevailing wage law. AB 130 teaching labor history in schools The Wisconsin Laborers’ District Council supports AB 130, a bill that would require public schools to include the history of organized labor as a part of their history instruction. The labor movement in general and organized labor in particular, has played an important role in the history of our great nation. The eight-hour day, the forty-hour work week, social security protection, health and pension benefits, unemployment and worker’s compensation, are but some of the gains enjoyed by all that are rooted in the labor movement. Proudly, workers of this state were on the frontlines in each of these struggles. Sadly, few of us know the price these workers paid securing rights that far too many of us today take for granted. Too few of us know that workers died in the streets of Bayview fighting for the eight-hour day – that many of our child-labor laws grew out of a woodworker strike in Oshkosh – or that workers in Wisconsin can claim credit for our nation’s first worker’s compensation law. The lives of these working men and women are too important and their legacy too great to be overlooked in our classrooms. Heavy and Highway
agreement teaches the lesson of organizing This year Laborers in Wisconsin negotiated perhaps one of the best Heavy and Highway agreement in your history – a 5-year agreement with annual increases of nearly 6 percent per year. Obviously, contractors recognize the commitment you have shown the industry. Your efforts to work with them to increase productivity, improve safety and create economic development and job opportunities across the state has made a positive impression on them and has had a positive impact on your ability to negotiate fair and decent contracts. From the laborer on the front-lines producing a quality product to the members of the negotiating committee, you deserve to be proud of your effort. In addition to all of the hard work and commitment that without question made this agreement possible, there is another equally important lesson to be learned. Another, less obvious factor contributed immensely to the success of this agreement and it deserves serious recognition. That factor is market share. And the lesson to be learned is when organized labor controls the labor market, organized labor is better positioned to negotiate decent contracts. Organized labor controls upwards of 90 percent of the road construction market in Wisconsin. That compares to about 30 percent industry-wide. But perhaps more enlightening is the fact that as recently as the mid-1970s union market share industry-wide ran as high as 70 percent in Wisconsin. It should be easy to see how an organization that represents 7 of every 10 workers in the industry has a little more leverage in negotiations than a group that represents less than 1 of every 3. Clearly, in numbers there is strength. But it is even more important to fully understand that real power is found in percentages. That is why a commitment to organizing new members is so important to every current and future member. Future work and future contracts depend on our ability to turn the tide on unionized market share numbers that have fallen steadily over the last few decades. Changing these trends will not be easy. It will require devoting more resources; developing a strong and skilled organizing staff; devising and implementing strategic organizing plans; and mobilizing members to support and participate in organizing campaigns. Without question, changing to organize will take time. But the sooner we begin the sooner we start to reclaim that all important market share in the industry. Training Center As the Winter schedule at the Training Center winds down, its usually time to hit the road. But that doesn’t mean it’s time to take a break or head back to the home local. For many instructors, it means its time for the satellite classes to begin at Local Unions and at contractor sites across the state. Each year the Training Center puts on dozens of evening and weekend classes at the request of Local Unions and contractors. Typically, these classes include forklift training, scaffold building and a variety of safety classes ranging from highway work zone to general construction safety meetings. Already through April over 250 Laborers from all thirteen Locals have attended these satellite courses. More classes are scheduled through November. If you would like more information regarding these or other classes at the Training Center, please call you Local Union or the Training Center toll-free at 1-800-275-6939. Class Schedule Forklift June 19 – Local 1086 (Oshkosh) July 24 – Local 317 July 31 – Local 317 August 14 – Local 1086 August 21 – Local 931 October 23 – Local 931 October 30 – Local 1086 Scaffold User June 26 – Local 1407 September – Local 931 October 2 – 1086 (Oshkosh) October 16 – Training Center November 6 – 1086 (Sheboygan) General Construction (2-week course) June 7-18 – Training Center LECET The Department of Workforce Development (DWD) will soon be conducting its annual wage survey of contractors in the state for the purpose of establishing prevailing wage rates on Public Works projects for next year. The success of this survey in providing an accurate accounting of all the work performed by union contractors is extremely important for every Laborer in the state. State law now requires all contractors to participate in the prevailing rate survey and report the hours worked and wages and benefits paid on all private work they performed over the year in Wisconsin. The data is then used to issue wage rates for work to be performed on public works next year. Why is it important for your employer to participate in the survey? The wage rates for public projects are established for the entire year by county, based on wages reported for similar work performed on similar projects in the private sector in that county. On average, union workers generally can expect to make about one-third more in pay than a nonunion worker across craft. Laborers can expect an even greater wage gap for their work. Not reporting these wages and hours worked will effectively lower the prevailing wage in the county and make it harder for our contractors to win work. That is why it is extremely important for our signatory contractors to report their work and establish prevailing wage rates that reflect union wage scales in as many counties as possible. To not report means that work performed at union rates will not be considered in the formula used to establish the prevailing rate. Because DWD establishes wage rates for an entire calendar year based solely on the wage information reported, union employers who do not report risk more than their ability to compete for work on public projects – they place all signatory contractors at a competitive disadvantage. Regardless of the prevailing wage, signatory contractors are bound to pay the wages and benefits set in their collective bargaining agreements. Union contractors who do not report high-wage private sector work take their generally higher wages out of the prevailing wage formula, and literally guarantee that lower than contract wage rates will prevail. That lower rate has a ripple effect, as it makes all signatory contractors less competitive and jeopardizes future jobs for even more union workers. Needless to say, it is extremely important that all Laborers understand how this survey affects them, and why it is so important that our signatory employers complete the prevailing wage survey and return it to DWD before the July 31 filing deadline. LECET focused on prevailing wage survey Wisconsin LECET is once again working with Local Unions to encourage signatory contractors to participate in this year’s prevailing wage survey. The computer program – Prevail – was updated and mailed to all contractors to make it easier for contractors to complete the Department of Workforce Development’s Prevailing Wage Survey that is used to determine prevailing wage rates for state-sponsored public works projects. This year, like last, LECET has been encouraging its use by previewing the program for contractors and staff. The program is designed to facilitate survey reporting by allowing contractors to report work, wage and hour information electronically to the Department. Associated Help Files within the program contain all DWD Instructions for filling out the survey, as well as union contract wage rates by county, to further insure that the most accurate information is filed with the Department. In addition, LECET along with District Council staff and Local Union representatives, have been meeting with contractors and their associations to discuss ways the Laborers can help increase contractors’ participation in the survey. Contractors have until July 31 to complete their survey and return it to the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development. The survey data will be used by the Department to issue prevailing wage rates for public work performed from January 1 to December 31, 2000. |
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