The city woke up to some good news in the Inquirer—Governor Rendell is evidently going to try to broke a compromise on the Convention Center labor dispute. So Council is not likely to adopt Frank DiCicco’s proposal to open the expansion of the Convention Center to non-union contractors
This is a tough issue for those of us who are both pro-labor and pro-minority. There is no question that many of the building trades have fewer minority and women members than they should, given the demographics of the city and region. And there is no question that racism is a main reason for these low numbers.
And yet, while I don’t doubt the good intentions of Frank DiCicco and the other supporters of this proposal, opening work at the Convention Center to non-union contractors is not a good solution, for many reasons.
First, there is no guarantee that non-union contractors are going to hire more minorities and women.
Second, the solution side steps the main issue. It doesn’t directly push the building trades to create openings for minorities. And, even if does have that effect, there is no point in opening the building trades if a great deal of construction in the city is done non-union. The point, after all, is not just to help more blacks and women secure jobs in construction. The point is to help them get the high wage, high benefit jobs that unions have created.
That is related to a third point: We have talked frequently on this blog about the importance of raising wages for working people. Strengthening the labor movement is the most effective way of raising wages. For this city to encourage the use of non-union labor in our most important public works project would send a message to developers and non-union contractors that the city welcomes non-union labor. That is simply the wrong message to be sending. And it is hard not to wonder whether some of the supporters of DiCicco’s bill outside of Council are not really motivated by an anti-union agenda.
Fourth, there are much better alternatives to the path Council was considering. There is no question, for example, that the first thing we need is accurate numbers of minorities and women working in union construction projects so that we can accurately judge their progress or lack of progress. Some unions can provide this information. For example, the Operating Engineers—for whom Lou Agre works—can tell you that on average a little over 20% of their workers on any project are African American and that the percentage of those hired in the union hiring hall is higher (I think I heard about 40%). It is long past time when the trades collected this information as a matter of course and one can’t blame Frank DiCicco for his frustration at Pat Gillespie’s inability to provide this information.
Once we have accurate numbers, we can require all the trades to adopt the policies that unions like the operating engineers have used to increase their minority members, including creating civil rights committees, special training programs for minorities and so forth.
And that leads to a fifth and final point: Though I am a strong supporter of unions, I recognize that they can also be shortsighted. They are most likely to be shortsighted, however, when they are on the defensive and jobs are at stake. It is when jobs are increasing that unions become most open to innovative ideas. The Convention Center expansion is thus a good opportunity to find a creative approach to increasing minority and female participation in the building trades, one that might be wasted if the blunderbuss on consideration at Council is adopted.
This is not the only example of a failure of our political class to find creative ways forward on labor issues. Remember the dispute about waterless urinals at the Comcast Center? Like many others, I was disappointed to hear that the plumber’s union was standing in the way of an environmentally sound policy. But it also occurred to me that, with a little creativity, we could have resolved this dispute in a way that served everyone. It is long past time that we changed the building code to mandate grey-water systems in our large buildings—systems that capture rainwater and waste water from sinks for use in toilets. Doing that would help deal the serious problems we have with run-off and our limited storm water system—which regularly leads to flooding and the discharge of sewage into our rivers and many basements. And it would require lots more pipes in our building, creating far more jobs for plumbers than waterless urinals would cost.
So I hope the news today prefigures some real creative solutions to the problems to which Frank DiCicco and others have pointed in recent weeks.
Disclaimer: Like everything else I write here or elsewhere, this post reflects my own views, not that of my employer, SEIU PA State Council, or any of the political groups with which I work.