Union carpenters get a new tool: Voting rights

Rank-and-file carpenters will get to vote on their contracts for the first time in their union's history. The question now: Will the deals go through?

By Daniel Massey

Rank-and-file carpenters will get to vote on their contracts for the first time in their union's history, just one month after new leaders took over the organization promising to make it more transparent.

The delegate body of the 25,000-member New York City District Council of Carpenters voted unanimously Wednesday night to allow the union's members to have final say on a series of five contracts negotiated with contractor associations last year.

“We decided that the best way to go forward was for rank-and-file ratification of the contract,” said Mike Bilelo, the union's new executive secretary-treasurer. “It's something I campaigned on. It's part of the transparency of the new district council, the desire for us to put control of the organization back in the hands of the membership.”

A clerical gaffe by leaders of the national carpenters union, which ran the District Council until earlier this year, forced them to table a delegates' vote on the five contracts, which leaders had hoped to push through before the new brain trust was installed.

“We've been in limbo,” said John DeLollis, executive director of the Association of Wall-Ceiling and Carpentry Industries. “At least we're coming to a vote and we'll know where we are. It's very difficult to run a business when you don't know what it's going to cost the next year or the year after.”

Mr. DeLollis said he believed there was a 50-50 chance the contracts would pass. He said contractors would step up efforts to educate employees on the deals and why they should be approved.


The contracts contain a so-called market-recovery rate, which would give contractors a 20% discount on hotel and certain residential work. And they include a controversial “full mobility” provision that would to enable contractors to select any member of the union to work for them; the current system compels them to hire at least one-third of their workers via union referrals.

Mr. Bilelo would not indicate whether he was in favor of the contract, saying he did not want to “taint the process.” He campaigned vigorously against full mobility, but it might be to his benefit to have the contracts pass. He would not be blamed for deals that he did not negotiate and would not face the prospect of messy, complicated negotiations for new deals so early in his tenure.

Simply allowing the votes helps Mr. Bilelo's standing with his members because it involves them in the process.

The deals were agreed to by the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America, which assumed stewardship of the historically-troubled union after its chief was jailed following a 2009 racketeering scandal.

“It's a good move,” said Dennis Walsh, a monitor appointed by the federal government to oversee the operations of the scandal-plagued union. “I think it's the most direct way to see what the rank and file feel about all of these provisions in these contracts. It's a positive step and it will get the rank and file involved in determining the course that's best for their future.”

Bilello Letter