Full Mobility Hits Speed Bumps

The UBC's full mobility proposal or contractors' insistence on the right to hire 100% of carpenters they choose, hit a speed bump in federal court last Tuesday.

In his opening remarks to federal judge Richard Berman, Review Officer (RO) Dennis Walsh said, "that the current delegate body is not correctly constituted and does not fairly represent the members."

Walsh specifically cited that Local 157 is "very much under-represented and that other locals are over-represented. He also stated that any Collective Bargaining Agreements (CBA’s) should be presented to the new delegate body which can be seated within one month from today."

Judge Berman expressed his agreement with that proposition.

Since being elected in June, President Patrick Nee has been demanding fair representation in the delegate body. Before Local 608 was dissolved, it had 18 delegates, and Local 157 had 11 delegates (29 total), currently Local 157 is represented by only 24 delegates.

In a letter to John Ballantyne, Nee cited that "the general carpentry locals which have two thirds of the members, have only 44 delegates and the specialties locals have 43 delegates."

"Locals 1556 and 2790 are new specialty locals which were chartered by General President Douglas McCarron and all of their delegates were appointed by McCarron.  These two locals received an additional 9 delegates above what the 1999 Bylaws would allow them," Nee wrote.

On Wednesday, September 14, delegates to the council voted and approved a Cement League "Memorandum of Understanding" (MOU) by a vote of 45 to 18 and voted and approve a Wall-Ceiling MOU by a vote of 35-28 (the Wall-Ceiling MOU is contingent on full mobility, presently, as per a federal judge's order, contractors must hire a third of their workers through the union's out-of-work-list).

Contractors argue that this system is inefficient and hurts productivity because they end up with workers who may not have certain skills needed on specific job sites. Rank and fliers argue that full mobility will turn the union into a contractors union with no ability to obtain work from the out-of-work-list.

UBC representative Kenneth Conboy spoke, and said that he was aware of Pat Nee’s letter to John Ballantyne questioning the representation ratio but only received it Friday and had not time to study it.

Conboy did not submit a formal motion for full mobility or a promised Stipulation and Order (executed by the District Council, the RO, and the US Attorney's Office), instead he handed judge Berman his letter of June 21 (originally sent to the RO and to US Attorney's Office) outlining the full mobility plan and the blueprint for the new Labor Management Corporation.

Walsh also made it plain in court that if mobility is passed by the delegates, it will be subject to strict scrutiny from his office and that "there will be no toleration of any prospect for even the slightest system failure or corruption" (the government expressed its strong agreement to that position).