As its strike against local building contractors moves into its fourth week, the St. Louis Bricklayers union plans to ask a federal mediator to step in if the contentious impasse continues when the two sides reconvene on Monday.
Business Manager Don Brown of the bricklayers’ Local 1 blames the stalemate on the St. Louis Mason Contractors Association, which Brown accuses of trying to use the economic downturn to loosen the unions’ grip on local construction projects.
“It’s a tactic that hasn’t been tried here before,” Brown said. “They’re trying to get members to resign from the union. It’s telling guys, ‘You can scab on your own union.’”
Association Executive Director David Gillick denies any attempt to bust the union, citing an alliance between the bricklayers and union contractors dating back a century. At issue, Gillick said, is the association’s belief that the future success of regional construction rests on a fundamental shift in the way unions and contractors do business.
“We choose to be union contractors. They choose to be union bricklayers. But if we don’t change the path we’ve been on, the marketplace will change it for us. It won’t be our choice anymore,” said Gillick.
Len Toenjes, president of the Associated General Contractors of St. Louis, said the split between the two parties exemplified a failed reliance on short-term fixes to the complex task of positioning the region to compete in the post-recession economy.
“In order to attract development, we need to be competitive,” Toenjes said. “But striking a reasonable balance is difficult for everybody. And it’s especially hard when two (organizations) that have been doing business for 100 years are suddenly thrust into the global marketplace.”
The public bickering marks an end to a pledge by the union not to negotiate the terms of its next contract in public. Brown said he broke that agreement in response to remarks Gillick made in an interview ten days ago with Charlie Brennan on KMOX radio.
The bricklayers walked off the job when the five-year contract they agreed to in 2006 expired at midnight, June 1. Approximately 500 members of Local 1 haven’t worked since.
Another 200 have remained on projects, part of an “interim agreement” with a handful of contractors who agreed to honor the terms of a new contract retroactively, assuming a settlement can be reached.
Local 1 also hit the pavement five years ago when talks faltered in a resolution of the 2006 pact. That strike lasted only five days.
What separates the tone of the negotiations in 2006 from 2011, said Brown, is the economic climate.
Compensation and work rules are the primary negotiating points separating the two parties. The association is asking for concessions that would peel back salary and benefits by four percent. Local 1 has balked at the proposal, noting that economy-induced declines in construction already slashed the average annual bricklayer salary to $30,702 in 2010.
The hours worked by bricklayers this year have already dropped 38 percent, Brown said. To the union, taking a salary reduction in a depleted construction market makes no sense.
“Even if we agreed to (a pay cut), there still won’t be any residential work out there, because they just aren’t building homes right now, and they won’t start until the banks start releasing money,” said Brown.
The two sides also can’t get together on a rule change that would increase the allowable weight of bricks lifted by workers from 30- to 40-pound masonry blocks.
Brown, citing a study, said a bricklayer hoisting 40-pound blocks 200 times a day would lift the equivalent of five pickup trucks a week or 2 1/2 fully loaded 747 jetliners over the course of a year.
Gillick maintains the 40-pound lift is consistent with union-regulated rules in other jurisdictions, including those in Illinois.
The union and the contractors are in accord on one aspect of the strike: Without an expedited agreement, current projects throughout the region will soon suffer the consequences of the labor stoppage.
Toenjes says some construction sites are already ’seeing an impact.”
And Gillick cautions the situation is “hitting a critical point” as bricklayers are needed to complement the work of carpenters, ironworkers, sheet metal workers and other tradesmen.
“Their patience is running thin, and they won’t be able to let a project dwindle,” Gillick said of general contractors and clients in the region. “They are going to have to make a decision about whether to bring in a union guy or a non-union guy. And in some cases that is already happening.”
On Friday, Day 17 of the strike, neither Gillick nor Brown was optimistic that an agreement might be imminent.
One measure of the distance separating the two men was Gillick’s reaction when asked if he’d agree with Brown to turning negotiations over to a federal mediator.
His answer: Probably not.
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