Michael Pesa
"We are not a narrow, selfish trade organization, entirely for ourselves.”
"[Unionism is] not about 'doing the right thing,' 'carrying on in the American way', or any other philosophical issues. Simply put, it's about self-preservation and making money."
For nearly two months, I have worked as an intern for the New York City District Council of Carpenters, an organization representing ten locals affiliated with the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America. According to my mentor, I am the first intern the District Council has ever had. As such, both the union and I were unsure what to expect from one another when I first walked in the door of the office.
My initial impressions of the Carpenters were formed before I ever started my internship. I had learned through various media and interpersonal outlets that the Carpenters were a fairly conservative, predominantly white, male, middle-class craft union, and that they were mostly concerned only with their own membership and not as much with building a larger labor movement that could empower all workers regardless of trade, industry, or skill level (except in specific instances where it directly benefits the narrow self-interest of carpenters). After learning that I was to be placed with the Carpenters, I also learned from a union carpenter who is an acquaintance of mine that the Carpenters have a top-down, elitist structure, a history of corruption and mob ties, a collaborationist approach to contractors, and a rabidly pro-militarist, conservative leadership.
After becoming somewhat familiar with the District Council from the “inside”, I regrettably must uphold many of these initial impressions as accurate. However, I also learned a number of positive, admirable, and downright impressive things about the union, and more importantly I gained understanding and insight as to why the union and others like it are the way they are.
My roles and assignments in the District Council vary from day to day. One of the main things I do, and apparently the purpose I was originally chosen for, is writing for the District Council magazine, “The Carpenter” (not to be confused with the international UBC magazine, “The Carpenter”, or the hundreds of local union newsletters bearing the same exact title). I have gotten to interview members and organizers at events, in the office, and via phone. For the September/October issue I only wrote a little bit here and there, but for the upcoming November/December issue, I will have at least four full-length articles and several shorter pieces. One of them was my own idea—to cover the Immigrant Worker Freedom Ride, which only had marginal UBC involvement and probably would otherwise not have made it into the magazine. I interviewed a Carpenter organizer who was deeply involved and got his perspective as an immigrant from Trinidad. I expanded the article to include a brief history of union-immigrant relations and in doing so I found out that despite the traditional anti-immigrant bent of craft unions, the founder of the Carpenters, P.J. McGuire, actually spoke out in support of immigrants at a time when most union leaders condemned them. This is one of many examples I have come across where the UBC defies simple classification as “conservative” or “elitist”. There are many sparkles of silver amidst the gray canvass.
Aside from the article writing, I have also done more mundane work such as data entry, envelope stuffing, making phone calls, and traveling all the way to Far Rockaway to take a picture of a street sign. I have been to several picket lines, the Labor Day parade, and completely by coincidence (i.e. the union never asked me to go) to a massive Yale living wage rally where I witnessed and photographed UBC International President Douglass McCarron get arrested and carried away by police for civil disobedience.
The latter example is one way that the Carpenters contribute to the wider labor movement. Despite the frequent sectarianism of UBC leadership, McCarron also appears to be on a mission to secure a higher status for the union within the labor movement. Sometimes this cause manifests itself in seemingly destructive ways, like when McCarron recently defected the Carpenters from the AFL-CIO in an arbitrary, top-down decision that upset and disappointed many members. Other times, the struggle for glory and fame calls for solidarity, hence the Yale incident, which also included the mobilization of hundreds of carpenters from several regional councils and close Carpenter involvement in pressuring Yale trustees dispersed across the U.S. and Canada. (I picketed with New York Carpenters in front of the home of Yale Trustee Ted Shen.) Obviously, more than just cold self-promotion was involved in the Yale campaign. Many Carpenters participated because of genuine feelings of solidarity. The point I am making is simply that the union does not seem to have a practical investment in mutual aid, outside the narrow scope of the building trades. Active support for non-carpenter causes like the Yale Living Wage Campaign are sporadic and peculiar, almost exhibiting an attitude of charity, as though there is nothing to be gained from it by the Carpenters except good publicity, the indebtedness and gratefulness of other unions, and the satisfaction of doing a good deed.
Despite the fact that the Carpenters have always been a specifically craft-oriented union confined to skilled carpenters and closely related trades, the UBC’s radical founder, P.J. McGuire, often made bold statements about the common interest of all workers that almost bordered on Wobbly-style “One-big-unionism”. Those days are long gone, and today’s Carpenters, for better or for worse, see themselves as part of an industry or “sector”: the unionized construction sector. The disturbing realities of modern capitalism have motivated the UBC to act as though union carpenters have more in common with their contractors than they do with fellow workers from other industries. In a narrow economic analysis, they’re right. Through a combination of organizing and training, carpenters and other unionized construction workers have made extremely impressive gains over the years, and in large part make wages and benefits high enough that there is little motivation to push very hard for more. Strikes against union contractors are rare in the carpenter trade, and usually revolve around an illegal act or a clear violation of contract on the part of the contractor.
The main issues that carpenters are concerned with are increasing market share and creating new jobs. This is due to the fact that carpentry jobs are almost always temporary in nature. Unemployment is always just over the horizon for the carpenter, and in fact it is considered normal for a carpenter to spend some time on the out-of-work list every so often. Market share struggles sometimes involve non-union workers organizing to demand union recognition, but more often are all out battles to wrest as many jobs as possible from the “non-union sector” and give them to existing union members. This is frequently done through top-down “labor management’ techniques that put the unorganized out of the picture.
Job creation is usually pursued through joint political action with contractors, using the union’s influence and political activity to push for just about any unionized construction project that might be proposed. Sometimes this puts the union in direct opposition to community groups and even other unions, a current example being the District Council’s partnership with the New York Jets to build a tax-subsidized stadium and numerous other useless buildings in a West Village neighborhood that has made it clear that it doesn’t want them. The initial plan would displace hundreds of renters (sparking rebellion from tenants associations and housing activists), several family owned small businesses, and several hundred textile workers organized under UNITE! The Carpenters have been in dialogue with UNITE! about how to resolve the conflict, but the bottom line is that the Carpenters will support the West Side Development project regardless of its impacts. Frankly, if they didn’t, they would have a lot of explaining to do to their thousands of unemployed members.
These conditions encourage a strategy of class collaboration that leads to a tendency for union members and officials to simply equate the union with the trade, identifying first and foremost as union carpenters, rather than as “workers”. The goals of the union are frequently expressed as promoting the interests of the carpentry trade as a whole. A rather extreme example of this appears in a treatise titled “An Outline of the UBC’s History”, that appears on page 39 of the book “Trade Unionism: History, Ethics, Principles”, which all New York City UBC apprentices are required to read. The document, which purports to be a history of the union (not the trade), reads in part: “Carpentry is among the most ancient of crafts, practiced in every civilization since the beginning of time…Many descriptions of carpentry are cited in the Old Testament, not the least of which was the building of the Ark by Noah.”
Apparently, the union was founded thousands of years ago, rather than the year 1881 CE, as most accounts have it. One can imagine the debate over what Jesus (who was of course a carpenter) would have done in the case of a labor dispute. Would the “turn the other cheek” principle preclude the possibility of a strike for material gains, or would the divine craftsman stand up for “the least of my people” and help hasten the meek’s inheritance of the Earth? Surely the Son of God wouldn’t scab on his fellow carpenters!
The tendency to view the union as a trade organization more than a wage-earners collective is in part a legacy of pre-capitalist times. Carpenters used to belong to a feudal class known as skilled artisans, who were neither peasants nor landlords, but rather independent craftsmen that worked with their hands but controlled their own trade with the help of self-regulation through guilds. A carpenter would begin as an apprentice working for a master carpenter, and would eventually advance to the level of journeyman where he (there were no female carpenters in feudal times) could seek his own employment and someday go into business for himself as a master carpenter, employing apprentices of his own. The difference between employee and employer, wage-slave and boss, were simply a matter of age and experience, not a difference of class. With the onset of capitalism and the industrial revolution, these conditions changed, and by the mid-nineteenth century, many contractors were opportunistic businessmen who had never held a tool in their life. These changes forced carpenters and other skilled workers to reorganize their outmoded guild structures into trade unions, but the traditional roots of the trade never completely died. As a consequence, class collaboration and craft sectarianism often seems quite natural within the carpenter trade. This is one of the many understandings I have gained during my stay with the Carpenters.
In this essay I may have appeared to take an overly critical tone toward the union, but my purpose in doing so is simply to demonstrate that I am learning and recognizing the logical and almost unavoidable reasons why the union is the way it is. My early prejudices and premonitions toward the union have become refined into an empathetic and realistic understanding of a group of truly remarkable individuals whose passion for worker justice is deep and heartfelt, if sometimes confused and distorted.
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Oct. 22, 2003
Internship Paper I
-UBC founder P.J. McGuire, 1890
-Mike Falk, a management representative, giving strategy tips to UBC officials at a joint labor/contractor "Leadership Summit" and golf competition in Palm Springs, CA, May 2003.