Recent Developments
The Carpenters were formerly, like most other craft unions coming out of the AFL, a union that allowed its Locals substantial autonomy in bargaining and representing their members. The Carpenter's International began to consolidate Locals into a District Council system in 1988 and since the International Convention of 2000, a system of "Regional Councils" has been implemented, further reducing the number of districts and high ranking Board members from 13 down to 10. While it may be debatable whether McCarron's vision is better or worse for the International Carpenters Union as a whole, they are one of only a very few International Unions in America whose membership has been maintained or grown while most other Unions have seen large declines in membership.
Consolidation of Locals was to address the regionalization of the contracting industry. The contractor who only worked within the local area was quickly becoming a thing of the past, while non-Union contractors were free to move their crews - experienced with the company’s methods of operation - from job to job, Union Contractors could not move their workers beyond the borders of the District's jurisdictional boundaries without replacing their crews with new carpenters from the jurisdictional district outside the Contractor's home Council. Union contractors rightfully claimed the situation was making them less competitive than the non-Union crews, and the 50% rule was adopted. Union contractors may now use crews with one local Carpenter for each Company Carpenter on jobs outside their Region. The consolidation greatly expanded the boundaries of a Regional Council’s jurisdiction and left the consolidated areas with a larger Council better able to compete with the growing non-Union segment of specialized contractors. Because of the pervasive protectionism practiced by the Locals, free movement of workers within a Council was only possible after this authority was taken from the Locals and given to the Councils in the 1991 UBC Convention.) Within this new system, working Carpenters slowly lost the right to vote for their Local's Business Agents and Organizers, thus consolidating all power into the Regional Council's officers and leaving Locals and rank and file members to vote on Delegate to the intermediary Regional Councils. As the union began reorganizing its system of District Councils to give more power to Regional Councils, it consolidated Locals into fewer Charters and deprived local members of the right to vote on contract ratification, giving into the hands of the Regional Council Delegates as the contracts also expanded covering greater areas than a single Local. However, all contracts are voted on by the rank and file members of the various locals belonging to the Northern California Carpenter's Regional Council.
A Federal Court of Appeals first questioned, then approved the United States Department of Labor's failure to treat these Councils as "local unions" for purposes of the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act's requirements governing local union elections, the Department has announced its intent to reconsider its existing regulations on this issue.
The Carpenters disaffiliated from the AFL-CIO in 2001, citing complaints about the National Federation's failure to follow up on its program to organize the unorganized. Other observers attributed the Carpenters' departure to its unhappiness with jurisdictional awards and other restrictions on its ability to raid the jurisdictions of other unions, as well as the AFL-CIO's uncritical and exclusive support of the Democratic Party.
Even after it left the federation, however, the Carpenters formed a temporary alliance, the New Unity Partnership in 2003 and the Change to Win Coalition with other unions — including SEIU, UNITE HERE, and the Laborers — to force the AFL-CIO to consider basic structural changes in order to facilitate organizing. In the summer of 2009, the United Brotherhood of Carpenters disaffiliated from Change to Win after the other affiliates in the Change to Win Coalition demanded the Carpenters cease raiding other Union's membership and allow Carpenter members basic democratic rights.
The Carpenters under McCarron's leadership have found it difficult to engage the membership in organizing activities. To counter this reality the Carpenters' Union has undertaken a program whereby the Regional Councils hire day labor to picket and banner non-union contractors. This action has caused considerable disharmony within the Labor movement as the day labor receives only minimum wage and no benefits to perform these tasks. In many instances where those employees have attempted to organize they have been terminated. The Carpenters were able to exploit a loophole in the National Labor Relations Act to accomplish these dismissals.
Read more about this topic: United Brotherhood Of Carpenters And Joiners Of America
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