ILC Assembly: Crafts at a Crossroad, Future of the Building Trades

Thank you.

Thank you.

Tom, I want to stick with you, actually, before you put that microphone down.

Because there, again, I have all these themes that came up from all of our conversations.

And one of them I have underlined here is the state, right? So the state giveth and the state taketh away is one of the stories we get from Greg, right? Which is that...

There was a prehistory of unionism in this country, which the building trades were a large part of, which was pre-Wagner Act, even pre-Railroad Act, pre-state intervention, NLRB, state intervention to ensure that we all have nice golden handcuffs, and there's certain things that we can do, and there's certain things we can't do.

I can't strike on behalf of Leo, right? He's a I can't have a sympathy strike with him.

I can't strike on behalf of the operating engineers or the transit workers.

I can't do a secondary boycott if something is delivered using non-union labor.

All these things subsequently are banned.

All these tactics that Greg talked about, going from job to job, having these trade movements, are now illegal and will get you decertified and or thrown into prison as the president of your local Tom was at one point.

So I guess the state, right? We've talked about a political party within this country, the Democratic Party, and the way in which they interface with our trade unions.

But how about the state itself? What's the relationship that you see as a public sector worker and as an industrial worker? Are you under the NLRA or are you under the Railroad Act?

So we're not under the RLA, which is the Railway Labor Act.

We're under the Taylor Law, though.

Oh, the Taylor, because you're a public sector worker.

Which is the

same, yeah, New York City Taylor Law, which illegalizes strikes.

And in 1999, under Giuliani, when there was a wave of militancy in my industry, and we were all about rated on the eve of striking, for sure.

If they had called a strike, there would have been a massive strike.

And so they made using the word strike illegal.

They knew it wasn't going to pass muster at the end of the day.

But when we do go on strike, we get massively fined.

And you get fined two days' work for every day that you're out.

It's a very effective and clever law, but it's absolutely the handcuffs, which the building trades have experienced.