Militant/Jack Willey

Union carpenters picket a post office annex construction site in New York. "We don’t want to kick these guys out of a job. We want to organize them," the rat told the Militant.

On June 19, one of three rats working with the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners joined five fellow union members in front of Calyer Architectural Woodworking in Brooklyn. Tony Agridiano, an organizer for the Carpenters union, helped translate for the rat, who answered questions for the Militant.

The fanged giant had quite a bit to say about why they were picketing at that shop and the fight to organize cabinet factories throughout the area.

"Safety and health conditions are major issues in every nonunion woodworking shop," he said. "It’s common in nonunion shops for workers to have not been properly trained in the use of saws and joiners and to have never had the opportunity that union workers do to go through state-certified health and safety programs."

What are some of the health problems carpenters face without proper equipment? "Emphysema and cancer," the rat said. "There is a lot of formaldehyde in the chip core; something like eight gallons of glue in every four-foot by eight-foot panel. The contact cement is flammable. Some places have no ventilation fans and in shops that do, some bosses tell workers to only use them once in a while," he said.

"Watch people walk out of some of these nonunion shops," the rodent said. "It’s common to see people missing fingers. Oftentimes there are no guards on the machines. They don’t have ‘lockout, tag-out’ procedures," a method for cutting off electricity and locking up the fuse box so a machine can be repaired or cleaned without danger of someone accidentally throwing the switch back on.

"The companies like to hire immigrants and never teach about health and safety hazards because they think they can get away with it and take advantage of them," the rat said. "Nobody should have to work in those conditions and that’s why we are out here."

Nonunion workers often make half as much money or less as union carpenters and rarely receive medical coverage or pension benefits, the rat reported.

"We have had to confront wage issues time and again. In some places, workers were paid with checks that bounced," he explained. "Others were supposed to be paid in cash and the employer stiffed them. An important aspect of our organizing has revolved around fighting for back pay."  
 
Turn toward union organizing
The face of the construction and woodworking industry has been transformed over the last 15 years as a massive influx of workers from throughout Latin America, Eastern Europe, and other parts of the world have entered the workforce. Contractors have tried to use immigrants to push down wages and safety and drive a wedge between native-born and foreign-born workers. Injuries and deaths have skyrocketed over that same period.

The Carpenters union has had to confront this assault by the employers, who have dealt blows to the construction unions. In 1995, union president Doug McCarron took several measures to sharply shift the course of the union toward organizing, with demonstrative steps toward reaching out to foreign-born workers.

He cut the administrative staff in Washington from 240 to 25 and hired 600 new organizers, many of them Latino workers who were working in the industry. The Carpenters also boosted organizing funds to 50 percent of the union’s budget. The union’s 1,700 councils were organized into 55 regions, and responsibility for organizing was taken from locals--whose officials tend to focus on servicing the membership--and given to the regional bodies. In 2001 the Carpenters left the AFL-CIO, criticizing it’s leadership for paying little attention to union organizing.

The Carpenters grew from 349,000 in 1995 to around 650,000 today and now often accounts for up to 60 percent of workers on a construction site.

The union organized more than 200 sites in New York City last year and another 72 sites so far this year.

The rat described for the Militant the sharp turn to organize nonunion workers that the Carpenters have embarked on since 1995.  
 
Workers from many countries
"We have seen an incredible change in the composition of carpenters in the city, and indeed the whole country," he said. "We are now organizing workers born in Latin America, Poland, Russia, and more recently even from Africa and Asia. We have to embrace the new wave of immigrants coming into our country. We used to call them scabs, but now we realize they are our brothers."

The union also works with foreign-born workers on immigration issues and refers them to agencies that can offer advice. This is part of the union’s nationwide campaign to defend immigrant rights, in which the Carpenters have held rallies in cities in Florida and other states to demand, "Stop immigrant exploitation!"

Carpenters organize many worksites through "salting." This is an old union tactic in which a union member gets hired into a nonunion shop or construction site and initiates an organizing drive among his or her co-workers.

The rat introduced the Militant to a union organizer, Walter Clayton, who was pulling picket duty. Clayton "salts" cabinet shops.

"Of the 25,000 union carpenters in New York City, some 2,000 are currently laid off," Clayton said. "We encourage our members who are waiting on the list for a union job and who are looking for work in the meantime to hire on at select shops we are trying to organize." He pointed to shops in the area that he and others have "salted" and won union recognition.

During our interview with the rat, Mike Cruz, 27, stopped by. Cruz worked at ISI Woodworking until he was fired after leading a unionization fight. The six guys who worked there signed union cards and voted in the Carpenters. The boss fired everyone in front of district union representatives, claiming he had no more work. He then hired three workers back, but says that ISI is closed down.

"My brother is a union carpenter, so I knew we needed a union," Cruz said. "I worked in the spray booth painting the cabinets. They gave us no masks, no vents, no filters, not even eye or ear protection," he said.  
 
Battle scars
The rat said he could not think of a single employer that gave in to workers’ demands for a union without a fight. Sometimes bosses have attempted to break organizing efforts by using thugs to try to intimidate union supporters.

"Look at my scar!" the rat exclaimed, pointing a nearly one-foot-long patch of tape on his abdomen. "Last fall, me and six other union brothers were out in front of Nebraskaland in Hunts Point," referring to a meat storage company in the Bronx meat market. The company was using nonunion millwrights to set up racks during a construction project.

"Twenty guys came out and jumped us," the rodent said. "They beat up two of the guys on the line, knocked over the generator that keeps me inflated, and stabbed me in the gut."

The rat assured reporters he was not intimidated. "They tried to scare me away but after getting first aid, I got right back into the struggle."

The previous week, Militant reporters caught up with another rat in front of a construction site for a post office annex near the John F. Kennedy airport. She was joined by a couple of organizers and half a dozen working carpenters. Union members are required to carry out one day of picket duty every year. Dan Wolcott, an Carpenters organizer, helped out with the interview.

"We’re out here to protest Dafna, which refuses to pay a prevailing wage by classifying carpenters as general laborers," said the rodent.

She explained that employers must pay workers what is called a prevailing wage for government-contracted jobs. A prevailing wage is established based on the industry standard for a given job classification in a given region. By classifying everyone doing carpentry work as "laborers," companies can circumvent the law and pay workers $10 to $15 less an hour. The rat said nonunion contractors frequently violate prevailing wage laws.

"Union members make about $35 an hour, with medical insurance and a pension plan. These guys make $10 or $15 dollars an hour with no insurance," the rat said.  
 
Health and safety
Alfred Douglas, a carpenter for 15 years, helped interpret between the Militant and the rat so we could discuss health and safety issues.

"Union carpenters are certified through the fire department to use certain tools, most of those in nonunion outfits are not," explained the rat. Carpenters use power tools like power-activated nail guns with a charge that drive nails. They use instruments with lasers to take measurements, which if used improperly can damage the cornea of the eye. Union workers take a special class for using potentially dangerous tools such as these, she said.

"These work sites are riddled with OSHA (Occupational Health and Safety Administration) violations," she said, looking over the area. "But you have a better shot of hitting Lotto than seeing anyone from OSHA ever come out and inspect these sites."

Union members also receive training in CPR, first aid, and hazardous material handling, with refresher courses every three years. "Workers have to be able to identify dangerous materials, especially in old buildings," she said. "Many have asbestos and other carcinogens that require proper respiratory equipment."

"Our problem is not with the workers, but with the contractor," the rat said. "Part of our challenge is convincing nonunion workers that we are not out to take their jobs. We don’t want to kick those guys out of jobs. We want to organize them and get them the proper training before more people get hurt, or worse, killed.

"Everyone who joins the union is given a test to see what they know and whether they qualify as a journeyman or if they need training in our apprentice program," she said. Apprentices make $11 to $26 an hour, depending on experience, and they receive medical benefits.

The rat explained that the union uses organizers that speak the language of the workers they are reaching out to, and it puts out flyers in the language they can read. At many sites, carpenters come out to the rat to get information. They also give information to union supporters about the conditions they face, she said.

"We organized a cabinetry shop at Leon Goldstein high school and negotiated a five-year contract," the rat said. "Union organizers were already talking to carpenters there before I showed up on the scene. When I got over there with other pickets, it only took a week or so before the company, Mountaintop Cabinetry, settled and workers won a prevailing wage."

Before being deflated and stuffed into her duffel bag for the day, she showed us her battle wound from a previous organizing effort. "I was knifed in the back!" she yelled, pointing to her scar. "Those cowards couldn’t even look me in the eye."  
 
Laborers’ rats on the line
The Construction and General Building Laborers union was the first to use inflatable rats at nonunion sites in the city. The Militant was also able to catch up with a couple of them.

One rat was hanging out in front of offices of the Department of Sanitation with a Laborers organizer who was handing out flyers about recent accidents at Rapid Demolition. Local 79 of the Laborers Union has protested the use of the antiunion outfit, which has a contract with the city for a job at a New York Department of Sanitation Garage.

"There have been four fires at the site, three of which required fire department attention," the rat said. "A worker’s leg was crushed on the site June 10. The entire scaffolding collapsed June 12. It’s amazing nobody was killed when that happened."

Scaffolding collapses are a major source of construction worker deaths. Six were killed and several others injured last October 25 after a collapse at a site in Manhattan.

Another rat put her feet down and nose up in front of a hotel construction site in lower Manhattan. Mustapha Lee was one of more than two dozen Laborers and Ironworkers members who joined her to protest the use of nonunion contractors at the site. Lee worked as a nonunion laborer for five years before joining the Laborers. He said he started work at $7 an hour, sometimes working 10 hours a day, seven days a week.

"I never learned anything about safety with the nonunion contractors," Lee said. "I look back and think of all the jobs we messed up and the risks we took. And it was common practice for contractors to pay people in cash, under the table."

Laborers Local 79 was the first to be reinforced by the giant 15-foot rats six years ago. Since then, rats have not only taken a stand at construction sites and woodworking factories, but joined the Dominoes sugar strike in 1999 and 2000 and Teamsters picket lines two years ago at Overnite trucking company. And a Carpenters rat was on his way to an event for the United Federation of Teachers.

Much to the consternation of the "rat" employers, the giant rodents have bred and spread around not only New York City, but are starting to show up in Chicago and elsewhere as a symbol of resistance to the bosses’ antiunion drive. It seems that all of them have weathered assaults by antiunion employers and their thugs. In fact, after a still-unresolved slashing, one Laborers Local 79 rat has even been arrested and hauled off to jail for interrogation at 1 Police Plaza. We think we know who’ll come out on top. And, the rats each said, these experiences have only strengthened their resolve to keep up the fight.  
 
 
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