Challengers: Carpenter’s union should be back in AFL-CIO

Wednesday, Aug. 24, 2005 | 10:01 a.m.

Two challengers to carpenter's union leadership said Tuesday they don't expect to succeed in their bid to unseat union President Douglas McCarron at a convention here this week.

But United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America presidential challenger Tom Lewandowski and Ken Little, candidate for secretary-treasurer, said they intend to raise issues about members' rights -- and their union's decision pull out of the AFL-CIO in 2001.

Only Thursday's vote will tell whether the call to rejoin the AFL-CIO fold will find traction among the 1,880 voting delegates at the Bally's and Paris Las Vegas hotel-casinos.

Union spokesman Monte Byars denied membership in the federation was an issue at all.

"This is not an AFL-CIO story," Byars said. "It has to do with restructuring and internal stuff."

However, Norman Solomon, dean of Charles F. Dolan School of Business at Fairfield University in Connecticut, said he was not surprised a union faction was advocating a return to the fold during an election.

"It shows that while there's a lot of unrest in the labor unions overall, deep down there's a desire for solidarity," he said.

Little, 54, of Seattle, drew just 10 percent of the vote when he mounted a similar challenge to McCarron when AFL-CIO membership was on the table at the union's last convention in 2000.

On Tuesday, he accused McCarron of pulling the 523,000-member union out of the umbrella organization without the support of rank-and-file workers, and of using administrative power to silence opposition.

"We will ask the members if they want back in the AFL-CIO. I know they do," Little said as he and Lewandowski prepared to submit their names for nomination Wednesday with western district vice presidential challenger Scott Brineman.

Byars, who said he was speaking on behalf of McCarron and the administration slate of nine candidates, said they would have no comment until after voting on Thursday.

He said union administrative changes were ratified at the 2000 convention.

McCarron is seeking a third term after being elected in 1995. The union broke away from the labor federation in 2001, with leaders saying they wanted to focus on organizing.

In June, the carpenters were among seven labor unions that formed the Change to Win Coalition, promising to challenge AFL-CIO leadership and focus on organizing workers.

The push to organize nonunion workers has emerged as a trend as the national economy has evolved from manufacturing to service jobs, said Daniel Cornfield, a labor expert and sociology professor at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn.

"The Change to Win Coalition involves unions that tend to organize the have-nots," Cornfield said. "They are ethnic and racial minorities, women and immigrants."

In July, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, United Food and Commercial Workers and Service Employees International Union broke away from the umbrella AFL-CIO, taking 4 million of the AFL-CIO's 13 million members and almost $28 million of the union's estimated $120 million budget.

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On the Net:

United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America: http://www.carpenters.org