Out to hurt builder, union takes aim at tenant instead

Thursday, July 26, 2007 | 7:08 a.m.

When Robert Bolick arrived at his law office one morning, he found himself changed into a monstrous rat.

Or at least that's how he says the carpenters union depicted him on the fliers its members started distributing outside his office last week.

Bolick is a rat - that snarling symbol of union scorn - because he's moving his practice into an office building part ly built by a non-union contractor who doesn't pay prevailing wages - $32.63 an hour.

Bolick told the Sun he had no idea who was or wasn't involved in building the structure. But the carpenters union's attorney said Bolick should have known.

"We believe people have a moral obligation to be concerned about this," Dan Shanley said. "Would it be any better for people to get the materials that Nazis had the Jews build because the end user is saying, 'Well, I didn't know the Nazis were killing Jews to make furniture?' "

And so Bolick became a rat, hunched over the American flag, gnawing on the stripes. He says he had no part in selecting contractors for the Summerlin office building he's moving into, and had no idea what companies were doing the construction. Still, the tenant was targeted.

What happened to Bolick is nothing out of the ordinary, said Richard Hurd, professor of labor relations at Cornell University.

In the past 10 years, unions everywhere have been looking for new ways to gain leverage against employers they disapprove of. One way has been targeting those indirectly related to the employer in question, in the hope these secondary "offenders" will do the union's bidding: pressur ing the contractor into hiring union-approved labor.

"Picketing an attorney that is only indirectly connected to what is going on, they are not interested in damaging the attorney," Hurd said. "They're interested in applying leverage to the contractor."

This tactic is as successful as any the unions have right now, Hurd said.

The flier being distributed outside Bolick's office shames the attorney for "Desecration of the American Way of Life," and suggests citizens call Bolick (his phone number is listed) and "tell him that you want him to do all he can to change this situation and see that area labor standards are met for construction work on any project they are involved with."

Shanley suggests that if Bolick doesn't like the attention, he should complain to the contractor about hiring decisions.

Bolick was so out-of-the-loop about the building's construction that he mistakenly thought the union was protesting about the subcontractor hanging 16 doors.

It really is upset about the drywall subcontractor, Proline Interiors, which calls the union's action harassment.

The general contractor, Bormann Development Inc., says even if Bolick complained to try to get Proline off the project, doing so would breach a contract arranged in December.

Bolick says the whole ordeal has become "the nightmare on Elton Avenue," where his office is now.

On Wednesday, protest ers were still standing outside his office. Calls to Carpenters Local 1977 have gone unreturned. For now, it's unclear whether the union protesters will be waiting for Bolick at the new office, banner in hand.

"This law firm has never hired a contractor. I knew nothing about it, and now they are demonstrating in front of my law firm," he said. "You add that all together, and now I'm a rat chewing on the American flag."