...the head of his rank and file. He showed a tremendous amount of leadership. In February, after a few months of negotiating, and without much to show for it, the CIP retreated to Florida for its annual conference. It was there, most feel, the tide began to turn and the agreement started to gain momentum.

PINTER: I actually thought there was a lot of ill will in Florida, initially. It had started to get pretty heated a couple times. The turning point there was a midnight meeting between the two executive boards saying, “Let’s cut this out!” With all those people in the room, it’s not going to be productive. We needed cooler heads in a smaller, more casual setting.

COLLETTI: The contractors were scared to death down there. They’re all wondering, “My God I’m going to lose my business? I’m laying off workers left and right. Am I going to have to go build non-union?” There were over 500 rank and file members and contractors and Gary got up and told them all that labor wasn’t going to allow that to happen. And then I stood up and said we we’re not going to let our businesses go bankrupt. Then around midnight, he and I were sitting up in a room saying, “Okay, we know the feedback we’re getting from our respective constituents, how are we going to make this work?”

LABARBERA: I’ve gone to every CIP conference since its inception in 1998. The first one we had 40, 50 people. This one there was close to 600. There was a lot of tension on both sides. Everyone was feeling it. I told them that we didn’t create this but we have to deal with it. It was probably the most healthy kind of tension you could have had. Everybody had the opportunity to get out their fears and concerns, say things they maybe normally wouldn’t have said. That process really accelerated the negotiations and got everyone thinking on the same page.

ERIKSON: If one trade looked at another trade and what they did or didn’t get or what they were or weren’t doing, nothing was going to get done. Once we separated into groups as an industry and began negotiating the savings, we took care of that really quickly.

Another turning point in Florida came when the contractors gave a presentation outlining what they were prepared to give up. Until then, there had been considerable fear on the labor side that management wasn’t absorbing nearly enough economic pain to justify the union’s concessions.

COLLETTI: They said they were laying people off. They said they were reducing health benefits. They said they were halting 401Ks. It was important for labor to see that they weren’t the only ones who were going to have to suffer these kinds of economic sacrifices. I can’t tell you how many union leaders came up to me after that and told me, “We needed to hear that.” It sort of fostered the idea that we’re all in this together. We’re either going to come out of this together or we’re going to all go bankrupt together.

BONANZA: All of us, the contractors the trades, we all have a lot of responsibility to get people to work. We felt we had to react and the solution we saw was to come up with something that would reduce the costs of the job without really hurting the benefits or the wages. There was a lot to work through, but we got through it. Once we got down to Florida you got the idea that no one was walking away from the table anymore.

LABARBERA: There were definitely arguments and everything down there, but at the end of the conference, both...