Split Has Many Eyeing Future Relationships Laborers and operating engineers are spearheading new building trades group outside AFL-CIO
Top officials of the laborers’ and operating engineers’ unions are sorting out the fine details of their decision to leave the AFL-CIO’s Building and Construction Trades Dept. to form a breakaway alliance with four other construction unions. But industry observers—particularly regional union officials, contractors and owners—are watching and wondering how yet another dissident union move will impact construction labor relations. Some privately worry whether new union strife will complicate jobsites. But others chalk it up to inside-the-Beltway labor politics and don’t expect much disruption in the field.
The latest furor involves the Feb. 14 announcement by the two unions, which represent 1.1 million construction workers, to leave BCTD and form a new organization, the National Construction Alliance (ENR 2/20 p. 7). The alliance, which launches on March 1, also will include the carpenters’ and teamsters’ unions, which already have exited BCTD and the AFL-CIO, and the ironworkers’ and the bricklayers’ unions, say laborers’ General President Terence M. O’ Sullivan and operating engineers General President Vincent J. Giblin.