Masonry Magazine April 1986 Page. 20
Education
Providing educational services to our members is not a new function for MCAA. As a matter of fact, it is an area where we have really shined, now and again. But we must continue to provide greater, more meaningful classroom experiences for our members. We must have more good courses for ourselves-courses such as Basic Masonry Estimating, Masonry Estimating for a Profit, Computer-Assisted Estimating, and Financial Management. We must have more courses for our employees, like the MCAA Rough Terrain Fork Lift Training Course.
It is clear to me that education is a key to success for today's mason contractor. We cannot easily provide broad educational services for ourselves acting individually, but together, as members of MCAA, we can do it. It is obvious to me that if the Mason Contractors Association of America is going to continue to serve its members, it must expand its efforts in the area of education.
Labor Relations
CAA has long been active in the field of labor relations. Our international labor agreements with the International Union of Bricklayers and Allied Craftsmen, and the Laborers International Union of North America go back to our very beginnings. The International Masonry Institute provides us the opportunity to co-ordinate broad scope efforts such as promotion, research and development, training, and labor relations on an international scale. The labor relations branch of IMI has been extremely successful in settling local disputes when local authorities seemed unable to do so.
The full range of IMI activities and programs-all of them designed specifically to aid MCAA members and to advance the interests of the masonry industry is impressive testimony to what a labor/management partnership in an industry like masonry can accomplish.
In view of this, it is frustrating that too many of our members remain largely unaware of what IMI is doing. Too frequently they think of IMI as it was for its first 10 years of existence-a single purpose organization dedicated to market promotion. They overlook that fact that for the past five years, while it has remained dedicated to promotion, IMI has grown tremendously.
I urge all of our members to acquaint themselves with IMI's work by studying the report to be distributed at our Conference that outlines the Institute's programs. In this report they will find some of the most promising evidence that we mason contractors not only can have a successful future, but that we can participate in shaping and designing that future.
As a matter of fact, the relations that exist between MCAA and BAC, and MCAA and LIUNA have been very, very good these past few years. It is significant that our most serious threat in the labor relations field has come from two unions with whom we do not have labor contracts the Carpenters and the Operating Engineers. For many, many years, the Carpenters and the Operating Engineers have tried, unsuccessfully, to change our historic assignment for the building of our scaffolds and the manning of our fork lifts.
Recently they mounted a new plan of attack. Now they are attempting to use the "subcontracting clause" in their contracts with general contractors to settle a clear jurisdictional dispute over the assignment of this work. Because they have been unsuccessful in their efforts to obtain these work assignments from us, they now go after the general contractor. Several have been taken to arbitration, and the general contractors have lost. There have been substantial awards. The general contractors quickly decided that they have less than a vested interest in our preserving our historic work assignments. They stop fighting, and very soon, faced with losing a major project, we give up the right to make work assignments as we choose to make them, and we pick up some prima donnas that do not really fit in our composite masonry crews.
What can we do? Alone, almost nothing, but together we can take these contesting unions before the National Labor Relations Board, and into Federal Court, or any place where we can obtain precedential awards that all of our members can use to show that while subcontracting clauses may be used to prevent subletting work to non-union subcontractors, they are not to be used to settle jurisdictional disputes.
You and I, as individual mason contractors, cannot afford to fight these kinds of legal battles. Even our MCAA budget has no provisions for this kind of undertaking. Therefore, at the fall Executive Board Meeting last year, we decided to form a special Legal Defense Fund for this kind of effort. Voluntary contributions are being solicited so that we can mount successful efforts on a case-by-case basis. Currently two cases are under way. One case involves the Carpenters and scaffold building in Massachusetts, and one involves the Operating Engineers and fork lifts in Wisconsin. While we cannot depend on others to fight this fight for us, we are receiving support from AGC and local management groups who recognize that any success we have will affect a lot more than just the masonry industry.
You are going to be asked to make contributions to this fund. It is going to be a silent collection-that is, we do not want your nickels, dimes, and quarters. Instead, we want you to sit down and recognize the importance of this effort. Decide what it would cost you to fight this yourself. Decide what it will cost you if this fight is not fought, and won! Then do yourself a favor-write a meaningful check to the new MCAA Legal Defense Fund.