With construction jobs tight, some unions may strike

At a time when, by some accounts, local unemployment in construction is running about 40 percent, some construction unions may be contemplating going on strike.

Contracts covering carpenters, sheet-metal workers, electricians, plumbers, and cement masons expire at midnight Friday, but if there are work stoppages, the real effect will not be felt until Monday morning.

As construction has slowed in the region, at stake are the few active projects, including the Philadelphia Union soccer stadium in Chester, the Convention Center expansion, and major roadwork initiatives such as interchange work at Roosevelt Boulevard.

"There's not a lot of work," said Patrick Gillespie, business manager of the Philadelphia Building Trades Council, an umbrella organization of construction unions. But Gillespie said contractors might be trying to take advantage of a rough market to impose big cuts. His logic is that banks refusing to lend is the problem, not wage scales.

"If there's no work, there's no work," he said, "so you'll either be unemployed on strike or unemployed unemployed. For our members, it doesn't make a difference."

Walter Palmer 3d, chief operating officer of the General Building Contractors' Association of Philadelphia, an umbrella organization of contractors' groups, said he was optimistic that contracts would be reached because all parties were actively bargaining.

But Tony Wigglesworth, executive director of the Philadelphia Area Labor Management Committee, a nonprofit group that coordinates construction agreements among contractors, unions, and their clients, said: "I've never seen the negotiations this fractured, this embargoed, and this far apart."

In the construction trades, unions do not bargain with individual contracting companies. Instead, all the unionized contractors in one trade - electrical, for example - belong to an association. The association negotiates a master contract with union locals, such as International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 98, headed by John Dougherty. The master contract applies to all projects.

Leaders of the region's two largest construction unions, Dougherty and Edward C. Coryell, business manager of the Carpenters' Union, did not return calls seeking comment.

"Negotiations are not going easily," said Harry Santangelo, who is on the board of the Mechanical Contractors Association of Eastern Pennsylvania. "Both sides are 100 percent right," he said.

In 2007, Santangelo's business, PMC Mechanical Contractors Inc., of Ambler, employed 85 plumbers to install piping systems in hospitals and schools.

Now, he said, there are about 10 to 15 people.

"We need to freeze wages because the marketplace is tight," he said. Contractors are bidding jobs on thin or no margins just to keep a core group employed.

Even so, unions need to cope with rising health-care costs and their battered pension funds.

"The crash of 2007 hurt everyone's plans," he said. "Consequently, the pension funds need contributions. It's a beast you have to feed," but man-hours are down.

Most unions are not asking for wage increases.

"We just need $1.75 an hour to fund our pension and health and welfare funds," said Michael Fera, president of Local 592 of the Operative Plasterers' and Cement Masons' International Association.

In northern New Jersey, contracts have led to package freezes - no increases for wages, benefits, or pensions. That amounts to a pay cut. "I'm taking groceries off their table," Fera said.

Convention Center project manager Joe Resta said he thought his contractors and their employees would be on the job no matter what. He is relying on agreements made through Wigglesworth's group that preclude work stoppages.

"I have a contract in place that is solid," Resta said.

Palmer is not so sure. His association also has agreements with its member contractors requiring them all to stop working, even at the Convention Center, if there is a strike.

"We believe our agreement is paramount," he said.

Gillespie said unions often bended to help individual clients in tough spots. For example, unions and union contractors agreed to hold wages at 2009 levels at Sunoco Inc.

"We're not going to do it in a master agreement," he said.

Santangelo said a strike would be a public relations nightmare in this economy.

"Everyone is kind of waiting to see what the other trades do," he said. "It'll be the first trade to settle that sets the hurdle for the rest of the trades."