Carpenters, contractors settle Convention Center side dispute

Outside the Convention Center, union carpenters no longer allowed to work there pursued a public strategy to regain those jobs: rallying and protesting, armed with bullhorns, leaflets, and an inflatable Fat Cat.

Inside their union hall, another strategy was underway: firing off grievances against 13 major show contractors, the companies actually hired to set up and dismantle the trade shows and conventions that fill the center.

That put the contractors, who had used the carpenters to set up shows, in the cross fire in the high-stakes battle between the Pennsylvania Convention Center Authority and the Metropolitan Regional Council of Carpenters, one of the city's most powerful construction unions.

This week, that collateral clash between the carpenters and the contractors came to an end, mere days before the two sides were set to face off in a National Labor Relations Board hearing room Monday morning.

"Everything is settled, and we can move on from here," Kenneth K. Bisch, who heads an organization of show contractors, said Friday.

The contractors were "caught in the middle," and were "being used as pawns," Bisch had said in an earlier interview.

The NLRB agreed. The board, serving as a prosecutor in the civil law case, had accused the carpenters' union of violating federal labor laws by "threatening, coercing, and restraining" contractors.

In the settlement, reached late Thursday, the union does not acknowledge that it violated any labor laws, but it does agree to withdraw the grievances and pay legal fees, reduced from the original estimates, to the contractors' lawyers.

The union declined to comment, spokesman Martin O'Rourke said Friday.

Bisch, president of the Philadelphia Exposition Service Contractors Association (PESCA) and general manager with one contractor, Hargrove Inc., said, "As contractors, we're not interested in fighting with the carpenters.

"The carpenters' dispute," he said, "is with the Convention Center."

Sounds simple, but it's not, given the complicated nature of the convention business.

When an organization wants to put on a trade show or convention at the center, it hires a general contractor that organizes the floor, sets up displays, and even lays the carpet. Other contractors work for exhibitors setting up areas.

Until May 2014, the contractors, working through the Convention Center's labor broker, requisitioned workers - primarily union carpenters - to install the shows. When carpenters' union leaders did not sign a new customer-satisfaction agreement by a Convention Center management-imposed deadline, they were out.

The leaders signed later. By then, their work had already been divided among other unions.

There was, however, one more wrinkle.

Even though the carpenters' union was out of the Convention Center, it had a joint union/management contract in place with PESCA, whose member contractors put on conventions at hotels and other venues, as well. That requires PESCA contractors to use union carpenters to set up shows - wherever those shows take place.

In fact, even now, PESCA contractors routinely hire union carpenters, per the contract, to install and dismantle conventions and exhibits at the Philadelphia Downtown Marriott and other venues.

"It works out fine," said one of the 13 contractors, who did not want to be named because he works with union carpenters in other cities.

But, he said, the Convention Center's rules now prohibit the contractors from using union carpenters at the center.

"At the center, we don't employ people, we purchase them [from the labor broker]," he said.

"We don't pay them. They aren't our employees. If [the Convention Center] said we'd have to use trained monkeys, that's who we'd have to use," he said.

After the carpenters lost jurisdiction at the center, union leader Edward Coryell began to file grievances against the contractors for working there but not using carpenters, in violation, he said, of the PESCA contract.

The 13 contractors responded by filing with the NLRB unfair-labor-practice charges against the carpenters, saying the grievances were a form of coercion.

In March, the NLRB agreed and consolidated the 13 cases into one, with the first hearing, now canceled, set for Monday.

Still pending are two other legal proceedings involving the carpenters.

One is a 25-page civil racketeering lawsuit filed against the carpenters union in federal court in May by the Convention Center Authority.

The other is a unfair-labor-practice claim against the Convention Center filed by the carpenters' union with the Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board.

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