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Full-Text Articles in Labor Relations
Fanning The Flames (After Lighting The Spark): Multi-Trade Comet Programs, Jeffrey Grabelsky, Adam Pagnucco, Steve Rockafellow
Fanning The Flames (After Lighting The Spark): Multi-Trade Comet Programs, Jeffrey Grabelsky, Adam Pagnucco, Steve Rockafellow
Jeffrey Grabelsky
[Excerpt] The COMET (Construction Organizing Membership Education Training) is an educational program utilized by building trades unions to generate rank and file support for organizing new members. Since 1996, the Building and Construction Trades Department of the AFL-CIO has been sponsoring COMET training in multi-trade settings for its fifteen affiliates. Between 1997 and 1998, the Department undertook a systematic evaluation of its multi-trade COMET programs to determine their impact on attitudes toward organizing as well as on the nature and extent of organizing activities. This article summarizes the lessons the Department learned. Among other conclusions, the evaluation reaffirmed that COMET …
Serving The Public Interest: Preventing Double-Breasting In The Construction Industry, Jeffrey Grabelsky
Serving The Public Interest: Preventing Double-Breasting In The Construction Industry, Jeffrey Grabelsky
Jeffrey Grabelsky
Excerpt] But the immediate question I am addressing is how the practice of double-breasting undermines the stability of collective bargaining in the construction industry. The simple answer is that it is not exceedingly difficult for a unionized contractor to operate a double-breasted nonunion firm and, given the increasingly intense competitive pressures to cut labor costs (given rising land and material costs), employers have a strong incentive to double-breast. To the extent unionized contractors have pursued that business strategy, how has it impacted the system of collective bargaining in the construction industry?