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Full-Text Articles in Labor Relations
Standing At A Crossroads: The Building Trades In The Twenty-First Century, Mark Erlich, Jeffrey Grabelsky
Standing At A Crossroads: The Building Trades In The Twenty-First Century, Mark Erlich, Jeffrey Grabelsky
Jeffrey Grabelsky
American building trades unions have historically played a critical and stabilizing role in the nation’s construction industry, establishing uniform standards and leveling the competitive playing field. Union members have enjoyed better than average wages and benefits, excellent training opportunities, and decent jobsite conditions. But in the last thirty years the industry has undergone a dramatic transformation. This article describes the decline in union density, the drop in construction wages, the growth of anti-union forces, the changes in labor force demographics, the shift toward construction management, and the emergence of an underground economy. It also analyzes how building trades unions have …
Bottom-Up Organizing In The Trades: An Interview With Mike Lucas, Ibew Director Of Organizing, Jeff Grabelsky
Bottom-Up Organizing In The Trades: An Interview With Mike Lucas, Ibew Director Of Organizing, Jeff Grabelsky
Jeffrey Grabelsky
[Excerpt] Like the bottom-up organizers who built the IBEW 100 years ago by traveling from city to city, working at their trade and preaching the union creed, Lucas has been around the block. From Florida to Oklahoma, Indiana to Tennessee, he worked from 1954 to 1959 as a member of the Laborers and Teamsters unions. He began his organizing career in the utility construction industry, and first volunteered his talents to the IBEW in 1960 by organizing the manufacturing workers at a new Studebaker plant in Bloomington, Indiana, which he had recently helped build as a union electrician. He served …