by A three-week strike fueled by rank-and-file militancy and self-organization achieved a partial victory for Carpenters in the Northwest, boosting a rise in labor strikes and socialist activism across the country.
It is rare for union members to vote down four consecutive tentative agreements recommended by their union leaders. And yet from September 16 to October 6, 2,000 members of the 11,600-strong Northwest Carpenters Union went on strike in Western Washington after the membership voted down the fourth in a series of tentative area master agreements with the bosses organization, the Associated General Contractors (AGC). That tentative agreement would have increased wages by $9.40 per hour over four years — not enough to keep pace with the current rate of inflation — and made small increases to parking reimbursements and other benefits. Under the previously existing agreement, journey-level carpenters in the union were earning $46.92 to $48.42 an hour, making carpenters among the lowest paid building trades in the region.
“When you factor in the three-plus hours you drive every day, the $300 a week you’re spending on gas and parking, the $46.92 gets knocked down to $23.50 an hour. I’m barely keeping my head above water.”
— Local 30 journey worker, father of three and union member for 14 years, quoted in Labor Notes
The fourth tentative agreement was rejected by 56 percent of union members. As Labor Notes reported, “rank and filers known as the Peter J. McGuire Group organized the no vote—despite pressure from union leaders, who were promoting the deal.”
The Peter J. McGuire group takes their name from the socialist co-founder of the Carpenters Union who campaigned for the eight-hour workday and proposed the National Labor Day holiday in 1882. The group organized through social media, where its Facebook page has over 2,500 members. Their demands, based at least in part on on-line polling of Facebook group members, include a $15 raise over a three-year contract, full parking reimbursements, fully-funded benefits, and improved protections against harassment on the job-site.
The demand for a three-year contract was particularly important in order to keep the carpenters on the same contract cadence as the other trades in the region, allowing all building trades to effectively bargain as a stronger united bloc with the AGC.
Union Leaders Stand in the Way
One of the Peter J. McGuire group’s leaders, Art Francisco, was quoted in a September 15th Labor Notes article criticizing his union leadership. He characterized their relationship with AGC as “cozy,” noting leadership encouraged members to vote in favor of the tentative agreements and did not adequately prepare for the strike, in his view.
In a September 16th article in Publicola, Nicole Grant, then the Executive Secretary-Treasurer of the Martin Luther King County Labor Council denounced the Peter J. McGuire group based on misogynistic posts on the group’s Facebook page against Evelyn Shapiro, Northwest Carpenters Executive Secretary-Treasurer and the union’s principal officer. Art Francisco responded in an interview with Jacobin:
Those [posts] are totally out of line and inexcusable. Corrective action was taken against those posts immediately; I moderated those posts. Not only that, but the members of the Peter J. McGuire Group have condemned those posts, and they’ve also talked with the members who made those posts to educate them on why they were wrong. It was women in our group who said we have to educate the people who have these backward ideas, the brothers that are making sexist posts — we can’t just ban them, we have to actually talk to them and get them to understand why it’s wrong. I want to put that out there.
It’s not like this problem is something that’s only in the Peter McGuire Group’s page or only on Facebook. Sexism is something that’s all over society and in the construction industry. The union leadership has had ample time to deal with sexual harassment and sexual assault in construction. They could have provided training; they could have provided education. They haven’t. They haven’t taken corrective action on their end. Women have been critical of that in our union, and it has been our group’s platform that we completely oppose any kind of harassment or discrimination based on sex, gender, race, or sexual orientation. We take corrective action against that as soon as we see it.
In the same Publicola article, union leadership and public officials, including Seattle City Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda, charged City Councilmember Kshama Sawant and Socialist Alternative with agitating for “wildcat” strikes. Grant even described the Peter J. McGuire group as “a small faction of Marxist extremists, with the backing of an elected official (Sawant).”
On September 15th, the union leadership issued a cease and desist letter against Francisco, which publicly disclosed his personal address.
Rather than attacking Sawant and rank-and-file carpenters, the union leaders should have been organizing the strongest possible strike against the company bosses. In particular, they should have focused on shutting down production with daily pickets and mobilizing both the rank-and-file and the community to win. In fact, this was what Sawant was doing. She made public statements supporting the union rank-and-file and promised to donate $10,000 to the carpenters’ strike fund as soon as it was created. She walked picket lines with the carpenters and appealed to the public to attend a community rally supporting the strikers. Sawant even introduced City legislation to require contractors to pay 100% of parking for construction workers, fully restore the right of construction workers to strike, and strengthen the City’s ability to combat wage theft and other abuses.
Escalating Strike Actions from Below
Unfortunately, once the strike began on September 16th, it became clear that the union leadership would only support limited strike actions.
The Puget Sound Business Journal reports that only 2,000 of the 6,600 Northwest Carpenters membership subject to the contract with the bosses organization, the AGC, (the other 5,000 members are under separate contracts) have been allowed to strike because the large majority of work sites are covered by no-strike agreements termed Project Labor Agreements (PLAs). Historically limited to important public works, these have grown to cover such “critical public infrastructure” as Climate Pledge Arena, Jeff Bezos’ local monument to his ego. A leaked letter posted on Facebook from the union leadership to AGC members even offered “Interim Agreements” to end strikes and pickets at job-sites before a new master agreement was democratically approved by the union membership.
In order to win and force AGC to meet the union’s demands, the strike needed to shut down important job sites to harm contractors’ profits. The most economically important sites and as many sites as possible should have been picketed continuously. Mobilizing family, community, and other unions to come to the picket lines would also have greatly strengthened the strike.
Yet union leaders only allowed strike pickets at a limited number of non-PLA sites and only on a rotating basis. Incredibly, the official “Picket Duty Code of Conduct” explicitly forbade family and friends from joining union members on the lines. Carpenters also complained that the union leaders’ selected picket locations were on job sites that were of lower importance, where work was substantially complete or, in at least one case, an empty yard.
Identifying the opposition to the union leadership as misogynist “Marxist extremists” or opportunistic meddlers could be seen as an effort at “red baiting” in order to inoculate union membership against the spread of militancy in their ranks. The effort was not without effect, as debates on Marxism contra “Soviet Communism” were held in the comments on the Peter J. McGuire Facebook page.
Nevertheless, frustration with the limitations placed on the strike spilled over into unsanctioned actions. Union militants and Socialist Alternative organized a rally and roving picket on Thursday, September 23 in South Lake Union. The roving picket successfully inspired workers to walk off a few active jobs in solidarity with the marching carpenters and community members.
The union leadership responded with a declaration that effective September 24, all official strike pickets were indefinitely terminated and picketing workers were threatened with the possibility of legal action.
In defiance of the union leadership, City Councilmember Sawant and Peter J. McGuire members led a roving picket on the morning of the 24th that resulted in even more walk-offs at twelve job-sites, including Climate Pledge Arena, while carpenters continued to hold their own pickets at the sprawling Microsoft campus mega-project in defiance of the union leadership.
The Socialist Response
Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) should be clear that we stand firmly on the side of the rank-and-file in every struggle against the bosses. DSA union members in MLK Labor did the right thing in their efforts to draft and pass resolutions calling on union leadership to organize large powerful strikes in the future, including permanent pickets at the most significant job sites, to end no-strike clauses in contracts, and to end side-deals during strikes that weaken the union’s bargaining power. It was positive that Seattle DSA committed to contributing at least $2,000 to the Carpenters Union fund as soon as it is set up, plus $500 to the Peter J. McGuire group legal defense fund. Finally, we must stand shoulder to shoulder with striking workers, organizing our membership and the community to attend rallies and pickets organized by rank-and-file union members — whether sanctioned by union leadership or not — and contribute our ideas on how to win.
As to this last point, a few DSA comrades raised concerns over what they saw as sectarian interventions by socialists in the carpenters strike. As a guard against this, they suggested that socialists should not pass out any publications or fliers from our organization and should not even identify as socialists to strikers.
However, simple politeness on its own and an honest approach to workers in struggle is reason enough to introduce ourselves and explain to strikers why we, as socialists, stand with them at the picket line — to do otherwise might seem standoffish, at best.
While sectarianism should be avoided, it stands to reason that winning the strongest possible agreement from AGC was the goal of all those who organized with the rank-and-file carpenters. If nothing else, a strong win by the carpenters union would have been a major boost to the socialists organizing in the complicated environment of the Biden era, whereas a high profile loss for the union would have been discouraging to socialist and progressive activists.
Of course, commitment to socialist principles does not automatically translate to having formulated an effective strategy for the specific circumstances of this particular labor struggle. Neither should socialists use strikes as a means of self-promotion or as a back-drop for a separate campaign. An appearance of self-interest would hand opponents an unnecessary and distracting line of attack. Striking workers and their demands must be front and center.
However, to say that socialists should not openly declare our politics and share our perspective does not sufficiently credit striking workers’ ability to judge the merits of our arguments and perspectives for themselves. Explaining why worker self-organization is necessary under capitalism and how strikes advance the movement for socialism is an important, necessary task, especially given the climate catastrophe we are facing under capitalism. Many construction workers are open to or supportive of socialist ideas, particularly since their wages are not keeping pace with the rising cost of living, despite being the ones building so many shiny skyscrapers and luxury condos. Moreover, understanding the world historical interests of the working class in a strike and its connection to other struggles can be a powerful motivator to win a strike and to continue organizing in the future. Socialists should also have confidence in the value of our practical knowledge hard-won through organizing experience and from the study of the history of the labor movement.
Socialist perspectives were especially relevant for this specific strike where a union leadership was at odds with its rank-and-file over the scope of acceptable strike actions. Socialists have a strong tradition of advocating militant rank-and-file organizing and building mass community support for workers struggles, which is exactly what this strike needed in order for the workers to win their demands. It is unfortunately not an accident that too many union leaders follow a corporatist approach, often called business unionism. Too many union leaders cosy up with employers. Accepting the framework of capitalism, they try to defend workers rights and wages within the attempt to guarantee profits for the bosses, as if we were in the same boat. Militant rank-and-file struggles need socialist ideas to overcome those limitations and develop a leadership that can offer a way forward to build and rebuild labor in the US and beyond.
Just because some of the unsanctioned actions were co-organized by socialists does not mean that the rank-and-file carpenters did not decide for themselves what actions they would take. The following is just one example of the far-reaching (albeit frustrated) conclusions drawn by some carpenters. (EST = Executive Secretary-Treasurer):
In the end, the militant strategy yielded results. On September 27, union leadership bowed to rank-and-file pressure and announced that daily pickets would be sanctioned at 18 sites, including the important Microsoft job site, for the duration of the strike.
On October 6, 2021, a fifth tentative agreement was reached between the NW Carpenters Union and AGC. The agreement contained some partial victories, including the crucial three-year contract, that were won entirely due to the demands of the militant self-organized rank-and-file workers. Although the organizers of the Peter J. McGuire Group urged a no vote because the agreement fell short of their demands for a $15 raise and fully reimbursed parking, the agreement narrowly passed with 53.6 percent of carpenters voting in favor on October 11.
The carpenter’s strike along with the recently concluded Nabisco and Frito Lay strikes were the vanguard of what appears to be an incipient strike wave. Tens of thousands of workers across the U.S. have gone on strike since October 1, including 10,000 John Deere UAW members and 1,400 Kellogg’s workers. They may soon be joined by 37,000 Kaiser healthcare workers and possibly 60,000 Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) members who have voted to authorize strikes, although IATSE leaders reached a tentative agreement that needs to be approved or rejected by the membership. Additionally, high profile unionization drives are active at Starbucks stores and Amazon warehouses. Conditions are highly favorable for labor victories given record high quit rates and unfulfilled job openings, as well as the ongoing supply chain limitations that reduce the threat of outsourcing.
A US working class already suffering from decades of wage stagnation with the decline of the labor movement and brutal state repression in the form of mass incarceration has faced one calamity after another in the first two decades of this century. From financial crises to the disastrous “War on Terror” and finally a deadly global pandemic mismanaged by the ruling class in almost every conceivable way, conditions for working and oppressed people have dramatically deteriorated.
In response, workers are voting with their feet to picket lines and union drives across the country to demand better. Ultimately, they will decide for themselves how to conduct their struggles. As socialists and workers, our choice is whether to join in the struggle to build the labor movement towards a socialist future with every tool at our disposal.
