IBEW Investigates Trump’s Union Claims

via The Electrical Worker Online
Politics • Views: 101,197

The Backwoods family is lifelong union and we are very proud members of International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW).

MrBWS is a journeyman outdoor lineman who works 50 hours a week maintaining and upgrading the electrical grid. When storms hit, he and his fellow linemen are the ones who show up ASAP to turn your lights back on, often working 16 hour shifts in horrendous weather conditions.

Yes, they get paid well and they should. And we do not apologize for being highly trained at what we do.

So, when Donald Trump makes outrageous statements about how he will protect the miners and the steelworkers and the autoworkers, that most definitely deserves fact checking of the highest order.

IBEW meticulously prepared an investigative report as to how Donald Trump has historically dealt with IBEW.

At the height of the real estate boom in 2005, Donald Trump announced a colossus would rise in central New Orleans. The 70-story Trump Tower would be the tallest building on the Gulf Coast outside of Houston and the highest point in the state of Louisiana.

The development ultimately failed. But before it did, New York City Local 3 Business Manager Chris Erikson hosted a meeting in Donald Trump’s office to talk about the job. In Manhattan, Trump’s home and the site of many of his developments, the building trades are strong and nearly every steel beam and electrical wire was put in place by union hands.

Former Local 3 business representative Austin McCann — who was the shop steward on the original Trump Tower — arranged the meeting with Trump, not for Erikson, but for New Orleans Local 130 Business Manager Robert “Tiger” Hammond.

“We were pitching Trump on using the same union in New Orleans that he has been using for decades in New York City,” Hammond said. “I went with good intentions and thought we had an honest chance.”

Trump, Erikson, McCann and Hammond met in the executive suite of the Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue, and Hammond made his pitch. Local 130 did all the work on Harrah’s $1.6 billion casino on the waterfront and does every electrical job in the city over $1 million. He had a stack of letters from customers saying Local 130 did its work on time and on budget. Would Trump consider a project labor agreement?

Trump’s response: Why me?

“He said ‘There are 10 projects on that block. Why do I have to be union? Why are you picking on me?’” Hammond said.

Trump, Hammond said, thought unions only did 10 percent of jobs in New Orleans.

“I told him that was a myth and a fallacy and I asked him to talk to our customers,” Hammond said. “Then Trump says it isn’t his job, it is his son’s and he turns to Erikson and said, ‘You know I work union.’”

“It looks like you work union when you have to, but when you don’t, you don’t,” Erikson said.

Trump’s son, Donald Jr., was called into the meeting and said he would ask the general contractor to look into it. The meeting was over.

“I am glad Chris said what he did — what I was thinking and couldn’t say,” Hammond said. “We expected more. He pawned me off on his son and we left with a bad feeling.”

Trump reportedly took 175 condominium deposits on the property before Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the real estate collapse and recession of 2008. In 2011 — six years after the meeting in Trump Tower — the lot was foreclosed on and sold to a parking lot company.

Hammond never heard back from Trump, his son or the general contractor in charge.

Trump calls in Donald Jr. to deal with the union reps.

My shocked face…

Donald Trump developed, owns, or licenses his name to at least 45 buildings in the U.S. and Canada in the jurisdictions of 17 IBEW local unions.

A review of the Republican presidential nominee’s projects reveals that he hires union when project labor agreements or dominant market share force him to. But more than 60 percent of his projects developed outside New York City and Atlantic City — which includes most of his recent projects — were built nonunion. When you exclude developments with project labor agreements, that jumps to nearly 80 percent built nonunion.

According to thousands of lawsuits filed against him and his companies, when union contractors were hired, Trump developed a reputation for ducking the bill on some, delaying payment on others and shorting workers on overtime and even minimum wage.

The lawsuits included 60 for not paying his bills, 24 violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act3 and four corporate bankruptcies that left hundreds of contractors with dimes, nickels, even pennies on the dollar. He has been sued for hiring undocumented workers, presided over thousands of layoffs and acquired tens of millions of dollars in personal wealth while companies he owned failed. At least five of the companies he has owned have terminated health insurance for employees, ended retiree health insurance, canceled their pension plans or some combination of all three.

Like all politicians, Trump has made statements, issued campaign promises and taken positions on policies. Trump has also been clear about his support for policies that have historically led to weaker unions.

He told the South Carolina Radio Network, for example, that he is “100 percent for right-to-work”6 and in December he said right-to-work states have an “advantage” because “you have the lower wage.

Trump makes certain that when it comes to his own houses, if you want the job to be done right, you use union labor. Everything else? Go cheap.

For every union-built development outside of New York and Atlantic City, Trump built nearly two nonunion, and if there is no PLA, Trump has hired union workers once for every four projects that go nonunion.

In Florida, for example, where Trump developed, or licensed his name to eight projects, only one used IBEW signatory contractors: his palatial home and private club at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach. Trump renovated Mar-a-Lago in 1986 soon after he bought it, and Local 728 has had the maintenance contract ever since.

“For everything he sold to other people, he went nonunion. But for his house, he went with us,” said Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., Local 728 Business Manager Dan Svetlick.

Svetlick said Trump isn’t the first Florida billionaire developer that uses nonunion everywhere but at home. Business tycoon Wayne Huizenga built three stadiums in the state when he owned the Miami Dolphins, Florida Marlins and Florida Panthers. All three jobs were nonunion, but IBEW electricians have worked on all his houses, and the houses of his children, Svetlick said.

“They want that to last,” he said.

There’s much more at the link below, but the ending is the nail:

“I can live with unions in certain locations,” Trump told the South Carolina Radio Network, “My position on unions is fine, but I like right-to-work. My position on right-to-work is 100 percent.”

In Las Vegas, after hotel workers voted to join the Culinary Workers Union and Bartenders Union, the company refused to recognize the union and demanded a federal labor board throw out the vote. Trump then hired Lupe Cruz and Associates, a union-busting consulting firm that boasts of its ability to preserve “a union-free workplace.”

His companies have applied for immigrant work visas more than 1,100 times since 2000, according to Reuters, for low-skill jobs like waitresses, cooks, vineyard workers and models.

When asked by Mika Brzezinski on MSNBC’s Morning Joe how he would make America more competitive Trump said, “We can’t have a situation where our labor is so much more expensive than other countries that we can no longer compete. One of the things I’ll do if I win, I’ll make us competitive as a country.”

“This is not complicated,” said Miami Local 349 Business Manager Bill Riley. “Trump supports policies that are most common in those places where unions are weak, and where unions are weak, he hires nonunion. Except for his own house.”

Really, read all 3,636 words (not including the footnote citations).

Workers of America should be outraged.

More: The Electrical Worker Online

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