Labor & Employment Law

St. Louis Electrical Workers Seek to Protect Quality Standards

By Mike Hall

AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department (BCTD) unions are urging St. Louis Carpenters Local 57 to stop performing electrical work the Electrical Workers (IBEW) union says undercuts union standards of quality, safety and wages.

IBEW members are trained in five-year apprenticeships that certify them as master electricians. But Local 57, formed two years ago by the Carpenters? District Council of Greater St. Louis, did not comply with federal standards on apprenticeship programs, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

IBEW President Ed Hill says:

When an IBEW member is on a site, customers can be assured that the job will be done right. When you?re working with high-voltage electricity, why would you want anyone else?

He also points that with construction trade unemployment over 30 percent in St. Louis,

we should be working together to win contracts to put building trades members back to work and preserving good jobs in St. Louis and across the country. Now is not the time to be fighting each other.

More than 1,000 members of BCTD affiliated unions rallied last week in St. Louis, to protest Local 57?s actions.  The unions are also airing television and radio ads and putting up billboards.

Gerald Feldhaus, Executive Secretary Treasurer of St Louis Building and Construction Trades Council says the campaign is aimed at the Carpenters? leadership, and is not

a fight with the rank-and-file carpenter who works hard to do his craft’s work with the same skill our other trades put into their work.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on June 24, 2010 (boomark / email).