The inflationary cost and price situations in the construction industry reflect to some extent its prosperity, especially in its industrial and commercial sectors. They also suggest the existence of more permanent structural problems which should be of vital concern for both the industry and the community at large. There have been many important technological changes in various sectors of the industry, but the total technical progress is clearly insufficient. 13 Basically, we are in the midst of a power struggle, a conflict of relationships that has existed for years, perhaps for centuries. What triggers this conflict is the issue of management prerogatives. At the outset, it may be suggested that the issue of management prerogatives, of authority prerogatives, is as old as the original master-servant relationship. Whenever there is an authority which presumes to direct a subordinate and to determine paths of conduct and routines. of behavior and wherever this kind of authority is assumed, there will inevitably be protest from those to whom the assignment is made. There will be questioning by the subordinates of the basis for the authority, and of the reasonableness of its exercise. So let us not now assume that this is an issue which somehow has suddenly been precipitated into our midst. It is one which has been experienced in human relationships in a variety of forms for thousands of years. This issue studs the history of the union management relationship. Every bit of progress the unions have made, every new provision in a contract, all has been realized in the face of charges that they were invading the prerogatives of others, that they were assuming authority which should be the proper preserve of some other group, generally a managerial one. 14 Charges and countercharges can be attributed to the opposite goals of labor and management. Labor unions are intent on improving the wages, hours and 1 working conditions of its members. Job security and maintenance of the status quo (if a change in the status quo would adversely affect the worker) are also necessary goals. Management, on the other hand, has traditionally been oriented towards a maximazation of profits. Yet to augment management's direction in this quest of the dollar, corporate leaders have been forced to rely on the doctrine of residual rights. The residual rights doctrine forms the cornerstone of managements right to manage in certain The job of management is to manage. The operation of the enterprise at its maximum efficiency is management's responsibility and obligation. A management should believe that, in order to discharge its obligations, it must retain in 15 full measure the so-called prerogatives of management. Only when the balance areas. of power (usually established by supply and demand factors) that exists between labor and management is imbalanced in favor of labor, then and only then does management suffer its loss of prerogatives, usually involving the collective bargaining process. residual rights. What management manages to retain is commonly called The current economic imbalance between labor and management has been compounded by a tragic complication. For the first time in the history of society, our government has given, not only legal sanction, but a measure of encouragement to those whose very function is to challenge a vested authority. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. O'Hanlon, Thomas; The Unchecked Power of the Building Trades, Fortune, Dissenting opinion in the case of American Column and Lumber Company Stabilizing Construction: The Record and Potential, Colean and Newcomb, 1952. Leiter, Robert D.; Featherbedding and Job Security, 1964. Examples, multiplied ad infinitum, are cited in the 1949 hearings before the Senate Committee on Banking and Currency, on the economic power of labor organizations. Ibid, p. 134. The State of the Art of Prefabrication in the Construction Industry, AFL-CIO Unions New Goal: King-Size Featherbeds, Nation's Business, July 1967. Costs and Prices in Construction, Monthly Labor Review, March 1966, Greenspan, Alan; The Escalation of Wages in Construction, Associated Productivity indexes have been furnished by the Construction Industry Collective Monthly Labor Review, p. 282, see note #8. Chamberlain, Neil W., The Union Challenge to Management Control, Phelps, James C., Management's Reserved Rights; An Industry View, RESTRICTIVE PRACTICES OF THE BUILDING TRADES PART II EXAMPLES In the past twenty years, many groups have attempted to illustrate the existence of construction restrictive practices by citing as evidence what to the construction industry is regarded as common knowledge. "For example, reports from Florida, Ohio and New Mexico indicate that requires extra In some places in upstate New York, plumbers and electricians are required to watch temporary wiring or heating plants which will function without such attention. In Louisiana, members of the Plumbers and Pipe Fitters Union have allegedly refused to work on prefabricated pipe, on the grounds that their national agreement stipulates that pipe must be fabricated on the job site, or in a factory by members of their own union. A firm in the State of Washington claimed that some cement finishers limit their daily output to 800 square feet per man. From places in California and Ohio, it was reported that, whenever a crane is used to erect steel, regardless of the extent of the job, the union requires a five-man crew. A craft union in northern California is claimed to have adopted a by-law setting a maximum work quota per man of six squares of roofing shingles a day, and to have imposed fines on members who exceed this maximum. Yet only in a few instances have specific work restrictive practices been singled out for public view. In 1961, the Government Operations Subcommittee, chaired by Senator John McClellan, investigated charges of various forms of featherbedding during the construction of vital missile sites. Chairman McClellan indicated that productivity was 40% of what was expected as normal. This incredibly low work production output resulted from a variety of factors, one of which was out-and-out featherbedding. The most brazen featherbedding case concerned the so-called "blessing" of manifolds at Vandenberg Air Force Base by union pipefitters. They refused to install prefabricated manifolds claiming the right to assembly work on the site. The "blessing" consisted of superfluously marking each manifold and then sitting around doing nothing for the time it would have taken to disassemble and reassemble the manifolds. 2 Also in 1961, Representative David Martin from Nebraska conducted an on-site investigation of construction malpractices at missile site bases under construction in Nebraska and Wyoming. A summary of this investigation contained this information. Included in the construction are automatic gas boilers and air conditioners, at each missile site. After these were installed, the stationary engineers insisted that they should have a man on duty at each boiler and each air conditioner at each missile site 24 hours a day, seven days a week. There was nothing for them to do except sit on a chair and put in their time. This involved a total of 48 men for a period of 12 months from April 1960 until March 1961. Total wages paid during this period to these men amounted to over one-half million dollars. When the missile is installed and checked out, it is then turned over to SAC and SAC at the present time is operating these Offutt missile sites with only a handful of men. Testimony by both civilians and service personnel indicated that there was absolutely no need for these stationary engineers to watch the automatic boilers and the air conditioners. Union rules required this. 3 Although most organizations are to be commended for their efforts and good-will approach to alerting the public to the problem, such an approach is without statistical or documentary support. This study attempts to relate the necessary specifics to these charges and in most cases with a caliber high enough to impress even the most sceptical of readers. A basic problem involved in the understanding of the restrictive practices problem is assessing the degree of creditability to be accorded to each individual charge. It is not our intent to reach such a determination, nor is it to ascertain with a high degree of accuracy the pervasiveness of the charges. |