Again, listen to their complaints:

Jerry Wurf, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees: "An unreasonable relationship exists between the contractors and the building trade unions. They continue to have those big fat settlements that force inflated prices so that the pay raises we get are not catching up." Richard Foshia, a young Detroit auto worker: "I make $4.20 an hour. A laborer in the construction industry here starts out, at $5.50, and he doesn't do anything but carry bricks or whatever he carries. I don't go along with that at all. He doesn't have any more know-how than I do. I can't afford to buy a house or rent an apartment, and I want those prices to come down."

Malcolm Denise, vice president for labor relations of Ford Motor Co.: "We have to be concerned about the relative costs of making things here and in the rest of the world. Construction and trucking don't seem to feel that they are in competition with overseas markets. But they are, because they're part of our costs and we have growing foreign competition.”

A WORLD UNTO ITSELF

The actual work of the construction industry is probably more visible than any other. We all watch with wonder as skyscrappers, highways and bridges rise from the ground. Yet the inner workings of this largest American industry-its $100 billion annual business is greater than automobiles and steel combined-is little understood and seldom examined by outsiders. "Unfortunately, the building trades are kind of a world unto themselves, and the industry is a world unto itself," says AFL-CIO Research Director Nat Goldfinger.

Inside that world, 10,000 local unions representing about 3 million workers bargain with a majority of the nation's 870,000 contractors. Another 500,000 construction workers are not members of labor unions.

Most of the local unions are small but powerful independent baronies which take only minimum direction in collective bargaining from their international unions. Most contractors are small businessmen, with only 1,200 firms hiring more than 100 workers each, and the four largest firms controlling less than 1 per cent of American construction.

The industry is marked by seasonal fluctuations and considerable uncertainty. Thousands of contractors go in and out of business every year. Workers' loyalties and their livelihoods are tied to their union hiring hall, as most contractors don't employ many year-round employees.

The unions exert power by controlling many of the functions normally reserved to management in other industries. For example, building trade unions not only supply manpower to the job but even appoint foremen and general foremen. Although contractors finance them, the unions administer various health, welfare, pension and vacation benefits.

The construction union work force is old and highly organized with the national federation of American building craft unions dating from 1908. Those early unions drew strength from the rich traditions of far older European craft guilds. The unionized work force is divided into 17 building crafts, which compete against one another and tightly resist entry from outsiders.

And these building trades collectively comprise the center core of power in the AFL-CIO. It is no accident that a former plumber, George Meany, runs the federation. The AFL-CIO's pecking order of power is readily discernible at the Miami labor conventions, where Meany and his favorite building trade presidents occupy the most prestigious row of hotel suites.

The AFL-CIO's political power has been applied most consistently and successfully to protect union wages in the construction industry. Construction wages have risen three times more than those in other industries in the last 10 years. The industry itself has been undergoing revolutionary changes, with new equip ment and materials pushing historic handcraft construction methods towards a factory production system. Reacting to this process, the unions have fiercely op posed change or demanded special compensation before permitting efficiencies that sharply reduce the need for skilled manpower.

THE DECISION TO INTERVENE

What is new today is that the federal government and big business-both alarmed by runaway inflation and foreign competition-have decided to intervene in the clannish workings of the construction industry.

The nation's largest corporations several years ago quietly formed the Construction Users Anti-Inflation Roundtable-to seek government controls, to help

contractors strengthen their management and resist demands for wage increases, and to persuade each other that corporate industry should avoid crash building schedules which raise construction costs for everyone.

The Roundtable members were motivated by concern over their own skyrocketing costs for new factories and by the "rippling effect" of construction salary raises on their own workers' salary demands.

"Prior to our auto negotiations in 1970, the construction industry got extravagant salary increases," says George Morris, a General Motors Corp. vice president and Roundtable member. "There's no damn way we can afford to raise salaries 18 per cent for construction or any other group and remain competitive.

"We have building trade union members rubbing shoulders with our own auto worker union skilled mechanics who perform the same jobs. The building trade people are not above saying: 'Hey, buddy. If you were a member of the electrical workers union instead of the auto workers, you'd have this kind of check.' They jab them and they irritate them, so that our electrician goes down to his UAW local and says, 'God damn. How come that guy gets $8.50 an hour and I get $5.80? "So we have a hell of a lot of pressure inside the union from the skilled trades group and the UAW has to reflect that when they sit down to bargain with us." "If I may use a Chinese expression, construction wages took a great leap forward about 1966," says Roger Blough, retired board chairman of U.S. Steel Corp. and chairman of the Roundtable. "I think it's realy one of the most uneconomic and inflationary types of workmanship—if you can call it workmanship-that we have anywhere in the country."

The unions also acknowledged the problem. "I'm not concerned where construction has come the last six years with respect to wage rates," says John Lyons, president of the International Association of Bridge and Structural Iron Workers. "My concern-and many in the industry share this-is where we are going. The industry cannot maintain these 17-, 19-, 22 per cent annual wage increases."

"A TERRIBLE CONSPIRACY"

Yet the building trade unions regard the behind-the-scenes Roundtable effort as a dangerous threat, particularly when they discover corporation presidents working inside the Nixon administration to control construction wages and open the industry to more nonunion workers. The administration established the Construction Industry Stabilization Committee last year, responding to inflation and to endless entreaties from the Roundtable, which met regularly with Cabinet members and White House officials.

"This is probably the most critical time the building trades have had in their history," says AFL-CIO official Georgine, referring to the Roundtable, government and growing nonunion competition. "I think it's an out-and-out effort to break the unions. If you want to get melodramatic, you could say it's a terrible conspiracy."

Sheet Metal Workers President Edward Carlough, however, brushes off the Roundtable threat. "It's been an old ladies' coffee table so far," he said.

And George Meany reacts angrily: "Let me tell you about this Roger Blough, the man who is dedicated to keeping wages down. He drew $916.000 in wages his last three years at U.S. Steel. Are we going to pay any attention to him?

"If he were to succeed, America would become a low-wage country. The progress of America has been made on high wages. Now, as far as I'm concerned, I'd rather have inflation than deflation because I know the difference between the evils."

Virtually all the building trade presidents we interviewed insisted that the public does not understand the nature of the industry or its $5 to $12 an hour building-trade wages-which have been rising at rates far in excess of rises in the cost of living.

They stress that most construction workers still don't work the full year, even though in prosperous times there are far fewer seasonal layoffs. They point out that construction salaries are not directly comparable to those in other industries, because fringe benefits are included. For example, an $8 an hour building trade salary might include $1.50 which the union keeps for the worker's health, welfare, pension and vacation funds. In most other industries, such fringe benefits are calculated separately and not listed as a part of hourly salaries. Building trade officials are not cooperative in supplying statistics about the estimated "annual wages" of their members, but Labor Department statistics indicate these salaries, although higher than factory workers, are not anywhere near as high as the hourly rates would imply.

Building trade officials argue that their unions' large wage increases have been justified to permit workers to share the increased productivity of new equipment and materials which cut down on needed manpower. (The Roundtable argues, however, that worker productivity has fallen.)

"An operating engineer may make $8 or $9 an hour," says S. Frank Raftery, president of the International Brotherhood of Painters and Allied Trades, "but you've got one operating engineer grading thousands of yards of road where you used to have hundreds of workers with picks and shovels. One man can paint an apartment in the same time it used to take three or four. In 10 minutes we can do an apartment ceiling."

Raftery also contends that giant-size construction wage increases were taken as defensive measures, and that the inflationary problems could have been avoided if President Nixon had taken the AFL-CIO's advice to impose controls earlier.

"It's Nixon's own damn fault," Raftery said. "Everybody was trying to get what they could bargain for against the day when controls would be imposed. That was an 'I don't give a damn' attitude."

"THE WORK RULES LIVE ON"

Despite all these explanations and rationalizations, few labor leaders we interviewed denied that there are serious inefficiencies in construction for which unions are mainly responsible.

Of all the labor union officials we interviewed, only George Meany denied any union-caused problems in construction. "I don't know of any restrictive practices, any feather-bedding, that creates useless jobs or provide pay for doing no work," said Meany, repeating this point several times in a lengthy interview.

In contrast, Ironworkers President Lyons said his local unions often improperly require unneeded men in work crews.

"The work rules live on," he said. "It's one thing when wage rates are low, but if you get the wage rates up to where they are satisfactory, these work practices don't make sense. It's very difficult to get people to recognize the fact that they can't continue doing something they have been doing for years."

Meany also refused to accept as featherbedding the numerous jurisdictional disputes that are settled by requiring two men for one job.

A Miami general contractor describes a common practice: "You install the elevators in a multistory building and start using them to lift both personnel and materials. Once you use the inside elevator, you must have an operating engineer and an elevator constructor sitting there side by side. If a passenger comes up, the elevator constructor pushes the button. If material comes up, the operating engineer pushes the button." Another common practice requiring even less work is one in which an electrician's sole job is to flip a switch turning an engine on at the beginning of the work day and off at the end.

Meany concedes that many building codes are outdated but claims "we don't make the building codes." Other labor leaders disagree.

Robert Connerton, general counsel of the Laborers' International Union, describes a common building code requirement involving Meany's own trade: "Plumbing codes are supposedly for the purpose of protecting the health and safety of all citizens. But they often are an illegal conspiracy in restraint of trade. The plumbers and plumbing contractors get together and pass those codes defining what is plumbing work that can be done only by plumbers.

"The law will say that plumbing work includes all pipe that is laid within property lines. Well, our laborers have been laying pipe within property lines all their lives and these codes prevent them from working. So we're trying to tear down these codes."

BENEFITS FOR THE CONTRACTORS

Building trade officials stress that the "industry club" very much includes the contractors, who benefit also from their unique clannish relationship with unions. The coziness of the contractor-union relationship is illustrated by one common industry practice: Contractor associations often are partially financed by assessments to all builders, which are required by union collective bargaining agreements.

Union contractors also have benefited from the Davis-Bacon Act, which requires the payment of "prevailing wages" on most federally assisted projects. In practice, the Labor Department usually has accepted union scale as the prevailing wage. Union contractors therefore are given some protection in bidding government contracts against nonunion competition.

EFFECTS ON THE POOR

Ironically, the AFL-CIO's success in adding Davis-Bacon to most new social legislation often defeats or limits the principal purpose of the legislation, which is often supported by the AFL-CIO in its social lobbying role. For example, the union-scale provision raises the cost of "low-cost housing" for the poor and often blocks the poor from getting construction training jobs in such programs as Model Cities, where their participation is an integral part of the intended program. A special labor-contractor relationship exists even in the administration of government wage controls, critics contend. While all other wages were controlled by a board equally divided among public, business and labor members until labor walked out recently, the special Construction Industry Stabilization Committee consists only of the building trades, contractors and John Dunlop, a Harvard University professor regarded as a friend by the building trades.

"While the Pay Board was rejecting deferred wage increases of less than 8 per cent," says I. W. Abel, president of the United Steelworkers of America, "the building trade board was still approving agreements for 10 to 15 per cent wage increases right now. It just doesn't make sense to me.

"I'm not going to quarrel with what the construction worker gets, but if they are entitled to it so are the steelworkers. If construction can have its own special board, I want the same thing for steel. I'll find a few employers I get along with too, you know."

Union leaders complain bitterly that building trade wage increases are given the entire blame for construction inflation, when soaring interest and land costs are equally to blame and these costs are not controlled at all. Labor leaders stress and here the Roundtable agrees-that a major part of the construction industry's problem is weak management, not all of which results from excessive labor power.

Labor leaders claim they also are wrongly given full responsibility for "scheduled overtime"-that is, a construction project on which the work is regularly scheduled in advance to include extra hours at doubletime pay. "The Blough Roundtable keeps yapping about overtime," says union official Carlough, "but we have these overtime problems because industry doesn't schedule its jobs properly. When General Motors wants to build an extension, it's 'Hurry up, hurry up. Get the model changes out. Get this. Get that."

GM'S ROCHE APOLOGIZES

As a matter of fact, GM board chairman James Roche sheepishly apologized to his fellow Roundtable members for ordering a crash factory construction project in Lordstown, Ohio, as GM raced to get its compact Vega into the field against Ford's Pinto, GM's haste and disregard for construction costs is said to have escalated wages and costs throughout Ohio. "Look fellows, I know what you are trying to do, but we have our problems, too," Roche reportedly explained at a Roundtable meeting.

Building trade officials especially resent being criticized for rises in the cost of homes, since most individual homes are built by nonunion contractors.

Sheet Metal Workers President Carlough admits: "The nonunion competition is devasting to us and anyone who doesn't think so is a total idiot. Jurisdictional disputes, work stoppages, paying guys for not working-these pratices are hurting us severely. We have flabby muscles, and if we don't adapt to change, we're in seriout trouble."

Disagreeing with-or taking advantage of-the "flabby muscle" theory, the Construction Users Roundtable aims to help builders regain management control of their industry. The Roundtable wants contractors to develop full-time work forces and get needed men through a new national manpower referral service. Management loses control, the Roundtable contends, because unions dictate employment through union hiring halls. For example:

"I needed plasterers," Miami contractor John Scott complains. "The union didn't have any to supply me, yet they wouldn't accept qualified people as members. They were harassing me because I was doing dry-wall work rather than the plastering work they wanted.

"Their theory is to keep only the maximum number of members in the union that can fill the minimum amount of work that might be available. Their theory is fine for their people, but can throw a contractor into ruinous situations."

Other contractors complained to us that if they reject workers as unqualified, the union hiring hall often insists on sending the same men back to the job site on a "take it or leave it" basis.

On the other hand, hiring halls have provided valuable service to contractors as well as workers. Painters Union President Raftery says:

"What is the alternative to the hiring hall? Is it profitable to go down on the corner and have a shape-up like they used to have on the waterfront? Have 500 workers show up at some candy store or something? And then have the employers go down in their trucks and say, You, you, you, you and you are carpenters. Hop in the truck!'"

"The hiring hall provides the people with the competency and skills to do perform a certain type of work. It brings them together, so that a contractor can grab a phone and say, 'Hey, I need 40 guys on my job tomorrow."

The hiring hall system also lies at the heart of another problem in the building trades-the power of the labor union officers, and the dependence on them by workers.

Many national building trade leaders insist there is too much local autonomy in their local unions, with local leaders-nervous about their own re-electiongiving in too easily to a new breed of construction worker who wants "more now." These leaders say larger-size bargaining units are needed to bring stability to the industry. Others say an annual wage is needed to promote stability. Roundtable members tend to agree with the suggestion for larger bargaining units, since they place more confidence in the "reasonableness" of the international presidents than in the rank and file.

The construction industry also is affected by another problem-growing violence between competing unions and against nonunion contractors. When nonunion contractors have tried to move into the bigger jobs until now "reserved" for the unions, they have encountered threats, sabotage of equipment, illegal mass picketing and violence.

Violence has almost reached epidemic proportions in South Florida, as nonunion contractors have pushed to participate in a building boom. For example, R. D. Hall, 38, a nonunion Miami contractor, told us he has been repeatedly threatened and had his equipment damaged. Describing one incident where his company was laying pipe on an otherwise unionized project, Hall said:

"About 200 men swarmed in and hit my crew. We had eight men working with three trucks, an equipment trailer, a ditching machine and a back-loader. These men split into groups with each taking a truck or a piece of equipment like it was all planned. They broke up the trucks, shooting bullet holes through the engines. "They set one trenching machine on fire, broke windshields and slashed tires. They were throwing rocks and were armed with pick handles, crow bars, and two guys had pistols. And all of this took place in the matter of three to four minutes and they were back in their cars and taking off."

'You CAN'T FIRE THE STEWARD'

Joseph Sullivan, owner of the Frame Construction Co. in Miami, Fla.. has spent 20 years as a building contractor-the first 10 as a union contractor, and the last 10 with non-union workers. In a tape-recorded and edited interview, he describes an experience as a union contractor.

Sullivan: I did the first FHA condominium in the United States and the reports from the job site were bad. I wasn't making any money so I decided to go on the job. I was out there for two or three days and I kept seeing this man dressed in a suit and he kept going back and forth. He had a sling but no hammer in it, so I assumed he was a carpenter.

So I said to my superintendent: "Cricket, who that guy work for?" And he said, "He works for us." And I said, "What does he do." And he said, "Oh, he's a carpenter." And I said, "When does he carpenter?" And Cricket said, "He's the steward." And I said, "Why don't you fire him?" And he said, "You can't fire the steward."

So we called the man in and paid him off. And he said, "Joe, you're not going to get away with this." I said, "Well, I've made my play, so you make yours." And in 45 minutes, we had seven business agents out there. And I told them, "Now, you take a secret vote of the men, and if it's not more than 60 per cent to fire him, then I'll hire him back." They said, "Well, we don't do things that