Over 5,000 construction workers had walked off jobs or honored our unofficial picket lines in our 4-day Wildcat strike battle with our union leaders and bosses. In a booming economy we were being forced to accept a 3% pay hike without being allowed to even vote on it. On Monday May 24th we voted en masse to return to work as a united body and then to take the fight into our union Locals.
Local 713 was probably the most militant local. Members of 713 sent wildcatters to all the other bay area locals to push for a vote against the contract and resolutions for the return of our right to vote on the contract. In June Local 713 voted 85 to 6 for a One Member One Vote resolution and at a following meeting, in a standing vote, passed a motion against the contract of 182 to 5. I can still see the faces of the 5 business agents up against the wall as their votes were counted. The Wildcat strike had enormously strengthened the back of the resistance to both our union machine and this weak contract.
On July 1st, what we had hoped would be the follow-up One-Day strike, a couple of dozen workers took the day off to flyer for a Noon Rally at the Regional Council to protest the contract. Armed with thousands of flyers we trespassed scores of jobsites, talked to carpenters and gave out flyers. At lunchtime about 200 workers met outside the Regional Council offices to protest. At the end of the month a far larger crowd was present to try to pressure the Regional Council when it re-voted on the contract. While the crowd was bigger, the angry mood was more diminished than two months earlier. The Carpenters Council passed the contact and the period of struggle against the contract was over.
What remained was a strong mood to take back the locals, to end the dominance of the business agents in both the Locals and the Regional Council.
In the fall of 1999, John Reimann, the elected Chair of the Wildcat and Recording Secretary of Local 713 was singled out and brought up on charges by the International of the Carpenters Union. The local voted 66-0 against this witch-hunt. In January 2000 John was expelled from the Union and in August the International convention of the union solidly upheld his expulsion.
In July 2000 the Wildcat slate swept both Local 713’s Executive Board elections winning 7 out of 10 seats and winning 29 out of 38 positions on the Regional Council from our Local. Within a month 3 Wildcatters were taken up on 23 new charges as a way to attempt to intimidate us. This was the Business Agent’s attempt to tie us up in long battles at the union’s Trial Board. After winning the Local election we immediately instigated simultaneous Spanish translations at our meetings to encourage increased participation of Latino carpenters in the Local and childcare at the local meetings for women carpenters and to make parents more likely to come to meetings.
We also immediately called a Special Called Meeting of the Local to begin a lawsuit against the International to undo the expulsion of our former Recording Secretary. This was, in retrospect, a tactical mistake. We were able to mobilize up to 300 workers for the Special Called Meeting, but only won a slim majority for the Lawsuit. The Business Agents were able to argue that the new Executive wanted to sue their own union and were trying to bring the courts into our union after losing the democratic process at the union’s Convention. Over the following 3-month civil war at the Local the middle ground who were against the expulsion, were increasingly convinced against the lawsuit and by October the lawsuit was dead.
While using the courts should never be the first step of any struggle, the Wildcatters adopted it when all other avenues were closed. John, as Chair of the Wildcat, had born the brunt of the post-strike backlash. The San Francisco District Attorney had threatened to fine him personally for the strike, which could have meant him losing his home. He was expelled from the union after 29 years membership and above all he was one of our own that had been taken down by our enemy, the bureaucratic union machine. Despite this, the lawsuit proved to be confusing to the members, was unnecessarily divisive and diverted attention from the Wildcat and our struggle to take the union back. Some were against the lawsuit at the time, but did not want to be seen as not supporting our expelled Recording Secretary, if this was the case with Wildcatters then that was a sign of how confusing it was with the rank and file.
The greatest victory of the Wildcat was in the consciousness of the carpenters. The strike deeply rooted the concept of worker self-organization and of working class power in a generation of Bay Area carpenters. Months after the strike we would hear stories of big jobs that had shut down during the Wildcat that we didn’t even know about: this was in the days before cell phones. Any strike that is unauthorized is more chaotic and less organized than an official strike, having a lack of a center and of clear lines of communications. However, the strike was also not held back by the union bureaucracy’s fear of a rising membership, nor by the dictates of millionaire labor lawyers.
Carpenters also won a huge gain in their pensions. The union machine was terrified of our uprising. They feared that in the upcoming elections for the Executive of the Regional Council that the rank and file could topple the existing regime. Our pension was one area where they were free to make concessions to this upsurge. Before the Wildcat for every year we worked we would get $40-a-month on our pension pay out. That is less than a dollar and a quarter-a-day. After the Wildcat, the Regional Council upped that $40-a-month increasingly up to $205-a-month for every year we worked. This freeing up of tens of millions of dollars in pension money to carpenters was a direct product of our Wildcat uprising.
As Wildcatters led Local 713 we were able to continue mobilizing the membership, but the further away we went from May 1999, the harder it became. In 2001 we organized a joint construction trades meeting of about 200 workers to show that our Local opposed our International leaving the AFL-CIO federation. Not insignificantly 1400 workers and their families attended the Local’s union picnic in the summer of 2001. In 2002 to challenge our union’s ban on electing fulltime officials, who are all appointed from the very top down, we held a “Preference Poll” election and submitted the winners to the Regional Council. The Council rejected our poll!
The wildcat strike was a product of two opposing forces: the late 1990s economic boom and the extremely poor contract offered to the workers. An explosion on the scale of the Wildcat was not inevitable. What made it inevitable were the changes in the union and the wider labor movement: in particular the ban on a direct vote for the contract and the ban on the election of Business Agents. The bureaucracy prevented any opportunity for an explosion to dissipate. In the past workers would vote on a contract, some small changes would be made, and then workers would be forced to vote again on almost the same contract. Invariably this meant it would pass as workers were worn down. As the Business Agents were all appointed then our “own” elected Business Agents were not there to act as a buffer between the machine and union members. Workers would have listened to their elected full-time officials who would in turn generally try to sway workers towards voting Yes. The repressive changes in the union made an unofficial, unsanctioned strike the only way out.
Under capitalism we are all brought up as workers to accept authority and generally do as we’re told. The Wildcat was an expression not only that workers will only take so much, but also of the enormous creative potential and power that working people possess. It is this power that is the planet, and its inhabitants, only hope. The 1999 Carpenters Wildcat is an incredible legacy that is held dear in the hearts of thousands of carpenters and many more who were also touched by it.
Rob Rooke, Recording Secretary Local 713 (2000-2003)
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