Welcome to the Business Journal Archives
Search for articles below, or continue to the all new BusinessJournalDaily.com now.
Search
Membership Holds Steady in Region's Labor Unions
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio -- Several labor organizations in the region say they are holding their own in terms of membership, even as the number of rank and file declines nationally.
Union officials at some locals report their members are benefiting from the oil and gas development and its resulting spinoff activity, while others, such as those representing public employees, are fighting the headwinds caused by funding cuts at state and local levels.
Large projects such as V&M Star’s new mill in Youngstown and construction at area hospitals are benefiting union members, they assert, and they looking toward upcoming opportunities such as a project for a V&M affiliate and the new Hollywood Slots at Mahoning Valley Race Course in Austintown.
Tradesmen represented by the Western Reserve Building and Construction Trades Council total about 4,500, reports Don Crane, president. That includes carpenters, ironworkers, laborers, plumbers and pipefitters, electricians and painters. Some 85% of his membership is working now, Crane says, and he foresees strong activity for at least the next couple of years.
“It’s a pretty stable number,” Crane says of his membership. Several crafts suffered during the 2008 economic downturn “so we probably lost a couple hundred members over the last several years,” he concedes. Now, the membership is going “very strong,” he adds. Trades unions are finishing up at V&M and preparing to start on the next VAM project, work will get under way on the racino this year, and Youngstown State University has several projects on tap as well. Other projects this year include new wings at St. Elizabeth Boardman Health Center and Salem Community Hospital.
“We also have the new processing plant in Springfield Township,” he says. Oil and gas activity has resulted in spinoff work at Wheatland Tube and pipelines are going to contractors that are hiring Western Reserve members. “So the infrastructure of the gas work is actually going very well for us,” he says.
“The building trades are doing very well in our area,” says Bill Padisak, president of the Mahoning-Trumbull AFL-CIO. Much of that he attributes to oil and gas drilling as well as work at V&M and the General Motors Lordstown plant. But he also acknowledges losses from RG Steel’s closing and in sectors such as education. Because of cutbacks in state funding, for example, Boardman Local Schools didn’t replace 28 teachers last year.
Largely because of the oil and gas activity, just 5% of the 730 or so members of Local 396 of the Plumbers & Pipefitters union are idle, says business manager Butch Taylor. Membership in his local has increased by 108 over the last couple of years, he says.
“We’ve been very fortunate. Components for oil and gas fall in with pipe and pipefitting,” he remarks. The local has worked “very closely” with contractors and incoming companies to line up “strong partnerships” to accomplish their mutual and separate goals, he says, and apprenticeship and welding programs are growing. He is optimistic about the near future is expected to bring with the cryogenic plant in Springfield Township and if BP moves forward with its plans.
A lot of the work for members of Local 33 of the Sheet Metal Workers can be attributed to shale, although not all of it directly, says Travis Hoskinson, Youngstown District business representative. While sheet metal workers didn’t have much involved in terms for V&M’s new plant, it boosted the economy as a whole. “People stopped losing their homes and are putting money back into them,” he says.
Hours for the 325 members of Local 33 – about 90% of whom are working full-time – were up about 4% last year from 2011, and Hoskinson expects even better this year with the racino and hospital projects, including renovations at Northside Medical Center and Trumbull Memorial Hospital. “The big stuff’s usually a good indicator,” he says, “and then all the small stuff that usually springs off of it.”
Dave Green, president of Local 1714 of the United Auto Workers, sees membership growth coming from outside of GM Lordstown where his local is one of two bargaining units that represent autoworkers. The local, which has 1,500 members, represents GM stamping and body ship workers as well as workers for Knight Sanitation, which operates at the plant.
“When I came to this plant [in 1995] we had probably close to 3,400 members and a lot of stuff has changed here,” Green says. Before, the plant used to stamp parts for discontinued GM brands; today it produces parts for the Chevrolet Cruze built in the adjacent plant.
“We had no other amalgamated units like Knight,” Green continues. “That’s our future – looking at other groups to organize and bring in.”
Retooling at GM Lordstown is providing work for Local 573 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, which has close to 200 members in Trumbull County, says its president, Kevin Miller.
The upsurge in sales of existing homes means “we are seeing a little upturn in residential service calls for small upgrades,” Miller reports. On the commercial side, his membership is getting more work for new stores coming into the Eastwood Mall as well as construction of the new hotel and banquet center there. “So there is an upswing in the commercial side. We just hope it continues and keeps going,” he says.
Council 8 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees represents a mix of 4,500 public- and private-sector workers over an area that includes Ashtabula and Belmont counties, although most of its members are in the Mahoning Valley, says John Filak, regional director for the Youngstown office. Its membership is a mixture of government employees and private-sectors hospital and nursing home workers, including 1,300 members at Trumbull Memorial and Hillside Rehabilitation hospitals and about 70 at Valley Renaissance Nursing Home. The rest are city and county workers and employees of the Mahoning Valley Sanitary District.
The private sector has seen a “long, steady decline,” Filak says, but since the chapter represents relatively few private-sector workers its membership has held steady, he reports. Within the last two to three years the public-sector membership has declined mostly through attrition – statewide, he says, AFSCME represents 40,000 members, down from 44,000 five years ago. As state funds dried up for local governments, employees weren’t replaced as they retired, and “a fair number” of employees retired as a result in changes in state pensions so they could preserve their benefits, he notes.
“Cities and counties have finally gotten down to bare bones and realize they need to replace some workers,” Filak continues. “We’ve probably bottomed out and we’re probably starting back up. I think we’d at least hold our own where we’re at.” He also notes Trumbull Memorial has hired several nurses recently. “As the economy rebounds in the Valley, the public employers won’t be so cash-strapped,” he says.
Robert W. Grauvogl, president of Local 880 of the United Food and Commercial Workers, reports that membership in his local of approximately 22,000 in northeastern Ohio has been stable the past several years. UFCW’s membership includes grocery and drug store workers, meat cutters, drug store and nursing home employees, truck drivers and warehouse workers.
The biggest challenge to the membership is nonunion competition, he says – “the trend of customers to pay less and less attention to whether a store or shop or product is union or not.”
Herman Marshman, president of IBEW Local 272, which represents 300 employees at FirstEnergy’s Corp.’s Bruce Mansfield Plant in Shippingport, Pa., says as the corporation closes plants, it is laying off employees rather than move them to other locations. Also, the company increasingly is giving work to outside contractors rather than employing full-time workers. “They’re trying to reduce our numbers and that will have an effect on our financial ability to represent our employees,” he says.
The economy is strong when unions are strong, UAW 1714’s Green maintains, so he is concerned about so-called “right-to-work” legislation enacted in Michigan and possibly coming to Ohio. “No right to work,” is how he puts it because it limits unions’ ability to represent their members. “We won’t have the ability to negotiate,” he warns. “It isn’t free. It costs money to hire labor lawyers.”
EDITOR'S NOTE: This story first appear in the Feb. 12 print edition of The Business Journal.
Copyright 2013 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
CLICK HERE to subscribe to our free daily email headlines and to our twice-monthly print edition.