Debunking the ABC

By Al Shur

The anti-union Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) likes to toss around the word “freedom.”  If you take a look at ABC’s Web site or listen to spokespeople like Eric Christen’s arguments about why unions are bad, they keep bringing up “freedom.”

Take a look at the facts, though, and you’ll probably be as disgusted as I am that they keep using this word — and even quotes from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. – to push their agenda.  The only kind of freedom that the ABC is fighting for is the freedom for contractors to pay their workers poverty-level wages with no benefits.

For example, a recent Bureau of Contract Administration report on Los Angeles Public Works projects looked at of a sample of 40 contractors and found that only one out of the 23 non-union firms offered any kind of heath benefits.  Of course, all of the workers at the 17 union contractors had health benefits.  In the construction industry, where workers are always moving from job to job, having continuous health coverage for themselves and their families is a big deal... and I’ve never met any non-union workers who would call their lack of benefits “freedom.”

Health care is one reason why about 20 ABC-certified electricians chucked their credentials in the garbage to start from scratch at the IBEW’s apprentice program last year, but wages are another one.  Even though ABC fought against it, California law requires that apprentices in ABC’s electrician program get paid the prevailing wage, which is union-level pay. Once they’re out of the program, they often need to take a pay cut, though, because they’re not protected by the prevailing wage laws anymore. These workers then decide it would be better to be a union apprentice than go begging for low-wage ABC work. 

You don’t need to just take my word on it; ABC even got slammed in Los Angeles federal court when their own apprentices sued them in 2005 for misappropriating funds meant for the apprentice program.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, the Washington State Apprenticeship and Training Council canceled three ABC apprentice programs altogether when a judge found that ABC’s Spokane chapter “failed to ensure proper training” for sheet metal worker, plumber and electrician trades as required by the state Labor Department. “These violations were the product of ABC and its training agents trying to maximize profits, at the expense of their apprentices’ quality of training,” according to Administrative Law Judge David G. Hansen.

Now that we’ve established how poorly ABC regards its workers, let’s look at a few quick examples of how ABC twists the facts or even outright lies to push its agenda:

• ABC spokesman Eric Christen continues to claim that Project Labor Agreements (PLAs) are discriminatory and has even equated these contracts with racism and sexism in recent speeches and interviews.  However, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Associated Builders and Contractors vs. Massachusetts Water Resources Author. 507 US 218 (1993) that PLA's are “like any other legitimate bidding condition and no contractor is excluded from the bidding process unless it excludes itself.”
  
• ABC also claims to have a majority of LA Unified School District projects, because they have 59% of total contracts (2003-2006), but unions were awarded almost four times as much work, if you look at the actual value of the contracts.  It should also be noted that the ABC contractors were 13 times more likely than union contractors to be slapped with punitive assessments for violating contractual terms with LA Unified during this same time span.
  
• Now ABC is throwing around accusations that the unions are “greenmailing” Gaylord.  We’ve already dealt with this nonsense on this Web site, but I just want to point out that ABC was making the same accusations about California Unions for Reliable Energy (CURE) in 2004, but the California Energy Commission’s own, independent report completely rejected ABC’s claims.

Despite the lack of critical reporting on ABC’s deceptions and anti-worker policies in the Union-Tribune, it looks like the people of Chula Vista recognize the many benefits of using local, union labor, as our soon-to-be release poll will reveal.  Stay tuned…

Posted by LJF Team on November 28, 2007 02:40 PM | Permalink

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