For all the talk of power tools, step stools and the ability
of exhibitors to set up their own booths at the Pennsylvania Convention Center,
the customer service agreement signed Tuesday by four of the center's six
unions is remarkable in another way:
It provides 10 years of raises at 3 percent a year - and if
the consumer price index surpasses 3 percent, union wages will rise to match
it.
"You won't find an agreement of that duration and that
ambition nationally," said Tony Wigglesworth, head of the Philadelphia
Area Labor Management Association.
"Nobody is signing 10-year, 3 percent-increase
contracts," Wigglesworth said.
Wigglesworth attended many of the recent negotiations,
serving as a third-party conduit between the six unions and the Convention
Center's newly appointed professional managers, SMG, of West Conshohocken.
That kind of stability and predictability will allow the
Philadelphia Convention and Visitors Bureau, which markets the center, to help
potential customers better estimate their total tab, even when they are booking
five to seven years ahead.
"This is what no other center in the country can
do," Wigglesworth said.
The Metropolitan Regional Council of Carpenters Local 8 and
Local 107 of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters have not signed the
agreement. Together, they comprise half of the Convention Center workforce.
Signing were unions representing riggers, who hoist and
assemble heavy exhibits; the stagehands, who assemble the stages; the
electricians, and the laborers, who maintain the center and move props and
exhibits around the convention floor.
The Carpenters have handled most of the assembly work within
the center and the Teamsters are responsible for loading and unloading the
majority of heavy equipment from trucks at the loading dock.
The agreement said that if some unions don't sign the new
agreement, their work will be divided among the other unions.
The new customer service agreement replaces the first
agreement, signed by all six unions and the Convention Center in 2003. The
backdrop was nearly a decade of ugly and sometimes violent jurisdictional
disputes at the Convention Center.
Intense negotiations, spearheaded by then-Mayor John Street,
led to the creation of a dispute resolution process and called for
post-convention meetings to resolve difficulties and improve services in the
future.
The agreement was basically ignored, with the center's
management failing to enforce its provisions, said Patrick Gillespie, head of
the Philadelphia Building Trades Council and a former Convention Center board
member.
"They just backed away," Gillespie said.
"Whatever problems they had they would let fester and embellish."
The new agreement very much mirrors the old one, but with
one key difference.
"SMG will enforce the contract," said Ryan Boyer,
who wears two hats.
Boyer is a member of the Convention Center board and a top
official of one of the four unions that signed the agreement, Local 332 of
Laborers International Union of North America.
Here's an example:
A big sticking point has been how much leeway individual
exhibitors should have in setting up their own booths.
In the past, exhibitors were allowed to assemble their
booths, as long as they were no larger than 300 feet. No power tools could be
used.
Under the new agreement, booth size has expanded to 600 feet
and modest power tools are allowed.
However, exhibitors can only use their own fulltime
employees for set up.
That is a key point because, if exhibitors were allowed to
hire temporary help, it would create a de facto nonunion workforce in the
center.
Under the terms of the agreement, it doesn't matter if the
exhibitors' employees are union or non-union. Either way, it's self-limiting,
because of the size of the booth and the necessity of using relatively
uncomplicated tools for installation. If it's complicated and large, then the
union's workforce has to do it.
Exhibitors and their employees will be issued badges, and
those credentials will be enforced by SMG, the unions believe. In the past,
that sort of enforcement was lax.
The customer service agreement also mandates the
establishment of a regular workforce, improving service.
Each union is allowed to select a group of members who are
trained in hospitality and who have passed drug tests. Those workers and their
foremen get first rights on the jobs at the Convention Center and can be
requested by name. The unions can dispatch other workers as needed.
Source: Philly.com
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