Carpenters, Letter Carriers join forces in “economic war” at Convention Center

The Carpenters union and members of the National Association of Letter Carriers have joined forces in a sign of solidarity. The Carpenters have been protesting outside the Pennsylvania Convention Center for four consecutive days. (See photo gallery).

Although the Letter Carriers’ are in town for a five-day convention, individual members have been protesting alongside the Carpenters all week. Both groups are protesting the Carpenters union being barred from working at the Convention Center after they failed to sign a new customer satisfaction agreement by the May 5 deadline.

“What’s been happening all week is a lot of Letter Carriers are uncomfortable because of the ongoing protest. And countless numbers of them have come to the Carpenters outside and basically said they’re sorry.” said Marty O’Rourke, spokesman for the Metropolitan Regional Council of Carpenters.

Furthermore, O’Rourke said: “It’s a sense of solidarity that the Letter Carriers understand the protest and agree with it. This is a group of them that decided to stand with the Carpenters.”

The Letter Carriers convention will be a boon for the facility and is expected to draw more than 8,000 people and generate more than $24 million in economic impact.

The Carpenters are also showing support for the Letter Carriers. Union carpenters joined hundreds of members of the Letter Carriers outside of Staples (15th and Chestnut streets) Wednesday in protesting the privatization of the U.S. Postal Service.

Convention Center officials, however, see the alliance as detrimental to the city.

“The Carpenters crossed the line from protest to waging economic war on the taxpayers of Pennsylvania when they called on the Letter Carriers to cancel their convention in Philadelphia,” said John McNichol, president and CEO of the Convention Center. “This is the Carpenter leadership’s latest attempt to distract the public from the fact that they rejected a good deal for their membership and are willing to harm the taxpayers to avoid responsibility for their actions.”

Furthermore, McNichol said: “The fact that this effort to dissuade customers from coming to Philadelphia is being led by Carpenters leader Ed Coryell — who, as a board member of the Center, has a fiduciary responsibility to the Center and taxpayers of the state — is even more troubling.”

The Carpenters say McNichol's words are an "outright lie."

"That never happened. The Carpenters never asked the Letter Carriers to not come to Philadelphia. We never asked them to cancel their event," O'Rourke said. "He's making it up. It's a total fabrication."

The Carpenters will be handing out flyers — or “truth alerts” — that read:

    Dear Sisters and Brothers, We hope you are enjoying your convention and your visit to Philadelphia - the Greatest City in America!

    We can not let you leave our great city without expressing our sincerest thanks and appreciation to the countless number of you who stopped to express your support by shaking our hands, patting us on the back, giving us thumbs up signs, offering to buy us food or water -- and in so many cases even picking up signs and standing with us to protest our LOCKOUT from the Pennsylvania Convention Center.

    Letter Carriers have always held a unique and special place in the hearts of Americans. Your warmth, your kindness and your individual acts of solidarity towards us over the last few days - will not be forgotten

    Thank you sisters and brothers! THANK YOU! And just in case PCC Management has been busy spreading more lies again --Here's the TRUTH one more time! We are locked out from working in the Pennsylvania Convention Center! We negotiated with management for more than 10 months - almost daily during the two weeks before the lockout.

    Then at the very last minute, management put a gun to our heads with a 24 hour ultimatum demanding that we sign a customer service agreement -- that was totally different from the one we spent months negotiating and had agreed to in principle with handshakes only a few days before.

    Now over 400 of our brothers and sisters - and their families - are out of work. IT'S TIME TO END THIS LOCKOUT!

Not all Letter Carrier members have joined the protests, however, nor were they as sympathetic.

Furthermore, the Convention Center is still arguing that it is not a lockout.

"A lockout is involuntary on the part of a union," Pete Peterson, spokesman for the Pennsylvania Convention Center Authority, said earlier. "They voluntarily chose not to become part of the customer satisfaction agreement and in doing so removed themselves from performing work at the center."

The Carpenters union recently filed their unfair labor practices charge against the center to the Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board after the National Labor Relations Board dismissed it because the Convention Center Authority is not under its jurisdiction.

Source: Philadelphia Business Journal