Teamsters get back into Convention Center

In yet another complicated twist to the Pennsylvania Convention Center saga, members of the Teamsters local that had lost the right to work in the building are back in the building working.

How did it happen?

When it comes to this building, nothing is ever straightforward.

In May 2014, two of the six unions that worked in the building setting up trade shows lost jurisdiction when their leaders failed to sign a new customer satisfaction agreement by a management-imposed deadline.

Negotiating with SMG, the center's outside management firm, the leaders of the four other unions divvied up the two unions' work and dramatically led members across a picket line set up by the two ousted unions.

By that time, those two unions - the Metropolitan Regional Council of Carpenters and Teamsters Local 107 - had already begun a continuing round of protests and legal filings.

Meanwhile, the center's formerly disgruntled customers are praising improvements in attitude and cost now that union carpenters no longer work at shows.

Union carpenters - sometimes more than 300 - had handled most of the work; now union stagehands do it. Show workers, who do not include carpenters and Teamsters, are hired, through a labor contractor, by the companies that produce the trade shows and build exhibits.

So how did Teamsters get back in the center?

The same way a handful of carpenters did.

Even as their union brethren have been picketing, a handful of carpenters have continued to work inside, not doing shows, but handling building repairs. They are employed by Wyatt Inc., a maintenance contractor.

The Teamsters' situation is more complicated.

When they worked in the center, the Teamsters had relatively small crews, usually about a half-dozen. They monitored traffic on the loading docks and checked freight.

When they lost jurisdiction, some Teamster functions were taken over by the management firm, SMG, and others were handled by employees of the companies producing trade shows.

In March, after a competitive interview process, SMG hired two men for loading-dock work and internal freight handling, said SMG general manager Lorenz Hassenstein.

They were Mike Bell, a Teamster shop steward, and fellow union member John "Sneakers" Griffin. Both had often worked in the building.

"We hired them as individuals," not as part of a union, Hassenstein said. "They understood the work and they knew the building."

Not long after, he said, the two men asked to be represented by the Teamsters, which is their lawful right. "We're pro-union," Hassenstein said, adding that SMG negotiated a contract with Teamsters Local 107, allowing him to call more Teamsters, if necessary.

Hassenstein said that two men will handle what is now a management function of monitoring loading dock traffic during shows, and, in between, handle any in-house freight.

But, he said, they will not do show work covered by the revised customer satisfaction agreement that their leader, Bill Hamilton, did not sign in May 2014.

How other unions feel about this is a mystery.

Quick to opine in other circumstances, leaders of the stagehands, the laborers, and the electricians were mum, despite repeated requests for comment.

Hamilton, president of Teamsters Local 107, did not return phone calls.

And the carpenters?

"In that Local 107's circumstances were identical to those confronted by the Carpenters, this is highly contradictory and substantially weakens the Convention Center's already flimsy legal basis for continuing to lock out the Carpenters," e-mailed carpenters' union spokesman Martin O'Rourke. "We trust that one way or another a similar solution will be reached with the Carpenters."

Source: Philly.com