Friday, July 29, 2016

Miracle in Philly: Labor peace breaks out at Democratic convention



 Start with the carpenters' and stagehands' unions, which historically hate each other's guts in Philadelphia. Add hard feelings over which union put up fences during Pope Francis' visit. Not a prayer of forgetting that.

Anthony Wigglesworth’s job was to resolve jurisdictional disputes and keep things friendly among unions, general contractors, and the Democratic Party. Wigglesworth is director of the Philadelphia Area Labor Management Committee.


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Layer in Democratic politics from Washington along with high-stakes pressure to show the city, candidate, and party in a good light. Then throw in demands from a contentious crew of media technicians from the major networks. No one wants to make them mad.

Now, just for fun, mix it with a crazy deadline of seven weeks to transform the Wells Fargo complex into a $15 million mini metropolis for the Democratic National Convention.

It was all a recipe for labor disaster. But then something unusual happened, at least by Philadelphia labor standards. Peace broke out.

Problems happened, but not many. Those that did were resolved, and quickly.

"It wasn't exactly lions laying down with lambs," said Anthony "Tony" Wigglesworth, who leads the group that ran interference among the unions at the Wells Fargo arena. But it was close.

How did peace happen?

Like so many things in Philadelphia, a city where everyone knows everybody forever, it took a combination of leadership shifts and outside forces to make change. New alliances were forged under the heat of deadline pressure applied by clients who didn't know, and didn't care, about the old grudges.

"We were able to not live in the past and to look to what's in front of us," said James "J.R." Hocker, an official of the carpenters' union.

Also, "there was a certain sense that it was bigger than the jurisdictional issues we focused on," said Michael Barnes, who leads IATSE Local 8, the stagehands' union.

Will it continue?

By nature, Wigglesworth is optimistic. "The trades are better off for having gone through this process," he said. "And we will be even better at big events than we were before."

Wigglesworth was in a prime spot to watch it happen at the arena. As director of the Philadelphia Area Labor Management Committee (PALM), Wigglesworth had the job, on behalf of convention organizers, of resolving jurisdictional disputes; keeping things friendly among unions, the general contractors, and the party; and tying it all up with a big blue bow before the convention opened on July 25.

And starting Friday morning, he will be untying that bow to return Wells Fargo to its pre-convention state for a Barbra Streisand concert Aug. 20.

"This has been the most unusual, awesome and frustrating project I've ever been involved with," Wigglesworth said. "I had to use all 31 years of political currency to keep the job going. It was whatever we needed to do to open on time."

Complicating it was a strange matrix: Not only did trade unions perform the work, but they were also major donors to the Democratic Party.

"We had to disconnect the political and fund-raising side of the trades to the performance in the field," Wigglesworth said. "We had to let our project-labor agreement be applied to the job."

Jurisdictional friction is hard-wired into the building trades with each union wanting to keep its members employed. That translated to skirmishes and hard feelings.

Over the years, those feelings ossified.

But a major shift occurred in May 2014 when union carpenters, led by Edward Coryell, lost the right to work in the Pennsylvania Convention Center.

In a nearly unprecedented action, the other building trades crossed the carpenters' picket line, led by their officers, including Barnes of the stagehands and John Dougherty, leader of the politically connected Local 98 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers

In February, Coryell lost his job with the carpenters' union, and in late June, two top stagehand officials, Anthony Tortorice and his son, Jonathan, lost their posts, amid accusations of deceptive labor practices.

That left room for new relationships.

Hocker, for example, was a Coryell lieutenant, but lined up behind the union's new leaders. The union, now headquartered in northern New Jersey, sent its political director, Tricia Mueller, to manage the convention.

"When I walked into this, I could have walked into a hornets' nest. I read everything and I had ideas and I never met these people," said Mueller, 42. "I took advantage of just being a newcomer."

She was able to forge a key relationship with Barnes, a fierce Coryell rival.

"That was a refreshing change between the carpenters and the stagehands," Barnes said.

Stagehands shop steward Lou Petrucci, who normally handles stagehands' assignments at the Wells Fargo, took over for the Tortorices, which also helped, Wigglesworth said.

So how did it play out?

Day to day, John Dougherty, who, in addition to his Local 98 post, is the newly elected leader of the Building Trades Council, an umbrella group, walked the arena, pushing for resolutions.

"He was a constant advocate for all organizations. He didn't have to be an advocate for us because we're not in the building trades," said Mueller, the carpenters' rep. And keep in mind that Dougherty and Coryell had fought, fangs bared, for decades for the alpha dog position.

"It was easy like Sunday morning," Dougherty said.

"It's been great," said Travis Dredd, who represents the Democratic Party at the arena. Dredd said he had to learn about jurisdictional disputes, down to which union could drive a forklift where. (That was resolved - Teamsters outside the building, Laborers inside.)

There was only one arbitration and two disputes that almost moved to arbitration. Everything else was resolved with phone calls, usually in less than an hour.

Take the fences. During the pope's visit, through a fluke, the stagehands ended up installing them - not their usual work and serious grounds for acrimony. At Wells Fargo, the fences wound up being erected by the carpenters and the laborers.

The Uber tent was another potential flash point. By July 20, with the convention opening five days away, "no one knew: Was there going to be tent?" Wigglesworth said.

Under the project labor agreement, the unions and the DNC agreed that outside groups that donated to the party could bring in their own work crews - even non-union ones. But if any union labor was used, the agreement had to be followed, Wigglesworth said.

So Uber brought in a mixed crew - union stagehands from New York and non-union technicians.

But erecting the tents should have been carpenters' work.

"I got a call, ran out there, and got a sunburn," Wigglesworth said. By the time he learned about the Uber tent, it was about 60 percent erected.

In the past, "that tent would have been taken down by carpenters and put up by the carpenters," adding cost and time to the job, Wigglesworth said. Instead, Hocker agreed to a composite crew with union carpenters replacing Uber's non-union technicians and working side by side with union stagehands to finish the project.

"It's a different world," Wigglesworth said.

Each union, he said, walked away from work to keep the job going.

The worst of it came when the media crews arrived, providing instant friction with union electricians and stagehands, Wigglesworth said.

The network technicians wanted to run their own cables and erect their own platforms in violation of the labor agreement, he said.

"It was whack-a-mole" trying to fix problems with five major TV networks, Wigglesworth said. These became the only problems that took time to resolve - a tense three days.

"Law, sausages, and media relationships are three things you shouldn't see being made," he said. In the end, no one was fully happy, but the show went on.

The unions "ended up getting much less than they bargained for," he said. But failure to reach some accommodation "would have been disastrous," given the pressure to showcase the city and the candidate.

"It would have been way worse than any jurisdictional disputes," Wigglesworth said. "You're not dealing with someone who has to buy a megaphone. They own the megaphones."

In the end, it boils down to good business, said Hocker, of the carpenters, echoing what other union leaders said. A successful convention means a powerful credential for union labor and union contractors.

"We don't go down there to futz around," he added. "We go down there to showcase our skills.

"With the DNC, we're trying to change perceptions," he added. "We want to show we're the best in the city and the best in the country."

Source: Philly.com

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