On April 25, the New England Carpenters Training Center hosted a graduation ceremony for the 2012  New England Carpenters Training Fund Apprentice Graduates. 101 members, representing 15 Locals, completed their training in the apprenticeship program in 2012.  Keynote speakers included: Mark Erlich, Executive Secretary-Treasurer, NERCC; William Irwin, Executive Director, Carpenters International Training Fund; David Powell, Director, Associated General Contractors of Massachusetts; and Larry Carr, Dean, Wentworth Institute of Technology.

Congratulations to all of the graduates! 

Applications are now being accepted for the 2013 New England Regional Council Scholarship Program. Last year 148 students applied and a total of $50,000 was awarded, including the top prize scholarship of $5,000.

To be considered for an award, a completed application package must be received by 5:00 pm on April 12, 2013.

Please review the Eligibility and Guidelines for the program before completing the application. Applicants will be required to write an essay of between 500 and 1000 words on the following topic:

What impact does “Right to Work” legislation have on labor unions, economic development and the standard of living in a state that adopt the law?

To eliminate bias, the scholarship committee is blind to the identity of the applicant. Essays are numerically coded to prevent any reader from having knowledge of the writer. Winners of the top two prizes will be asked to read their essays at the June 2013 delegate meeting. Persons awarded first or second place in a prior year are ineligible for first or second place in subsequent years.

Bryan Bouchard, who serves as Business Manger of Local 1996 in Vermont, Regional Manager for Northern New England and a member of the New England Regional Council of Carpenters Executive Board has announced his retirement, effective March 11. Bouchard is a 36-year member of the UBC.

Executive Secretary-Treasurer Mark Erlich is appointing John Leavitt to fill Bouchard's unexpired term on the Executive Board as well as his role as Regional Manager for Northern New England.

"Bryan served the members on staff for the Carpenters Union for 26 years," Erlich said. "He has been a quiet but effective leader who always carried himself with dignity and integrity. He will be sorely missed by his members and the Council. We wish him a long and happy retirement."
 

The 5th Annual New England Carpenters Ice Fishing Derby will be held Sunday, February 17 from 7am-2pm at Singletary Lake in Millbury, Massachusetts.

Organizer Joe Broderick will be set up at 5am at the lake, which can be accessed by West Main Street in Millbury. Look for a banner with the carpenters emblem by the boat ramp. There is a $20 fee to enter. Twenty-five percent of proceeds will be donated to the Valley Tech Educational Fund

Power augers will not be allowed before 7am and no tickets will be sold after 9am. Awards and a shore drawing will be held at the boat ramp at 2pm. Prizes will be awarded to the heaviest fish of any species, with 40% of proceeds going to the winner, 25% to 2nd place and 10% to 3rd place. Ties will be broken by fish length. All fish must be brought in alive.

For questions, please call Joe Broderick of Local 535 at 781-983-1383.

On January 12, 2010, a catastrophic earthquake hit Haiti, devastating an already impoverished nation. With much of the country's medical infrastructure destroyed, plans that were in place to build a 110-bed community hospital had to be revamped. The Ministry of Health, along with Partners In Health, launched a far more ambitious plan to build a 320-bed state-of-the-art teaching hospital in Mirebalais, which is located thirty-five miles north of Port-au-Prince in the Central Plateau.

Haiti's building industry, however, was simply unable to meet the needs of the new building design. Massive donations of time, materials and skills would be needed for the project to succeed. Union carpenters and contractors stepped up to the challenge to help secure materials and volunteer their time and labor to help build the hospital while teaching Haitian workers valuable craft skills 

To learn more, check out the piece NERCC Executive Secretary-Treasurer Mark Erlich wrote for Commonwealth magazine about this amazing project following a trip to Haiti in 2012.

David Rampone, President of Hart Engineering, a signatory contractor based in Cumberland, Rhode Island isn't shy about being a union contractor. Last year he volunteered to be one of the latest union contractors to do a radio ad on behalf of the New England Regional Council of Carpenters. Now, he's published an opinion piece in the Providence Journal explaining why his business is better with a union partnership. Click through to read it.

The following opinion piece appeared in the January 10 print edition of the Providence Journal-Bulletin.

The benefits of employing unionists

DAVID RAMPONE

Regarding Charles Chieppo’s Dec. 20 column, “Unions are 1 percenters in Mass.,” in which he portrayed the construction industry inaccurately:

As the chief executive of a major Rhode lsland construction firm that does work all over New England, I’ll set the record straight. I am the president of Hart Engineering Corp., a general and process mechanical contractor founded over 70 years ago and based in Cumberland.

While I have read several opinion pieces by “public-relations experts” articulating the “evils” of the unionized construction industry, it needs to be pointed out that these experts have no actual experience in the construction industry and draw their conclusions based purely on anecdotal information provided by those who wish to see the unionized construction industry fail.

For the record, the National Labor Relations Act lets construction companies decide for themselves whether to be affiliated with the industry’s trade unions. It is the only industry that has such a provision. Since its inception, our firm has made the business-driven decision to be affiliated with several trade unions — a decision that has been beneficial to both our company and employees.

Currently we employ more than100 union tradesmen and women on dozens of jobs, large and small, throughout New England. These employees receive a fair wage, full health-care benefits and pension contributions — a package that lets them provide their families with a respectable standard of living. And in light of the negative attention cast on public-sector unions in these times, note that unionized construction workers are not guaranteed employment. In fact, Rhode Island unionized construction workers average about 1,500 hours worked a year. They do not receive vacation time, sick days or holiday pay, nor do they receive any benefits if they do not work the required number of hours a year — usually between 1,200 and 1,400, depending on the trade union involved.

Beyond my own company, the performance of Rhode Island’s trade unions and union contractors speaks for itself. There are more than 200 local contractors with union agreements in the Rhode Island area, and there have been more than 50 all-union project labor agreements (PLAs) worth billions of dollars completed in this area, including most of the state’s highest-profile projects. Most of these PLAs have been in the private sector.

These agreements symbolize the marketplace at work. Owners, construction managers and contractors enter into these agreements for one reason only: It is in their best interest to do so. And why? The trade unions in partnership with their contractors invest millions of dollars annually recruiting, training and retraining their workers to provide the safest, most skilled workforce in our industry. In today’s world, owners want their projects completed safely, on time, under budget and to the highest level of quality possible. That is why owners from small firms to Fortune 500 companies enter into project labor agreements.

While there are far fewer PLAs in the public sector than in the private sector, they are becoming more prevalent. However, before any public entity in Rhode Island can implement a PLA, it must complete an independent “objective and reasoned” study that recommends their use.

The trade unions’ record of providing contractors and owners with a safe and productive workforce is unmatched in our industry. Those who oppose them assert that using nonunionized workers would provide the owner with great savings. Unfortunately, those savings are usually the result of substandard wages, failure to provide health-care benefits to employees, or misclassifying employees to pay them a lower wage.

For 70 years we have provided our clients with the safest, most capable and productive work force in the industry, and our employees with a fair wage and benefits for them and their families. We are proud of what we have been able to achieve with our union partners.

David Rampone is president of Hart Engineering Corp., in Cumberland.  

Registration is now open!

Registration is now open for 2013 Spring Semester. All training is provided FREE to UBC members. Classes are filled on a first-come, first-served basis, so register early!

To register, log onto the training website NECTF.org by using your UBC number (found on your union card) and your date of birth.

Check out nercc.org/training2013 for more info. 

Applications are now being accepted for the 2013 New England Regional Council Scholarship Program. Last year 148 students applied and a total of $50,000 was awarded, including the top prize scholarship of $5,000.

To be considered for an award, a completed application package must be received by 5:00 pm on April 12, 2013.

Please review the Eligibility and Guidelines for the program before completing the application. Applicants will be required to write an essay of between 500 and 1000 words on the following topic:

What impact does “Right to Work” legislation have on labor unions, economic development and the standard of living in a state that adopt the law?

To eliminate bias, the scholarship committee is blind to the identity of the applicant. Essays are numerically coded to prevent any reader from having knowledge of the writer. Winners of the top two prizes will be asked to read their essays at the June 2013 delegate meeting. Persons awarded first or second place in a prior year are ineligible for first or second place in subsequent years.

Misclassification has been a serious problem in the construction industry for years, and something against which the Carpenters union has led the fight locally, regionally and nationally. Union efforts resulted first in greater understanding and awareness among elected officials and now regularly lead to enforcement and publicity on the issue that is either directly a result of union action or an indirect result of efforts initiated by the union.

Two items broke this week that reinforce that point. In Worcester, Telegram and Gazette columnist Clive McFarlane wrote about efforts by NERCC Organizer Manny Gines to chase down employers who cheat by misclassifying workers as independent contractors or cheat them out of their wages.

McFarlane's column ties into an announcement earlier in the week by the Executive Office of Labor in Massachusetts that more they had found more than 2,300 workers misclassified by just three employers. Though the three companies were not involved in the construction industry, the eye-popping $11 million in unreported wages and millions of dollars the state should have received for unemployment insurance payments generated new stories that put the issue in front of the general public.

To all staff and local unions:

Yesterday was a good day for union carpenters across New England. Amazingly, all of the Council’s endorsed candidates won election. Obama swept the six states, including winning swing-state New Hampshire by a larger-than-expected margin. In the critical races -- Warren in Massachusetts, Murphy in Connecticut, Hassan/Kuster/Shea-Porter in New Hampshire, King in Maine, Cicilline in Rhode Island – our picks were all winners!!

There is no doubt in my mind that some of the credit for these outcomes belongs to all of you and our members. We worked as hard as we ever have in an election season. We used all the tools available to us – new and old techniques – to educate and mobilize our members. And they responded. Door knocking, phone banks, rallies, visibilities, robo-dials, tele-Town Halls. We had a good story to tell…and we told it well and often.

But it’s important to keep a clear-eyed perspective on where we stand the morning after Election Day 2012. In many ways, we “held serve”. We helped fend off the right wing Republican assault on the middle class. There should be a clear message to the nation’s anti-union forces that their philosophy is not welcome, that the voters do not buy an agenda that favors the wealthy over working families. Yet we still have a divided Congress; we still have a Republican Party that attacks unions. We have some new articulate champions but we also have some old foes. Paul Ryan is still chair of the House Budget Committee and there are no signs yet that the House leadership is prepared to move forward in terms of solving our country’s problems as opposed to scoring political points.

So, as much as all of us deserve to take a deep breath and feel a justified sense of pride in our efforts, we will need to remain vigilant. The economy will not fix itself; it will require more federal and state action to invest in jobs and people. And it will require our continued involvement. Our members need to work; that’s why we endorsed the candidates who understood that the best social program is a job.

Thank you all for your efforts these past weeks and months. It was worth it. Congratulations.

Mark Erlich
Executive Secretary-Treasurer
New England Regional Council of Carpenters
 

Learn more about The Highlands renovation project, by clicking here to view the project in our portfolio.

Members in Rhode Island have been helping families faced with one of the harshest realities of a volatile economy, homelessness. For many years, members of Carpenters Local 94 have been raising funds for the Rhode Island Family Shelter, located in Warwick.

Carpenters Local 94 holds an annual Dollars for Food Drive to raise money for the shelter.In addition to the monetary donations, carpenters have volunteered time and labor on site to help with various projects throughout the facility. These projects include a complete renovation of the basement, creating meeting space and a large playroom.

Learn more here. 

Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chaffee and Providence Mayor Angel Taveras were among those on hand today for a ceremonial groundbreaking for The Highlands on the East Side in Pro. The project is a renovation of senior housing that will become an assisted living facility. The project is being financed by the New England Carpenters Pension Fund and led by union general contractor CWC. It will provide an eventual monetary return to the Fund while providing immediate employment opportunities to union carpenters, economic activity for Providence and badly needed housing for an aging population.

The building is owned by Halkeen Management if Norwood, Massachusetts and will eventually provide 64 unites of housing, including Alzheimer's and Dementia apartments in a variety of layouts.

The Carpenters Pension Fund is investing in the project as part of their diversified investment portfolio.

The groundbreaking was covered briefly by Providence Channel 10.

 In recognition of Earth Day 2012 the New England Carpenters Training Fund is sponsoring a FREE electronics Recycling on Monday, April 23, 2012 at the New England Carpenters Training Center (NECTC), 13 Holman Rd, Millbury, MA 01527.

Items may be dropped off between the hours of 7:00 AM and 2:30 PM (any day this week or on Monday, April 23).

Please call the NECTC at 508-792-5443 to let them know if you will participating so they have an idea of when you will arrive and the items you will be bringing.

The following items will be accepted.

• PC’s/Laptops
• Monitors (CRT & LCD)
• Terminals
• Servers
• Wires and Cables
• Fax Machines
• Printers
• Power Supplies
• VCR, DVDs, CD’s, floppies, camcorders
• Electrical Equipment
• Stereo Equipment and components
• Server Racks
• Projectors
• Photocopiers
• Communication Equipment
• Networking equipment
• Cell Phones
• Telecom Equipment

****We will not accept TV’s as there is a charge for them

Information sessions are being held for members who would like to learn more about degree programs available through the union at Wentworth Institute of Technology. Two sessions are scheduled in the coming weeks.

Saturday, April 21 at 10AM: 750 Dorchester Ave., Boston, MA

Saturday, May 5 at 9 AM: 13 Holman Rd., Millbury, MA

Learn more general information about the program by clicking here.

While we love the convenience and immediacy of sharing news and information through the “Council Update” and on NERCC.org and social media platforms, we know not every carpenter is active online. So the New England Regional Council is committed to continuing to produce the New England Carpenter magazine and deliver it to every member’s home.

The latest issue of New England Carpenter magazine has rolled through the presses up in Salem, Massachusetts at Deschamps Printing. You’ll notice some changes in this issue, including some new design elements and more (and bigger) pictures of union members and union projects!

We’re featuring a cluster of stories about member involvement in area standards demonstrations and introducing the Union Participation Program, which will plug active members into ongoing union efforts to protect standards and win more work opportunities.

Keep an eye on your mailbox or check-in at the media center on NERCC.org

Hats off to Local 94 members Eric Furtado and Robert Andrioli who volunteered their time and labor to build a handicap ramp at a VFW Post in Providence, Rhode Island.

The Post is being reopened by local-area veterans. Creating handicap access to the facility was a crucial component of these preparations.

Members of Carpenters Local 94 in Rhode Island unanimously ratified a new, two-year collective bargaining agreement at a meeting last Saturday. The contract was negotiated with the Associated General Contractors of Rhode Island and includes increases of $1.50 each year.

Seventy-five cents is being added to wages this month. The remaining seventy-five cents for the first year will be added to benefit contributions in January. The allocation for those increases will be determined in December by member vote.

The second year of the agreement is also schedule to include a wage increase of seventy-five cents in June and an increase to benefit contributions of seventy-five cents in January of 2013.

Language changes made to the agreement included mostly housekeeping issues such as a change from benefit stamps to electronic receipts for employer contributions to benefit funds.

The collective bargaining agreement with the Construction Industries of Rhode Island included a wage reopener, only. Wage and benefit changes negotiated as part of the AGC agreement will be applicable to the CCRI contract, but language changes will not.

Both the AGC and CCRI agreements will expire on June 2, 2013.

Rhode Island Carpenters Local 94 and affiliated apprenticeship and training programs are participating in Rhode Island Construction Career Days today and tomorrow. Union representatives and training instructors are talking to thousands of high school and middle school students about careers in carpentry and affiliated trades.

Students are getting a chance to see and hear what things are like from some union carpenter apprentices who might've been in their shoes not too long ago. Brothers Christopher Costa, Floorcoverers Local 2168, Stephen Dias Carpenters Local 94, Shawn Rios, Carpenters Local 40 and Matthew Higgins and Emerson Ocampo, both from Carpenters Local 33 are showing off their skills with the screw gun and drywall and some concrete forms.

Carpenters Local 94 will accept 14 apprentice applicants from a grant-funded pre-apprenticeship program and run training for apprentices and journey-level carpenters with their share of a $1.8 million grant awarded to Rhode Island Building Trades unions.

An undocumented immigrant has filed a lien for wages he's owed for work he performed for a drywall subcontractor...on an immigration center.

The worker--calling himself "Jose" in the Target12 story (embedded below)--did work on a Federal Immigration Center in Johnston, Rhode Island. He says he was hired by Ocean State Drywall and owner Joseph Pagliaro. In the video a visibly nervous Pagliaro confirms that the man worked on his job and that he knows him, but denies that he employed him or ever paid him cash for wages. He claims that another subcontractor hired "Jose" but does not mention the subcontractor's name or identity.

Calson Corporation is the general contractor on the project, which is owned by a company named Atwood Development, LLC in Johnston. It is being leased to the federal government for ten years.

"Jose" claims he is owed more than $2,300 dollars. He says neither he nor another undocumented coworker was ever asked for proof of residency.

"Jose" reached out to NERCC Organizer Matt Murphy for help because he's been cheated out of wages in the past and had had enough. Murphy and other organizers in the area have been working with "Jose" to try to get the money is rightfully owed for work he did.

On Saturday, members of Rhode Island Carpenters Local Union 94 unanimously approved a new agreement with the Construction Industries of Rhode Island for heavy and highway work. The four year agreement will provide hourly increases for total wages and benefits of $1.50 in the first year and $1.75 in the second year. Total package increases for the third and fourth year of the agreement will be the same as what is negotiated for the building agreement. A two-year agreement for building work was completed last week.

Coming soon...more negotiations
This year is a busy one for the New England Regional Council when it comes to collective bargaining. In addition to the Western Massachusetts and Rhode Island contracts, three other agreements covering four New England states are set to expire before the end of 2009. The final carpentry contract will be negotiated next year. The contracts, and their expiration dates are:
Boston/Eastern Massachusetts--September 30
Massachusetts Floorcoverers Local 2168--August 31
Northern New England(Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont)--September 30
Connecticut--May 2010

The New England Regional Council of Carpenters and Rhode Island Local 94 released the following statement regarding a new collective bargaining agreement with Rhode Island building contractors.

This morning, members of Carpenters Local 94 of the New England Regional Council of Carpenters voted overwhelmingly to approve a new 2-year agreement negotiated with the Rhode Island Associated General Contractors and return to work immediately. The agreement provides an hourly increase in combined wages and benefits of $3.25 over two years. Of that, $1.50 will be added in the first year of the agreement and $1.75 in the second. Increases will cover rising costs of benefits with likely minimal, if any, wage hikes. The agreement covers building work only; a contract with heavy and highway contractors has not been reached and those carpenters remain on strike.

As a union we work very closely with our partners in the industry--including subcontractors, general contractors owners and developers--to stay on top of industry trends and conditions. We understand the financial troubles that are currently impacting the construction industry. That is why we worked so hard to negotiate a reasonable agreement that balances those concerns with those of rank-and-file carpenters who build the highest quality projects in Rhode Island.

The brevity of the work stoppage clearly demonstrated that neither side wanted a strike. We’re pleased that our members will be returning to work and using their skills to help employers build a better Rhode Island.

The New England Regional Council of Carpenters and Rhode Island Local 94 released the following statement regarding the current strike.

On June 20, nearly four hundred members of Carpenters Local 94 unanimously voted to reject the final offer of the Rhode Island AGC for a new collective bargaining agreement. The previous four-year agreement expired on June 7. At that time the AGC representatives were unable to determine who had the authority to bargain on behalf of the employer association, so the union agreed to a two week extension.

On Friday, June 19, employer representatives submitted a final offer which they insisted be presented to the union’s membership.

In the wake of the membership vote, the Carpenters Union stands ready to continue negotiations at any time. The Union believes it is not in the best interests of either party or the state’s construction industry to negotiate in the media and calls on the employers to return to the bargaining table and finalize a mutually acceptable contract so that carpenters across Rhode Island can return to work.

Though many union carpenters are on strike, carpenters employed on construction projects governed by project labor agreements (PLA) continue to work as well as those employed by the dozens of construction employers who have expressed a desire to continue working with the union by signing interim agreements with the union.

The Carpenters union has always enjoyed a cooperative and professional relationship with the AGC and all construction employers in the state of Rhode Island. Through cooperative training and benefit programs, we have worked to train and retain the best trades workers in the industry. It is through this partnership that union contractors have been able to produce the highest quality work at competitive prices for their clients. The Union looks forward to returning to the bargaining table and re-establishing that partnership with the AGC.

Two days into Rhode Island Carpenters’ statewide strike against commercial and heavy/highway builders, the Providence Journal Bulletin has published a story about the impasse.

The story includes quotes from both the union and a representative of the Associated General Contractors (AGC). The union statements (included below) emphasize the need to return to the bargaining table and resume the positive, cooperative relationship the union has had with signatory contractors. Unfortunately, the AGC maintained no such level of professionalism or respect.

Eric Anderson, executive director of the Rhode Island AGC characterized union carpenters as "kids" whose strike is "nutty" and "a power play on behalf of the carpenter’s union to dominate the construction industry."

Mr. Anderson apparently doesn’t think union carpenters are smart enough or considerate enough to make their own decisions, telling the paper that carpenters’ wives and significant others would put pressure on members to accept whatever deal management offered: "eventually we’ll get to that and people will start to become more reasonable. That’s what we hope will happen soon."

Union carpenters understand that a strike is not a frivolous thing. The members of Rhode Island voted by a margin of more than 400-1 to reject the last offer and strike. They didn’t do it because they wanted to lose their trucks or homes anymore than contractors want to drive their businesses into the ground by sitting idle.

As is the case in many local unions around the country, union carpenters in New England are facing new collective bargaining agreements that provide very little, if anything, in the way of wage increases. Rather, carpenters are focusing on protecting health and retirement benefits. It is an unfortunate function of the current economic times. But those benefits don’t only protect members, they reduce the burden on all taxpayers by lowering demand on public assistance programs.

Carpenters are not "kids" interested in pushing aside our Brothers and Sisters in the Building Trades. At the same time, the AGC’s "cookie cutter" approach to negotiating and its threats to start negotiations from scratch do nothing to protect and promote positive labor relations between the union and the AGC in the future.

Mr. Anderson suggested that contractors in Rhode Island might try to keep projects on schedule by brining carpenters down from Massachusetts. But union carpenters in Massachusetts have expressed strong solidarity with their Brothers and Sisters in Rhode Island, making it unlikely members would cross state lines and union strike lines.

Members in Rhode island are encouraged to visit the story at the Providence Journal and voice their opinion on their actions in the comments section after the story. All union carpenters--no matter where they live--can voice their support for our Brothers and Sisters in Rhode Island by submitting their own comments. Go to the story on the Providence Journal’s website and leave a comment in the section following the story. Remember, the paper reserves the right to delete comments it finds objectionable and rude or immature attacks do not generate support for union members. Comments are moderated and may not show up immediately. Only submit them once.

As a result of a unanimous vote by the members attending this morning’s well attended membership meeting, Carpenters Local 94 has rejected the final offer from the AGC Labor Division and the Construction Industries of Rhode Island (the road builders) and are now on strike.

All building and heavy/highway members of Local 94 are instructed not to report to work starting on Monday June 22 until further notice. Exceptions to this are the projects at Blue Cross, Women and Infants and FM Global, which are covered by PLAs and will continue to work. Any members who have questions should call the union hall at 401-467-7070.

All stewards are to report to the union hall on Monday at 7am for instructions.

Electronic updates will be provided, through the Council Update and on NERCCBlog.com as soon as negotiations resume. Rhode Island members will also receive updates through automated phone messages.

Members of Carpenters Local 94 in Rhode Island will hold a meeting to vote on current contract proposals on Saturday, June 20 at 9:00 am. The meeting will be held at Local 94's union hall at 14 Jefferson Park Road in Warwick.

The union and contractors had agreed to a two-week extension of the previous agreement, effective June 7. That extension will expire on Sunday, June 21. If members do not approve a new contract, they will vote to strike all commercial construction and heavy/highway sites beginning Monday, June 22.

Contract negotiations for a new collective bargaining agreement in Rhode Island between the New England Regional Council of Carpenters, Local 94 and the AGC Labor Division and the Construction Industries road builders have not been completed.

Both of the associations and the union have agreed to a two week extension, with the understanding that any increase in wages or benefits will be retroactive to June 7. As a result of this extension, the membership meeting scheduled for Sat June 6 has been canceled. Another meeting has been scheduled for Saturday June 20 at 9 am at the Carpenters Local 94 hall to consider contract proposals.