The Drywallers--an Ironic Tale

Even President Bush admits that our free enterprise system isn’t functioning very well in this miserable recession, but a look at one microcosm of the Southern California economy shows how ridiculously maladjusted it is.

It’s easy to understand the basic element of this relatively tiny example that centers on an unprecedented and costly four-month strike by more than 3,000 frustrated, mostly Latino immigrant construction workers in six Southern California counties.

The workers, “drywallers” who cut and nail up 100-pound sheets of plasterboard on the inside walls of new and remodeled houses, were once fairly well-paid. They are striking in an attempt to restore at least some of the 50% cut in wages and health benefits they have lost over the last 10 years. The drywall contractors say business is so lousy that they cannot possibly meet the workers’ demands.

The pressure of the strike forced 28 of the contractors, who employ 75% of the workers, to agree last Thursday to negotiate a contract with the Carpenters Union.

They are not likely to get one unless it includes all of the strikers who forced the contractors to the table.

But the ramifications of this seemingly simple labor-management dispute are vast. For instance, in a free enterprise system presumably controlled by market forces, when demand is way down, supply is also supposed to decline, bringing supply and demand into some sort of balance.

Yet while demand for new housing construction is off by nearly half in California, the number of drywall contractors has been rising. The number has soared by 25% in the last three years alone.

Also, under our system, when thousands of workers are on strike demanding a union contract, union organizers should have been all over the place handing out membership cards for the workers to sign.

Yet none of the strikers were offered union cards even though they needed some kind of help soon after their old union was crushed nearly 10 years ago.

Unions didn’t ignore the strikers, of course. Douglas McCarron, leader of the Carpenters Union in Southern California, says the strikers have been badly abused and his and other unions, along with immigrant rights organizations, strongly supported them.

The various support groups raised an estimated $1 million from across the country to help the strikers survive.

Also, under our system, when workers are hired to break a strike, the strikebreakers almost never become militant pro-union workers who then go on strike to get their own union.

Yet that happened with the drywallers. They had a union of mostly white males for many years. Then in the mid-1970s employers began hiring illegal aliens because they work hard, accept low wages and are not considered union supporters.

The trend continued and by 1982, the immigrant workers helped the employers break the union. Most of the old-time union members were replaced.

Then came the recession and again the drywallers’ wages plummeted and fringe benefits were eliminated. The strikebreakers realized that they had been duped but took no action because many of them feared deportation as illegal aliens.

On June 1, however, they went on strike, disrupting the already depressed home building industry.

Another anomaly: Under our system, when a large number of workers say they want a union, in theory they simply petition the National Labor Relations Board and get one if a majority of those involved vote for the union in a government-conducted election.

But under our pro-management laws, that isn’t easy. You see, if the drywallers signed cards saying they want union representation, highly paid company lawyers could get in the act. They could use legal tactics to stall an election for many months, giving employers a chance to fire the activist leaders and line up thousands of permanent replacements of the strikers from the still-growing ranks of illegal aliens.

Of course, workers fired for supporting the union can, under our malfunctioning system, force the boss to rehire them, since it is illegal to fire someone for union activity.

But winning reinstatement can take years, and few workers can afford the time or money it takes to achieve that goal. And while they cannot be fired for supporting a union, they can be permanently replaced under our strange system, which uses different words to do the same thing.

As long as only non-union workers strike to get a union, it is difficult for the lawyers of the employers to obtain injunctions limiting picketing or to get courts to impose heavy fines or jail the strikers.

The non-union strikers are acting as individuals, not subject to federal labor laws that deal with union strikes. Even if the individual strikers are sued for illegally striking, or for alleged picket line violence, they have no money so the employers couldn’t collect strike damage.

The housing industry, once largely unionized, is almost entirely non-union today because of increased employer resistance, unfair labor laws and minimal efforts of the unions to try and organize new members.

All of that may change if the drywallers’ militancy succeeds. It could lead to a revival of unions in home construction and other industries too, according to David Sickler, regional director of the AFL-CIO.

“It has been decades since we have seen anything like the militant determination of these strikers to get a union,” he said.

But even if the drywallers get their union, they know that in the background is the ever-present threat that employers will again hire more illegal aliens to break it, just as they did 10 years ago when job-hungry illegals moved into the industry by the thousands.