Subcontractors, Striking Drywallers Begin Negotiations to End Walkout : Labor: Southland employers talk with carpenters union. Those who refuse face continuing lawsuits on alleged non-payment of overtime.

Southern California drywall subcontractors sat down with the carpenters union Wednesday for the first time in years.

The goal is to negotiate an end to an 18-week strike--something many of the subcontractors vowed when the strike started this summer that they would never do. No settlement is expected in the next few days; negotiating a contract is likely to take some time.

Several thousand drywall hangers, most of them Mexican immigrants, walked off the job June 1, demanding benefits such as health insurance--they get no benefits now--a union and their first raise in 10 years. The men nail up the plasterboard that forms the inner walls of houses. Because wages have dropped during the recession, the men say, they now earn an average of $300 a week.

Drywall subcontractors expected the protest to fold after a few weeks as the strikers ran out of money and had to return to work. Instead, the subcontractors gave in because of two developments over the summer: Unions donated millions of dollars to keep the workers afloat; and by August, the strikers had discovered a technique more effective than picketing--their lawyers began suing the subcontractors for allegedly not paying overtime.

For companies that have agreed to negotiate with the union, the lawsuits on the overtime are on hold for a month. Robert A. Cantore, a lawyer for the strikers, said legal action is continuing against holdout subcontractors in San Diego and the Palmdale area of eastern Los Angeles County.

The Pacific Rim Drywall Assn., the industry’s trade group, said this week that it has cobbled together with its 41 members “a fragile coalition” willing to talk to the carpenters union, which the strikers want to represent them.

The workers say they have organized the strike mostly on their own. If they win, their union could represent as many as 4,000 drywall hangers, making their organizing drive the largest in the nation.

Some of the men are the same ones hired by the subcontractors and home builders to break the largely Anglo carpenters and painters unions 10 years ago.

While many home builders have made clear that they are not happy about the re-emergence of the carpenters union, they have officially taken a neutral position on the negotiations.