What Drywallers Want From Subcontractors : Labor: Union demands include big wage hike and health plan. They will drop lawsuits if companies try to get criminal charges against strikers dismissed.

Here’s a look at the main points of the contract being considered by drywall subcontractors:

* Wages: Drywall workers are paid a piece rate that is now as low as 4 to 5 cents for each square foot of drywall they hang. Workers had wanted a rate of 8 cents, or the same rate as the last union contract 10 years ago. In the new contract, the workers and subcontractors compromised at a rate of 7 1/4 cents.

How much each worker can earn varies depending on his skill and experience. But at 8 cents, according to subcontractors, a good estimate for the average, productive worker is $500 to $550 a week.

At the compromise rate of 7 1/4 cents per square foot, an average, productive worker would earn an estimated $400 to $500 a week. (At the 4- to 5-cent rate paid until recently, some men were earning less than $300 a week.)

The 8-cent rate paid even more 10 years ago, when drywall workers were mostly union members and generally more skilled; work crews were smaller and the interiors of houses less complex. In short, workers today are generally less skilled while the work is often more complex.

An average worker can hang between 20 to 30 sheets of plasterboard or drywall a day, say workers and subcontractors.

The sheets measure 4 feet by 12 feet, or 48 square feet each. At about a half-inch in thickness, they weigh about 100 pounds each. Also figuring into calculations: For “high work”--hanging plasterboard high up on walls or ceilings--the piece rate increases a half-cent for each foot over eight feet high.

At around $500 a week, drywall workers would make less than Orange County’s average construction worker, who earns an estimated $577 a week, an average which includes more skilled trades and union members.

* Duration: The subcontractors wanted a one-year contract; the workers wanted three. They compromised on two years.

* Benefits: Both sides tentatively agreed to a union-administered health plan, a key demand of the strikers. The worker and employer would each contribute equally. The subcontractors rejected a demand for a pension plan.

* Lawsuits: The strikers agree to drop their class-action lawsuits--48 have been filed so far--against companies that sign the union contract. Picketing and lawsuits will continue against companies that don’t sign the contract.

Of 43 subcontractor members of the Pacific Rim Drywall Assn., which includes most of the larger drywall companies, 32 have said they will probably sign the contract.

In return for the strikers dropping the lawsuits, the 32 companies agreed to persuade prosecutors to drop any pending criminal charges against the strikers. Charges are pending against dozens of strikers for everything from stealing the tools of replacement workers to smashing plasterboard in half-finished houses.

Subcontractors in San Diego, who are not part of the trade association, have not agreed to sign a contract. And there is also a group of holdouts around Palmdale in eastern Los Angeles County.

One other key question centers on the number of drywall workers who are in this country illegally. One reason the drywall strike is so unusual is because perhaps a third or more of the strikers are illegal immigrants.

Those are usually the most docile workers; they are least likely to organize a union because they fear deportation. (Of 150 strikers arrested in a mass bust in Orange County in July, more than a third were in the country illegally, according to the federal Immigration and Naturalization Service.)

But in this case, raising themselves out of the exploitation of the underground cash economy may come with a price for some of the Mexican immigrants.

The union isn’t an employer, so it’s not obligated by federal law--as employers are--to check documents to see if members may legally work in the United States, says the strikers’ lawyer, Robert Cantore of Los Angeles.

But the carpenters union has agreed to check the men’s documents, such as green cards, before referring them to employers, Cantore says. Other unions, particularly in construction, have agreed to do this too.

That means the carpenters union may have to deny work to some of the same people who walked the picket lines for a union contract.