Carpenters Organizer Braces for Negotiating : Recent Strikes Focus Attention on Labor

Striking United Parcel Service and Bay Area Rapid Transit workers have momentarily shifted the nation’s attention to issues of labor, but local carpenters union organizer Randy J. Thornhill doesn’t expect his job to get any easier.

“I don’t think it will have much impact on the rest of us. Everybody gets up and goes to work and has to deal with their own problems on a daily basis,” said Thornhill, 44, one of three business representatives for the Southern California-Nevada Regional Council of Carpenters Local 2361. “It certainly gives the unions more visibility, but every case is different. Union organizing is a lot tougher in Orange County.”

Thornhill and other leaders of the local union are already telling their 2,000 members to brace themselves for tough contract negotiations, which begin next summer.

“We’re letting them know that now is the time to start setting some money aside. If we come to an impasse, everybody’s got to be ready,” said Thornhill, an Orange County carpenter and union activist for 26 years. “We’re going to go through a difficult time--there’s no doubt about it. The employers will be going for the lowest number, for whoever will work the cheapest. It’s an ongoing battle.”

Meanwhile, a shooting range run by the county Sheriff’s Department not far from union headquarters in the city of Orange was just remodeled with nonunion labor.

“All the carpentry work went to prison laborers. We contacted all the supervisors, and they said: ‘We’re trying to save money.’ So what’s the message here? Commit a crime, go to jail and get a job--somebody else’s job.”

Carpenters Local 2361 operates under the umbrella of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters & Joiners of America, which is affiliated with the AFL-CIO. It is one of three union locals that represent about 5,000 carpenters in Orange County.

The last major strike by Orange County carpenters was in 1993. Complaints of low wages and poor working conditions against private contractors were mostly from nonunion drywall installers working on residential construction projects, but the local unions lent their support.

“The whole residential construction industry had deteriorated so bad. Some guys were going six to eight weeks without a paycheck. Some guys were not being paid because they just looked like they might be illegal aliens.

“Carpenters were making half of what they used to make in the ‘70s and the ‘80s. You couldn’t make $60 a day [in 1993] as a journeyman carpenter on these residential jobs.”

The strike brought residential carpenters together and helped union negotiators win them higher wages from contractors, Thornhill said.

“They put together an agreement that was about equal to what it was in the middle ‘70s. It was not what it should have been 20 years later, but it was double what it had been. It was a start.”

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Thornhill first learned drywall construction at age 18 in 1971. Lured by the prospect of good wages backed by a strong union, he quit his job as a dishwasher. “I grew up on welfare in a broken family with five brothers and a sister. Carpentry was great money for a young guy like me to make. Just a few short years later, I was able to buy my own house. You could make $100 a day then, on a good day. Later on into the ‘80s, you could make $200 a day.”

But the Orange County housing boom went bust, sending the most highly skilled carpenters into commercial construction. Residential construction jobs shifted to immigrant laborers who were grateful for the work, regardless of the wages, Thornhill said.

“When I first got started, if you didn’t have a union job, you didn’t have a job. Today, union carpenters account for about 35% to 40% of the carpenters working in Orange County overall. We’re only doing about 5% of the home building in Orange County, if that much.

“Union organizing is much more difficult than it ever has been. You’ve got a country 100 miles away, where a lot of that work force is desperately looking for a new future. They might be making 50 cents an hour, and then they come here and make $5 an hour. It’s like they died and went to heaven.

“I know of workers out there who have gone as long as nine weeks without a paycheck because they may be illegal and they don’t want to rock the boat. They’ve got a job and they’re being promised more work. But in the end, sometimes they’re not even paid. The employer will say, ‘What are you going to do? Turn me in?’

“That makes it real difficult for the other workers in the industry, when some of these guys will go nine weeks without a paycheck. And you can’t really blame them. If the carpenters will just stand together and work together, they can protect the standards that they’ve had. But they’re not going to be living in Mission Viejo or Irvine, and they’re probably not going to be buying a house any time soon. But standing together, they can achieve more.”

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Profile: Randy J. Thornhill

Age: 44

Hometown: Garden Grove

Residence: Riverside

Family: Wife, Kerry; two school-age children

Education: Graduated from Garden Grove High School; completed Carpenters Joint Apprenticeship program and became journeyman carpenter at age 20, specializing in drywall construction; studied labor history and organizing, workplace health and safety issues, social responsibility; leadership training

Background: Began as a journeyman residential carpenter in 1973; switched to commercial construction in 1977; became a business representative in 1979 for the Southern California-Nevada Regional Council of Carpenters Local 2361 in Orange, mediating work-related problems, helping enforce contracts, monitoring the apprenticeship program, recruiting and organizing members; works with numerous charitable organizations; serves as Orange County political director for the local union

On union membership: “People say, ‘Well, union membership is only 12% of the work force today.’ Well, I’m very proud to be part of that very strong 12% of the workers who are carrying the load for every other working American. We’ve been on a slide for 30 years, but history is funny; sometimes it repeats itself.”

Source: Randy J. Thornhill; Researched by RUSS LOAR / For The Times