Members of Local One of the carpenters’ union had a surprise waiting for them at their monthly meeting in April 2001. On their chairs lay a copy of a magazine article reporting that their international leaders had pulled their union out of the AFL-CIO, the nationwide federation of building trades.
Wilson and Quattrochi had been in the UBC more than 15 years, and they remembered a time when things were different, when a gulf didn’t exist between the people running the local and the people on whose behalf it was supposed to be run. They’d recently started sitting in the first or second row at meetings and leaping out of their seats with comments or questions. They figured they’d paid $300 in annual membership dues and were entitled to voice their opinions.
When Wilson told him at the April meeting that he was going to raise some hell about the AFL-CIO decision, Quattrochi worried that his friend might not be picking his battles wisely. He warned Wilson not to say “the V word” and said that if necessary he’d sit on Wilson’s lap to keep him in his chair. As the meeting got under way, Quattrochi pressed Wilson’s foot with his own to indicate he was serious.
Wilson and Quattrochi exchanged gleeful looks, and Wilson turned toward the man and shouted, “Where are you going after the meeting?”
Willmeng had seen radical youths banding together with rank-and-file union members, and he was proud to find himself in the mix of “steelworkers, dockworkers, anarchists, punk wacko kids, and Lesbian Avengers.” It didn’t escape his notice that by packing the streets and blocking access to the convention center, the protesters were using direct-action techniques similar to those once used by labor movements. He knew unions hadn’t won an eight-hour workday by writing polite letters to Congress, and he left Seattle hopeful that capitalism was on the decline and somewhat deluded about the vigor of the labor movement.
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He also needed time to figure out the union’s hierarchy and the roles of the numerous officials, some of whom had mystifying titles such as warden and conductor. “I had 60 billion questions all the time,” he says.
Eventually he learned that the international was responsible not only for training full-time organizers, certifying carpenters, authorizing strikes, and helping to elect prounion politicians; it also had the power to decide points of law, to create or dissolve subordinate bodies, and in certain circumstances to supervise or even conduct the affairs of established councils and locals. He also learned that contractors–the carpenters’ employers–made up half of the district council’s board of trustees, which he thought could be a conflict of interest, especially given that the district council had the power to set union rules and even hold trials for members who’d been charged with violating them.
