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A beautiful catch: You gotta have it, but you can’t get it!
   We are “suspending the development and approval of apprenticeship programs in all trades,” the governor announced the other day. “The addition of new participating employers to existing programs is also being suspended.”

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Strike vote reveals workers’ feelings
Executive compensation is a sore spot; UAW contract deadline nears
BY TOM KRISHER The Associated Press

   SALINE, Mich. — Ford Motor Co. has brought a lot of uncertainty into Gerald Williamson’s life.
   The factory where he works is on a list of plants slated to be sold or even closed, and like other workers, he’s had to give up part of his pay raises to help the company fund its huge retiree health care bill.
   So when it came time to vote to give union leaders the power to call a strike if contract talks go south, Williamson got some satisfaction last week out of casting his ballot in favor.
   “To try to force us to make any more concessions, it’s unreasonable and we’re willing to shut them down,” said Williamson, 55, who works at a plant that makes instrument panels and other parts in Saline, about 40 miles west of Detroit.
   Plenty of United Auto Workers members share his thoughts. At his plant, 99 percent approved the strike authorization. Voting nationwide wrapped up last Friday, but the final tally was not announced. Typically, though, strike authorizations are approved overwhelmingly.
   With contracts between the union and Ford, General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC set to expire Sept. 14, UAW leaders have asked members during the past few weeks to authorize a strike. It’s standard procedure, and it doesn’t mean that a work stoppage will occur.
   Williamson, a 13-year Ford worker from Ypsilanti, says he doesn’t want a strike and he doesn’t think the company wants one either.
   But like many workers, he’s unhappy that he’s had to give up money when new Ford President and Chief Executive Alan Mulally is making millions.
   “When you ask people to make concessions and they help out and chip in, then everyone has to make concessions,” Williamson said after voting on Wednesday.
   Mulally’s compensation package was valued at $39.1 million during his four months on the job last year, according to an analysis of a Ford filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Workers at many Detroit-area factories often refer to executive compensation when asked about concessions.
   The package also bothers Bill Garner, 54, who voted in favor of a strike. He thinks the salaries of Mulally and other top Ford executives should be cut.
   “If they were down more, I don’t think it would be near the issue it is now,” said Garner of Saline, who has seen only one strike in his 35 years with Ford.
   When Mulally was asked last week about criticism of his compensation, he said that leadership counts.
   “All the skills required to run a business are market-driven,” said Mulally, who was hired away from Boeing Co. last year to rescue the money-losing Ford.
   All three Detroit-area automakers are seeking concessions from the UAW as contract talks progress behind closed doors. They point to what they say is around a $25-perhour labor cost disadvantage to their prime Japanese competitors. A big chunk of that is the multi-billion-dollar long-term retiree health care obligation, which the companies want to unload by paying the UAW a lump sum so it can form a trust to pay the medical bills.
   Led by Ford’s record $12.6 billion loss last year, the three Detroit automakers lost a collective $15 billion in 2006. Ford had to mortgage its factories to generate enough cash to stay in business.
   The losses, brought on by high gas prices sending consumers away from Detroit’s trucks and sport utility vehicles, led to restructuring at all three automakers. Thousands of union workers left their companies under buyout or early retirement packages.
   As part of that restructuring, Ford last year took the Saline plant and 16 others from its former parts arm, Visteon Corp., and placed them into a holding company for sale or closure.
   Workers at Local 892 in Saline don’t know if they will have jobs or for whom they’ll be working in the future. They also don’t know if they’ll be part of whatever national contract the UAW negotiates.
   Yet in Saline, many of the 1,300 hourly workers have some hope. Ford recently has been moving equipment into the plant to make interior parts for new vehicles, the workers say.

United Auto Workers union members march in the Labor Day parade in Detroit on Monday. The annual parade through the heart of Detroit’s downtown contained no speeches, but thousands of labor members marched or stood with signs calling for preserving health care benefits and job security.

United Auto Workers President Ron Gettelfinger yells his support to other unions as they march in Monday’s parade in Detroit.

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Hoffa: GOP Has Destroyed Itself
Author: John Mercurio

Jimmy Hoffa doesn’t have a presidential candidate he and his powerful Teamster’s union is backing, but he praises Democratic candidate John Edwards for making strong appeals to labor a centerpiece of his campaign.

Since James P. Hoffa, the son of the legendary Teamster’s boss, took the presidency of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters in 1999, he has energized his 1.4 million membership, making the country’s 4th largest union once again politically relevant and influential.

At 66, Hoffa is not only busy building union membership – conducting recruiting efforts among workers at UPS, FedEx, and solid waste companies – but also using the Teamsters clout to influence U.S. trade policies, block unfettered access of Mexican trucks into the U.S., and push for Iran divestment. He is even making a mark in the world of cyberspace – the Teamsters Web site, teamster.org, buzzes with blogs, commentaries, and the latest news for union members.

Hoffa’s main obsession today is making sure his union can adapt to a rapidly changing political landscape and help Democrats retake the White House in 2008.

“The Republican Party has destroyed itself,” Hoffa recently told NewsMax in an exclusive interview. “I don’t know what else they could do that’s worse or how they could come to labor and ask for our support. And I don’t see how working people, or labor, could give them that support.”

Hoffa once flirted with endorsing the GOP in the 2000 election. His union backed Reagan in 1980. But Hoffa has little sentimentality toward the Republicans.

He says the Republican Party “isolated itself from the labor unions and from working families” by pushing pro-business policies that are simply anti-worker.

“They’ve advocated terrible trade policies that have cost this country thousands and thousands of jobs. They’ve tried to get rid of Social Security. They have gotten us into a very unpopular war and they’ve alienated us from the rest of the world.”

To fight his battle, Hoffa has even turned to the byzantine world of liberal bloggers.

This August he ventured to the 2007 YearlyKos blog convention in Chicago and made a highly choreographed entrance.

The hard to please bloggers were impressed.

“I went because I was hungry and somewhat curious since Jimmy Hoffa Jr. was going to speak,” one liberal blogger wrote recently on DailyKos, referring inaccurately to Hoffa as “Jr.” (His middle name is Phillip; his father’s was Riddle).

“When I got there I was impressed. Music, hamburgers, a bar and two Teamster-owned big trucks on display. What’s not to like? Then came the big event – a 3rd rig rolled in honking and out of it came Markos [Moulitsas] AND Jimmy Hoffa. Big hoopla, very impressive.”


The Democratic Primaries


Three years ago, Hoffa put his muscle behind a longtime ally, Congressman Dick Gephardt, in his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Gephardt’s campaign crashed and burned in Iowa and he quickly quit the race.

Hoffa is apparently intent on not making the same mistake again and wants to make Big Labor, with the Teamster’s at the fore, a Democratic kingmaker.

Hoffa has yet to pick a candidate and is withholding the Teamsters’ support until two key developments occur:

First, the political landscape firms up, giving him a clear sense of what it would take for his candidate to win.

Second, candidates start to give a clear picture of how they would advance his union’s ambitious agenda as president.

In his interview, Hoffa singled out former Sen. John Edwards.

Edwards “has done a very good job articulating a more populist message, and that’s one that resonates with the members,” Hoffa said.

Hoffa said Sen. Hillary Clinton, who leads by wide margins in most national polls, is “obviously out front” and is running a “smart, controlled, very professional” campaign.

As a senator, Clinton has developed strong ties with New York unions. Her campaign has tapped Mike Monroe, a former president of the International Brotherhood of Painters and Allied Trades, as senior political adviser for labor outreach.

Monroe’s work has apparently started to pay off. Hoffa and other labor leaders have largely forgiven Clinton for her past membership on the Wal-Mart board of directors during her time in Arkansas, and for her selection of chief campaign strategist Mark Penn, whose firm has a subsidiary that helps employers fight union organizing drives.

Still, Hoffa said his reluctance to support the former first lady’s 2008 campaign instead stems more from her failure so far to focus on issues important to his members.

“I would hope that she would speak out more on the issues that resonate with the average American,” he said, ticking off a list of labor priorities, including trade, “affordable” health care, and so-called “pension protection.”

“You can’t talk about these issues enough,” he told NewsMax. “All of the [Democratic] candidates are missing the boat by not talking about them more.”

Sen. Barack Obama, he said, “is the real surprise candidate so far. He’s running a very interesting race.”

Obama’s campaign has recruited Temo Figueroa, a former deputy political director of the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees, as the campaign's national field director.

And yet, Hoffa remains unconvinced -- and uncommitted. “There’s just no one candidate that stands out yet,” he said.

Though union membership has been falling – dropping from 20 percent of eligible workers in 1983 to 12 percent last year – unions remain a potent force in politics. That’s especially true in the Democratic primaries, which rely on union activists to do the political grunt work – such as manning phone banks, door-to-door canvassing and get-out-the-vote efforts.

For Hoffa and his union allies -- specifically Andrew Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, with whom he formed a breakaway chapter of the AFL-CIO called “Change to Win” -- the 2008 campaign will be a key test of whether, by dramatically “changing” their approach to political and campaign activism, they can still win on a national playing field.


Foreign Issues


Recently Hoffa has taken on another major cause that endears him to foreign policy hawks: In late August, he formally joined the Iran divestment movement by urging his union’s pension funds to shed all shares they own in companies doing business in Iran.

His goal: sponsoring an Iranian version of Solidarity's Lech Walesa, whose leadership in the 1980s transformed Poland's workers into an invincible political force.

“It’s amazing that with all the potential for that country, they would chose to become such a rogue state, denying the Holocaust and adopting bizarre policies toward everyone,” Hoffa told NewsMax. He said he advocates pension funds and business divesting because “Iran has got to be brought in line until it becomes a responsible citizen in the world, and they’re not that right now.”

During the interview, Hoffa said he doesn’t see parallels between his efforts to work with the federal government on national security priorities and American unions during the Cold War that strongly supported a hawkish foreign policy.

“America has to have an assertive foreign policy, we recognize and support that,” he said. “We have to have a policy that makes sense. You’re attacking us, doing things that are against the general good. This is a new and current threat.”

He also expressed concern about new federal regulations that would allow Mexican trucks unfettered access to the United States. He said the “known” risks to the American public -- especially in border states like Arizona, New Mexico, California, and Texas -- are “unbelievable.”

“There’s almost unanimous consensus that they’re not near our standards,” he said.

“They don’t have training for drivers licenses, drug testing, physicals for their workers. They’ve done nothing, despite the fact that NAFTA was passed 13 years ago, to bring themselves up to our standards. There’s a tremendous environmental problem. The only ones who are for the idea are George W. Bush and some business people who think they can make a lot of money off it.”

On Aug. 29, the Teamsters union sought an emergency injunction to block the Bush administration from allowing Mexican trucks to operate freely throughout the U.S.

While this and other administration moves have made the prospect of the union backing a Republican candidate next year “very remote,” Hoffa also acknowledged some frustration with the Democratic field for failing to address one of the Teamsters’ top issues: illegal immigration.

The Teamsters strongly oppose the guest-worker program included in the bipartisan “compromise plan” President Bush proposed earlier this year, which many Democrats supported, and Hoffa charged that the Bush administration has failed to stem the flow of illegals in large part to keep wages down in the U.S.

“Illegal immigration is one of the major problems facing the U.S.,” he said. “We have to distinguish between legal and illegal immigration. I do think we have to find a way to integrate the people who are here and control our borders.

“The AFL-CIO and Teamsters have come out against the guest-worker program. We want to find some way for a path to citizenship for the 15 million who are here but we don’t want a guest-worker program.

“It’s a matter of supply and demand. Part of the plan for Bush pushing for unlimited people coming across the border, it’s basically designed to compress wages.”

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By any measure, union apprentice programs are better

   In response to Carl Strock’s column on Aug. 30, we would like to take this opportunity to highlight the vast differences between union and non-union apprenticeship programs. This moratorium was not a favor to the governor’s union supporters but, instead, a result of a review of apprenticeship enrollment and graduation numbers that simply do not measure up.
   The facts on this issue speak for themselves — in 2006 there were 93 programs registered by the New York State Department of Labor to provide training under the designation of Skilled Construction Craft Laborer. A total of 69 registered programs were being operated by non-union contractors, while 24 programs were considered union-sponsored programs. The 69 non-union programs had a total of 51 currently enrolled apprentices (less than one apprentice per program) while the 24 union programs had a total of 916 currently enrolled apprentices (approximately 38 apprentices per program). Additionally, 35 non-union programs failed to have a single active apprentice in their program.
   In respect to moving apprentices through the skilled construction craft laborer program, the numbers are even more dramatic. The 69 “open shop” programs had a graduation rate of 5.2 percent while the union programs graduated 22.4 percent of their apprentices. Over the last decade, the non-union programs graduated a total of six apprentices, while their union counterparts had graduated 306 apprentices in that span. In fact, 93 percent of the “open shop” programs have failed to graduate a single apprentice since their inception.
   In each statistical category, the union programs performed far better.
   Organized labor is not calling for an end to the apprenticeship system but, rather, a thorough review of any existing programs that are not up to par, regardless of union or non-union status. The union programs have done, and continue to do, a better job in the area of apprentice training They recruit more, educate more, graduate more and employ more Non-union programs should be held to an equivalent standard.
JAMES MELIUS
Copake
The writer is administrator of the New York State Laborers’ Tri-Funds.  

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Taxi strike leader noted for strength under pressure
The Associated Press

   NEW YORK — She is the unlikely embodiment of New York City’s striking cabbies: A college graduate, a woman, barely 5 feet tall, soft-spoken.
   But as the city’s two-day taxi job action headed toward its fi nish, Bhairavi Desai reaffirmed her prominent role in the city’s labor movement and her willingness to make bold moves on behalf of her membership in the New York Taxi Workers Alliance.
   “She doesn’t rattle easy,” said Ed Ott, head of the New York City Central Labor Council. “That’s the thing that’s very interesting to me — she does not rattle easy. Under extraordinary pressure, she keeps an even keel.
   “She never raises her voice. She never swears. She’s steady as a rock.”
   Desai, 34, is a slight woman — 5-foot-1, 110 pounds — who cofounded the alliance in 1998, the same year the city’s cabbies refused to drive in a historic one-day walkout over working conditions.
   This time around, she organized a 48-hour work stoppage over the city’s insistence that all cabs be fi tted with new technology including global positioning systems and video screens that will allow customers to pay by credit card.
   The cabbies are complaining that the GPS technology will allow Big Brother into their cabs and that the credit card option will cut into profits by costing them a 5 percent fee on every transaction.
   The technology must be in place as the cabs come up for inspection starting Oct. 1.
   The city has 13,000 yellow cabs and 44,000 licensed drivers. The alliance — an advocacy group, not a union — claims to represent about one-fifth of those cabbies.
   The success of the strike that began Wednesday morning remained in dispute well into day two. City officials said 82 percent of the taxi fleet was on the road Thursday, while the ever-passionate Desai was proclaiming triumph.
   “You know, the numbers can be spun as much as the opposition wants, but the reality is the waiting lines speak for themselves,” Desai said Thursday.
   It’s that attitude that made her one of 17 people recognized by the Ford Foundation in its 2005 Leadership for a Changing World awards, where she was among those cited for bringing “not only concrete gains to their communities but a determination to stand for justice.”
   One year earlier, she was honored by another group as one of the “Top 5 Under 35” South Asians in the metropolitan area. And in 2003, the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund presented her with a “Justice in Action” award.
   Desai was born in India, where her grandmother — as related in stories to her grandchildren — was arrested in the fight for her homeland’s independence. Her father was an attorney who “fought for the rights of the underprivileged,” Desai once said.
   When she was 6, the family immigrated to the United States and settled in Harrison, N.J., a gritty blue-collar town near Newark.

PETER MORGAN/ THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Bhairavi Desai, executive director of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, pickets with the group near a taxi stand at Pennsylvania Station in New York on Thursday

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Organized labor is not calling for an end to the apprenticeship system but, rather, a thorough review of any existing programs that are not up to par, regardless of union or non-union status. The union programs have done, and continue to do, a better job in the area of apprentice training They recruit more, educate more, graduate more and employ more Non-union programs should be held to an equivalent standard

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Ford sales collapse again - boycott a driving force

Simply put, people are not buying Fords.

Ford Motor Company continues to suffer monthly sales losses because of its support of homosexuality.

For August, Ford reported a 14.4% drop in sales over the same month last year.

Rather than taking a neutral position in the culture war, Ford uses its profits to support gay activist groups, whose top agenda is to push pro-homosexual marriage and "gay" hate crimes laws on the rest of the nation.

While other automakers are at least holding their own (GM sales actually went up in August), Ford continues to suffer huge sales losses month after month.

It's obvious by now that homosexuals don't have enough purchasing power to keep the Ford ship afloat.

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Ford Gay, Lesbian or Bisexual Employees

Ford GLOBE -- Changing the Corporate Culture
Ford GLOBE is an ever-expanding grassroots network of hourly and salaried employees, retirees and contractors at Ford Motor Company, its subsidiaries and affiliates. We welcome new members. Your participation is what helps make the group what it is and what it will become. Whether this is your first shy, tentative outreach to like-minded individuals at Ford or one small part of an ongoing activist lifestyle, your presence and viewpoints are welcome in this group. Ford GLOBE respects each members choice on how "out" they wish to be.  
Ford GLOBE's goals are mutually beneficial between GLOBE members and Ford Motor Company. By helping to maintain a safe, supportive work environment for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people at Ford, enhancing their loyalty and productivity, Ford GLOBE helps Ford Motor Company to achieve its goal of becoming the world's premier automotive company.  

Towards that end Ford GLOBE has launched these web pages to inform and educate both potential members and the general public of our activities, both inside and outside the company. Please feel free to browse our pages, ask questions or send us feedback at  info@FordGLOBE.org.  

Ford GLOBE provides speakers for many organizations and events. Some of these are listed on our Speaker's Bureau. GLOBE support for Ford Recruiting is highlighted on our Ford Recruiting page.

What's New
Pride Celebration: On July 30th, Detroit's 10th Annual "Hotter Than July" Pride Picnic & Festival will be held in Palmer Park.  More
Social Event: On July 23rd, GLOBE Member Jeffrey Fensterman and his partner Marco will host a BBQ party at their beautiful lakeside home.  More
Pride Celebration: On June 5th, Motor City Pride 2005 will take place in Ferndale, Michigan.  Ford GLOBE and many other local organizations will host information booths throughout the day. More
Community Outreach: Joe Solmonese, the new president of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), visited Ford Motor Company in Dearborn on Thursday, April 14 as part of his "On the Road to Equality" tour.  More
In the News: On February 23rd, Ford GLOBE Hourly Outreach Liaison Bob Burrell was featured by Ford's internal news agency, FCN. More

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Vision, Mission and Objectives

Ford GLOBE is an organization of salaried, hourly, or retired employees of Ford Motor Company, its subsidiaries and affiliates, and agency contractees who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered (glbt) and allies.
VISION
Ford GLOBE's Vision is of a corporate culture which provides a safe, inclusive, and supportive environment where diversity is valued and everyone is empowered to be authentic about themselves in the workplace, without fear of loss of opportunity, thus allowing them full realization of their potential and equal participation in all aspects of corporate life.
MISSION
Ford GLOBE's Mission is to foster an inclusive and supportive atmosphere within Ford for glbt persons.
OBJECTIVES
  To promote understanding of Ford's policy and practice of hiring, training, and promoting the best qualified individuals, without regard to their sexual orientation, and to work towards expansion of Ford's policy and practice to include transgendered persons, in furtherance of its goal of becoming the top automotive company in the world.  
  To encourage and assist Ford in its efforts to achieve greater market share among glbt consumers.  
  To provide a venue for networking, socializing, and communication among Ford's (including subsidiaries and affiliates) active or retired glbt employees, contractees, and allies.  
  To endeavor toward a safe work environment at Ford, free from all forms of harassment.  
  To promote understanding of the workplace-related concerns and sensitivities of glbt people at Ford.  
  To advocate for mandatory diversity awareness training--specific to sexual orientation and gender identity issues--presented to all Ford employees and contractees and conducted by qualified, sensitive trainers.  
  To advocate for the business value of diversity within the workforce.  

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To advocate for mandatory diversity awareness training--specific to sexual orientation and gender identity issues--presented to all Ford employees and contractees and conducted by qualified, sensitive trainers.

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2nd taxi driver strike a possibility
The Associated Press

   NEW YORK — The advocacy group that led some of New York’s cabbies on a two-day strike said it might call for a second work stoppage if the city doesn’t start listening to its demands.
   “There is a possibility, but we hope that these two days have kind of gotten the message through,” said Bhairavi Desai, executive director of the Taxi Workers Alliance.
   Thousands of drivers were back on the job Friday as the strike ended with no immediate gains for the hacks who idled their cabs.
   The cabbies are upset with new city rules requiring all taxis to modernize by adding credit card machines and global positioning systems.  

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Carl Strock THE VIEW FROM HERE
Oh, that deadly dust at Ground Zero
Carl Strock can be reached at 395-3085 or by e-mail at carlstrock@dailygazette.com.

   On the health front, we have the news that all those alarming statistics we have heard regarding ailments arising from exposure to dust at the World Trade Center site were generated by a small clinic with strong ties to labor unions.
   This would be the Irving J. Selikoff Center for Occupational and Environmental Medicine, in New York City, which, with very limited resources, has kept data, now challenged by other medical experts, on some 15,000 Ground Zero workers it has examined.
   A great many of those workers, including 69 percent of emergency responders, were found to have serious respiratory symptoms, and many of them, according to a doctor at the clinic, would need “ongoing care for the rest of their lives,” though it now emerges that those symptoms included things as trivial as a runny nose.
   The report, in The New York Times the other day, pointed out that the Selikoff clinic was founded in the mid-1980s “with political backing from New York labor leaders” and is “well known for serving injured union workers.”
   I hope I don’t need to explain that for a worker to be diagnosed with a lifelong ailment as a result of exposure at the World Trade Center site has major financial consequences, thanks to the concern and the generosity of our state government. It is roughly equivalent to winning the lottery.
   And well-deserved in my opinion if the ailment is genuine and grave — but if it’s a runny nose? Diagnosed by someone who is functioning as an advocate as much as he’s functioning as a doctor?
   I never would have guessed that such things could happen in a great city like New York.
APPRENTICES (CONT.)
   Then we have the letter from the union official objecting to my take on apprenticeship programs. My take was that Gov. Spitzer suspended the recognition of new programs as a sop to the trade unions.
   Why? Because non-union shops, in response to recently enacted local requirements, were actually developing apprenticeship programs and were getting them certified by the state, despite the many diffi culties involved, and were thus still able to compete with the unions in bidding on public construction jobs, and this is not what the unions wanted. They wanted a monopoly, and they prevailed on the governor to go along with them.
   Their efforts to cripple small mom-and-pop non-union shops through apprenticeship requirements weren’t working as they had hoped. That was my take.
   The union official’s take, as expressed in his letter published the other day, is no, no, no. The problem with the non-union apprenticeship programs is that they don’t measure up. They don’t enroll as many actual apprentice workers as the union programs do, and they don’t graduate as many either.
   But this is just more eyewash, ladies and gentlemen.
   Of course these small familyowned non-union companies don’t enroll or graduate as many apprentices as statewide unions do. It’s comparing the wrong things.
   Actually, a company that employs union labor doesn’t enroll or graduate any apprentices at all. The trade unions do that, statewide, and the company uses those workers and gets credit for it.
   But a non-union shop has to develop its own program and get state certification for it, and since that shop might consist of just a few people, like your local roofing company, it’s entirely possible that it has only one apprentice, or at any given moment even none. And further, since apprentice training typically takes several years, depending on the trade, it’s entirely possible and even likely that in any given year no one graduates from a little one-man program. The one man might still have a year or two to go.
   It’s absurd to compare the two things.
   Further, if an apprentice with a non-union outfit moves, he gets recorded as having dropped out of the program he was in, even if he joins another similar one somewhere else, whereas if a union apprentice changes employer it doesn’t matter. He’s still enrolled in the same union program.
   But the union officials know all this, and there’s no point in my belaboring it.
   It’s just more sand in the eyes. The truth is the construction trade unions try everything they can to prevent non-union labor from competing with them, and apprentice training was merely the latest gimmick. When it didn’t work out the way they expected, they changed course. They decided they didn’t want new apprentice programs after all, and now they make up phony, dishonest reasons to explain their reversal.
   What do they think, I was born yesterday?

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Spitzer action divides unions, builders
Directive given on apprentices
BY BOB CONNER Gazette Reporter

   There is widespread agreement, at least in theory, that it is a good idea to train people to become plumbers, electricians and practitioners of other skilled trades because it benefits both them and the economy.
   But there is an ongoing dispute in New York about the nature of that training, and depending on your point of view, the state Labor Department is either making things better or worse.
   On Aug. 28, Gov. Eliot Spitzer put out a statement announcing “initiatives to strengthen worker rights” and saying the Labor Department “is suspending the development and approval of apprenticeship training programs in all trades. The addition of new participating employers to existing programs is also being suspended.”
   The reason, according to the statement, was that “a cursory review of the program has revealed an unusually low graduation rate. Many programs were not graduating apprentices so as to keep them as a cheaper form of labor.”
   State AFL-CIO President Denis Hughes said that is exactly what some nonunion contractors were doing, hiring apprentices with no intention of genuinely training and graduating them. He supports the Spitzer action.
   Many municipalities, including Schenectady, require bidders for construction contracts to have apprenticeship programs, many of which are in effect run by labor unions. Those public projects also pay prevailing wage rates, as calculated by the Labor Department, but apprentices can legally work on the projects at a lower wage.
FIGURES PROVIDED
   It is not clear just how “cursory” that review by the Labor Department was. Department spokeswoman Christine Perham could provide little additional information on Thursday and Friday. She did, however, provide fi gures showing a decline in apprentice program graduation rates in 2006 compared to 2005.
   According to Scott Zylka, political affairs director for the Associated Builders and Contractors’ Empire State Chapter, Spitzer and the Labor Department are trying to make it harder for nonunion contractors, which have been trying to start apprenticeship programs so as to meet local mandates, to compete on public works contracts.
   “This is payback to the unions for all their support, without a doubt, under the guise of reform,” Zylka said.
   Zylka said he has not heard of any sham programs that do not intend to graduate apprentices, but if there are any, “I’m sure there are union scams, too.”
   Union wages are higher on nonpublic projects, Zylka conceded, but he said there is more opportunity to find work outside the labor movement, leading some apprentices who graduate from union-run programs to leave the union after graduation so as to find jobs more readily.
   Following the governor’s action, Zylka said, ABC is calling on local municipalities to do away with any requirements for apprenticeship programs.
   While Zylka’s group represents nonunion contractors, Jeffrey Zog, executive director of the General Building Contractors, said he represents mostly companies with unionized workers, along with some nonunion ones.
GROUP PROGRAMS
   Zog said a program run by a small company may fail to graduate an apprentice not for any sinister cause, but simply for economic reasons, because the demand for the company’s services dries up. The way around that, he said, is for companies to band together to run an apprenticeship program.
   “Group programs make sense,” Zog said. “The state is not real good about approving group programs for nonunion contractors.”
   Zylka said his organization has had an application in to the Labor Department since last November to run a group program for 11 employers. That proposal may fall under the moratorium, he said.
   Hughes, too, cited potential problems with a plan run by a single employer, because its continuance “hinges on whether the employer stays in business.” He also said it’s not just a matter of unions vs. nonunion contractors. A longstanding nonunion sheet-metal apprenticeship program in Binghamton appears to be working, Hughes said. But he also said he is certain many of the newer nonunion plans are shams, designed just to get cheap labor.
   “I support apprenticeship programs that have some degree of integrity,” Hughes said.
   Hughes also agreed with Zog that some small plans may fail to graduate apprentices for economic reasons. He said he sees no public benefit in companies starting new programs that would plow the same ground as well established ones that have good track records.
   Zog said he hopes the state will “review union and nonunion [programs] to see if they’re being productive.” He said he wasn’t aware of any company offering a program in bad faith, and, while sounding skeptical, said he didn’t know whether Spitzer overreacted on Aug. 28.
   Zylka said there is no need for the state to bar new programs while it conducts its review.
BILL VETOED
   Spitzer, a Democrat, hasn’t always sided with labor unions in his first year in office. He vetoed a bill that he said would have weakened police discipline, and another that would have prevented localities from cutting benefits costs for public retirees. But he also has delivered unions some victories, such as making it easier to organize day-care workers under state contracts, and making it harder for employers to “misclassify” workers as independent contractors.
   Organized labor has many powerful allies in Albany in both parties. The Legislature routinely passes pro-labor bills by overwhelming majorities.
   Scott Reif, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, R-Brunswick, said the senator has been assured by the labor commissioner that the review of apprenticeship programs will be done in a timely fashion, so that programs can get up and running.
   Spitzer’s Aug. 28 statement said, “During this moratorium, which will last up to one year, the DOL will undertake a comprehensive analysis of the procedure by which the state reviews apprenticeship programs and the performance of individual programs in order to better protect these workers’ right to fair compensation.”
   Patricia Smith, a lawyer who used to work for Spitzer on labor issues when he was attorney general, is the current labor commissioner.  

Quoted Text

The reason, according to the statement, was that “a cursory review of the program has revealed an unusually low graduation rate. Many programs were not graduating apprentices so as to keep them as a cheaper form of labor.”