CHICAGO RULES CARPENTERS' LOCALS HERE

CHICAGO RULES

Local Carpenters Part of Chicago Union

My, How Things Have Changed

By Michael Horne

Two years ago, carpenters in six southeast Wisconsin counties merged with their south-of-the-border counterparts create the Northeast District of the Chicago Regional Council of Carpenters. It was done for “mutual issues of bargaining, training, and so forth,” according to Dominique Paul Noth, the editor of the Milwaukee Labor Press, who shared this information in response to a request from Milwaukeeworld.

The Chicago Council, dating to 1881, has 47,000 members in 81 counties in Northern Illinois, Southeastern Wisconsin and Northeastern Iowa. It is the largest Regional Council in the United States.

Just at about the time of the merger, carpenters union members became an increasingly common presence at City Hall, at non-union construction sites and even at community meetings at which construction projects were discussed. The impression is of a much more in-your-face presence than is customary in Milwaukee. However, Noth says, “most of the folks you are seeing in Milwaukee have Chicago on their signs, but live and work hereabouts.”

If that is the case, the locals have certainly been instructed at some level by the big guys from the Windy City, which has a union tradition quite different from Milwaukee’s, to say the very least.

At a meeting Monday evening, June 26^th 2006, held at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Milwaukee to discuss an upcoming project by New Land Development, individuals who identified themselves as members of the Carpenters Union handed out flyers that announced, “Who Is Pulling The Strings Around Milwaukee?”

The flyer answered its own question with, “Boris Gokhman of New Land Enterprises, LLP!”

The flyer queried further, “Is Boris running Ollman Construction Corp.?” (A non-union contractor that does much work on large residential projects.)

The answer, apparently, is yes, “Because he is signing the mortgages!”

“Does Boris Have Influence at City Hall?”

Yeppers, again, “Because Ald. D’Amato Gets Him Everything!”

“Where Will it End?”

No answer to that, but the flyer continues with, “Boris might be pulling the strings. Don’t let him ‘yank your chain.’”

The flyer ends with “The Carpenters Union is currently engaged in a labor dispute with Ollman Construction Corporation … We seek only to inform the public!” (Similar flyers have also appeared in mailboxes of homes under construction by non-union carpenters, including those built by Miracle Homes.)

Interestingly, there is no “union bug” on the flyer to identify it as the work of a union printing shop, so perhaps the flyer can not be traced to the union any more than can the mysterious fires that have occurred at non-union construction sites on N. Commerce St., or the vandalism that has been recorded at construction sites belonging to New Land Development and the Mandel Corporation.

I asked Ald. Michael D’Amato if he was aware of the flyer, and he said he was, adding that nobody from the Union has ever called him to express concerns about Gokhman.

Milwaukee, despite its geographic proximity to Chicago, has never really had a union with close ties to that city. Perhaps we are in for a learning curve.

--Michael Horne