Editor:
They’re so numerous now that it’s impossible to miss their activities. I’m referring to the Carpenters’ Union’s “Shame On” picketing campaigns that have sprung up around the city of Bakersfield over the course of the past two years.
By the looks of all this activity, one can only surmise that there must be a lot of shameful contractors doing business in Bakersfield.
But the truth of the matter is that all of the “shame” is coming from one entity, Carpenters Union, Local 1506.
It would appear that the Carpenters Union, Local 1506, has decided that too few jobs are coming their way in Bakersfield.
As a solution, they have launched “Shame On” campaigns against local businesses.
They make the irrelevant claim that the businesses they are picketing have hired contractors that do not pay prevailing wages (union wages) to all of their employees.
Let’s clear up that misconception right away.
Prevailing wages and benefits are required on any projects that receive local, state or federal funding. It’s the law.
The carpenters’ campaign signage and literature fails to make the distinction between labor on public works projects and that of private work.
The contractors in question do a combination of public and private work. In essence, they are required to pay prevailing wages on the public work but not on the private.
But in practice, many of the contractors being picketed are actually paying well above prevailing wages on their public contracts because they are using their most senior labor and that labor is generally making more than even the prevailing wage.
So, the carpenters are not only misleading the public on the issue, not even the basis for their claim is accurate. Another excellent point, one that has been pointed out by others, is that the carpenters are actually paying minimum wage (or just above the minimum wage) to pickets they have hired to stand in front of the innocent businesses with those ridiculous signs to hand out ridiculous literature (one has an image depicting the nonunion contractors as a rat eating the American flag).
The purpose of this heinous assault on good businesses is not entirely clear. But the fact that the Carpenters Union and the local Drywall Union have been at odds over just which unions would be allowed to work in drywall may have something to do with it.
One thing is for sure, though. This effort is an attempt to indirectly blackmail nonunion drywallers into joining the union lest they be forced out altogether. What is also interesting is that Carpenters Local 1506 isn’t even the official Carpenters Union for the Bakersfield area (that is Local Union 743). Local 1506, headquartered in Los Angeles, is conducting dozens of “Shame On” campaigns, some as far away as Phoenix, Ariz.

Kevin D. Korenthal
Director of Government Affairs for Associated Builders and Contractors of Central California