Melissa Bailey Photo
Carpenters across the state put their hammers down Tuesday, bringing their work in New Haven to a halt.
Workers with Locals 24, 43, and 210 are on strike throughout Connecticut. They’re picketing outside some 50 public and private job sites statewide, after a failure to reach a new contract with a state association of general contractors. In New Haven, workers are protesting at the new Gateway Community College site and between six and 10 locations elsewhere in the city, according to labor spokesman.
Mark Erlich, a spokesman for the carpenters’ umbrella union, said the strikes are a result of contractors rejecting a request to extend negotiations one week past the Sunday expiration of the latest contract. Don Shubert, a representative of the contractors’ association, acknowledged his group rejected the request and said he hopes to get everyone back to work as soon as possible.
Carpenters walked a picket line Tuesday afternoon at two gates opening to the construction site of the Gateway Community College (pictured above). Three carpenters walked in a circle on Church Street in front of a new glass facade while workers in other trades took a lunch break from work. The picket was solemn and quiet, except for an AC/DC song “Highway To Hell,” coming from a boombox under a flowering tree. Workers declined to comment or give their names.
Five carpenters picketed at Church and Crown.
“It’s a very unfortunate situation,” Erlich said. He’s the Boston-based executive secretary-treasurer at the New England Regional Council of Carpenters. The council has separate contracts in six New England states. Erlich said Friday was the last day of negotiations between Connecticut carpenter unions and the Connecticut Construction Industries Association (CCIA), a management organization.
“We did not reach an agreement,” Erlich said. The unions proposed a one-week extension; CCIA said no.
Erlich said the primary contract issue is health care benefits. Health care costs have seen double-digit inflation, and carpenters are just looking to keep up, Erlich said.
Pay rates are not on the table, he said. “We haven’t gotten a wage increase in well over a year. We don’t expect to get one this year. Nobody has unrealistic expectations.”
Erlich declined to speak in detail about the negotiations beyond saying that carpenters are looking to maintain their health benefits in the face of inflation.
“We’re ready to return to the table,” he said. But the strike will continue until “some rational voices” prevail at CCIA, he said.
Shubert also expressed a desire to come to an agreement, and also declined to comment on the specifics of the negotiations.
“I think that this is another result of the pressure that the economic downturn is putting on the construction industry,” he said. “We’re in a very difficult situation.”
Shubert said CCIA did reject the negotiation extension request, but questioned whether that was the cause of the strike. “I can’t tell you the reason for the strike. That’s something [Erlich] decided to do,” Shubert said.
“I think we all want to reach a resolution,” Shubert said.
Melissa Bailey contributed reporting.