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:: Monday, April 14, 2008 ::

CONSTRUCTION WORKER DEATHS ON THE STRIP: A CAUTIOUS PUSH - By Alexandra Berzon, Michael Mishak, Las Vegas Sun
But unions say they are already diligent about safety. “If we really thought these sites were off the beaten track we’d pull our guys,” said Marc Furman, president of the Southwest Regional Council of Carpenters. Furman said accidents are inevitable in a high-risk environment. “There are all these safety meetings, and (the contractors) are really doing the best they can.”

The carpenters union lost two members in an accident at CityCenter last year.

Laborers International Union Local 872 also lost two workers. Union official Joe Taylor, who is executive director of the Laborers-Employers Cooperation and Education Trust, a training center, said that if laborers exercise their rights to stop working in an unsafe environment and take their concerns to their union, it puts the responsibility on the company.

But neither Taylor nor an organizer for the union who spoke to the Sun could recall any time that workers joined together to stop working in unsafe areas.

David Montgomery, professor emeritus of history at Yale University, said the go-easy approach by union locals follows a decade long trend of accommodation among the country’s building trades.

As national construction firms have squeezed many local contractors out of work, union locals have lost much of their leverage, Montgomery said. Their biggest fear is that the giant national contractors will build with nonunion workers, so the unions try to maintain tight relations with those contractors.

The workers share that concern. “You don’t have to be fired. You just have to not be hired tomorrow,” said Jim Platner, an associate director of the Center for Construction Research and Training, the research arm of the AFL-CIO’s Building and Construction Trades Department. “Workers are unlikely to support an action that will make them lose a mortgage payment.”

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