COMMON SITUS PICKETING - SECONDARY BOYCOTTS Under current law, both the U.S. Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court have determined that the practice of common situs picketing, or allowing the employees of one company on a construction site to close down the entire site because of a dispute with their employer, constitutes a secondary boycott. And "secondary boycotts" have been ruled unfair labor practices, and thus illegal. Despite the fact that membership in the building trade unions has grown steadily in the years that common situs has been prohibited, the AFL-CIO has placed passage of the common situs bill high on its list of priorities. There are many arguments against the legalization of common situs picketing and secondary boycotts. Among them: 1. Common situs would increase dramatically the power of the construction unions in settling labormanagement disputes with union contractors. 2. Even on all-union projects, varying contract expiration dates among the various employers could result in periodic total stoppages, and increase the pressures on each employer to negotiate wage and benefit increases. 3. At the same time, legalized secondary boycotts would allow union employees of one company to force non-union employees of other contractors off the job site. Despite the prohibition in prior bills of picketing where discrimination on the basis of membership or non-membership in a union is the object of the picketing, the effect would be the same even where the ostensible "object" is something else. 4. Because minority tradesmen have, in some cases been denied membership in the building trade unions, legalization of secondary boycotts would similarly affect the ability of minority contractors to win contract awards, despite the prohibition in prior bills. Likewise, the rights of individual minority tradesmen employed by open-shop contractors would be affected by the ability of unions to force their employers off the site. 5. Common situs would in effect make general contractors responsible for the labor policies of their subcontractors and vice versa. 6. Common situs would "polarize" the construction industry by making job sites either "union" or "nonunion," ending the current common practice of "mixed sites" with contractors selected on the basis of competitive bidding alone. The threat of having a total stoppage on the site while legality of the picketing "object" is determined in court would be enough to keep a unionized general contractor from making a contract award to an open-shop subcontractor, or vice versa. Because of all the above problems that would be created, many small construction firms could be forced out of business. While legalization of secondary boycotts would affect all companies involved in the construction business, the smaller firms would suffer most because they would be least able to survive lengthy picketing, and least able to afford costly litigation to determine the legality of a particular secondary boycott. In addition, prior bills did not exempt residential construction. Thus common situs could be used against the mainly smaller firms that are involved in homebuilding as well as in commercial construction situations. RESOLVED The Small Business Legislative Council is opposed to STATEMENT OF THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF HOME BUILDERS (NAHB) before COMMITTEE ON SMALL BUSINESS UNITED STATES SENATE on HOUSING INDUSTRY: 1983 ISSUES AND PRIORITIES on February 25, 1983 My name is Jim Schuyler and I am Staff Vice President and Legislaive Counsel of the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB). I am testifying on behalf of the more than 105,000 members of NAHB. NAHB is a trade association of the nation's homebuilding industry. We appreciate the opportunity to present our views on the outlook for housing and our legislative priorities for 1983. This Committee and its highly competent staff have been particularly sensitive to the problems of the homebuilding industry during the past three and one-half years. And this Committee has recognized that this industry is one of the largest and most important "small business" industries in the country. STATUS OF THE HOUSING INDUSTRY How do you describe a housing recovery which has already received much attention as one of the only bright spots in the economic picture? I would say the recovery is modest, fragile but real. The signs are mixed, but pointing upward. Building permits for January rose at a seasonal rate by Housing starts in January were up 36 percent from December, • The new unsold inventory is generally declining, with a Construction unemployment still stood at 20 percent in January of this year, representing over one million people out of work. However, this has dropped from a peak of 22.3 percent in October of 1982. In 1981 and 1982, the housing industry operated at its lowest levels of production since 1946. Starts in 1982 ended up at 1.07 million, about 46 percent below the peak of the previous cycle in 1978. New home sales were at their lowest level since the Census Bureau began its sales survey in 1963. Construction unemployment averaged 20 percent, the highest level since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began its monthly unemployment survey in the late 1940's. You could say that we in the housing industry (with the exception of some of our builders in Texas and other isolated areas) are very happy that 1982 has ended. At this time, mortgage interest rates are in the 12 percent to 14 percent range, substantially higher than rates in 1976 when the industry recovered from its last major recession. It should be noted that this modest recovery is underway without the type of government assistance (Brooke-Cranston and tax credit for home purchase) provided to assist recovery from the 1974-75 downturn. That may account in part for the slow and modest recovery now occurring. In fact, our Economics Division has projected that government-assisted production of all types will be down by 50 percent from 1982 to 1983. And most of that limited activity in 1983 will be due to rural housing programs. |
