The Numbers Game In The State's Construction Industry | Who should we believe when it comes to union v. nonunion employee totals?
How many of the state’s construction workers are union members?
It’s a straightforward question, but it’s one that has fueled years of conflict between the building service unions and nonunion contractors. Each side uses their claim to a large chunk of the market to bolster arguments for and against union-promoting devices like project labor agreements.
The latest salvo in the battle comes in the form of a report from the nonunion employers’ group Merit Construction Alliance, which is a statewide organization based in Kingston.
The report purports to debunk a number of union claims, including the contention that they represent 75,000 construction workers, more than half of the industry’s workforce. MCA puts the number at a startlingly lower 22,000.
So what is the truth? Well, there are some problems with the non-union camp’s figures.
Damned Lies And Statistics
They’re based on data from the federal government’s Current Population Survey, compiled by researchers from Georgia State University and Florida State University at a site known as unionstats.com. But the sample size of the data is so small that the government itself doesn’t break it down by industry within individual states because of likely inaccuracies. It’s small enough that the stats for Massachusetts union members in construction swing wildly from year to year, from 29,000 in 2000 up to 41,000 in 2001, for example.
Still, Ronald N. Cogliano, president and CEO of the Merit Construction Alliance, says that kind of change still doesn’t bring the numbers anywhere near the union estimates. And Gary Chaison, a Clark University professor who focuses on labor unions, said he’d take the unionstats.com numbers over the unions’ estimates any day.
“I don’t think that’s anywhere as close,” he said of the 75,000 number. “I think that’s highly exaggerated.”
Chaison said it’s hard to buy the idea of a 50 percent-plus unionized construction workforce in the state, given that the official federal stats show only 13.2 percent of all Massachusetts workers, and only 13.9 percent of the construction industry nationwide, are unionized.
But Frank Callahan, the president of Massachusetts Building Trades, swears the 75,000 number is correct. It’s based, he said, on the membership of the unions that are part of his umbrella group. He said there’s no reason for the unions to inflate their numbers since that would mean paying more into the MBT kitty. If the number is higher than many might expect, he said, chalk it up to good work by the state’s building trades unions.
Tally It Up
Adding up the numbers on financial papers that unions file with the Department of Labor, it’s easy to get to a membership of more than 35,000 for building trades unions in the state. That’s even without including several big unions like the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers whose locals cross state lines.
But it’s impossible to tell how many members of the unions aren’t construction workers at all. Chaison says some building trades unions, like the Laborers International Union, are known for organizing workers in all sorts of industries. And some may include retirees or people who are unemployed, he said.
Cogliano puts the matter even more bluntly.
“They tend to count people who are retired, they count people who are dead,” he said.
Callahan claims those issues don’t play into his membership numbers. He said the reports he gets from constituent unions include just members who work in Massachusetts, and just those who actually work in the building trades.
A few retirees and unemployed workers may end up in the mix he said, but certainly not enough to make a big difference in the total numbers.
Clearly, the disagreements will continue. Ultimately, though, when it comes to the policy questions that the unions and the non-union contractors debate, does the answer really matter? Chaison thinks not.
The decision of whether to use PLAs, Chaison said, depends on whether you buy the argument that they improve the quality of work and avoid problems with labor supply.
“I don’t think it really depends on how many workers there are there,” he said.
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