press conference<\/a>\u00a0in front of the Washington Convention Center, Shapiro had said, \u201cWe build office suites for billionaires and millionaires, and our carpenters make great family wages. Even with those great family wages, the wage gap between the ultrarich and workers grows and grows.\u201d<\/p>\nShapiro also called the tentative agreement \u201chistoric.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some members were angry to hear their current wages called great \u2014 one carpenter told me it gave the impression that carpenters would be \u201cgreedy\u201d if they wanted more.<\/p>\n
Asked how she responded to that criticism, Shapiro said, \u201cI represent all of my membership. And I have to represent not only current contracts, and also future work opportunities. There\u2019s places in the country that have struggled when they have priced themselves out of the market.\u201d<\/p>\n\n \n \n
\n Coming Together?<\/h2>\n \n
Some who voted no on the contract were frustrated with Shapiro\u2019s rhetoric beforehand and still feel the union has worked to limit the strike.<\/p>\n
Others I spoke with credited her for joining them on the picket lines and hearing members out. \u201cIt\u2019s what you would expect from someone who aspires to be a good leader,\u201d said Rice. \u201cBut it probably takes a bit of courage to come and face those people.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m hoping that I\u2019ve seen another side of her,\u201d said Tom Nolan, a Local 30 journey worker. \u201cLike she said it herself, we were all divided before, but now we need to come together.\u201d<\/p>\n
While union leaders reached out to dissidents in the Peter J. McGuire Group this week, allowing them to nominate a representative to join the bargaining committee, the union also threatened one of the group\u2019s leaders, Arthur Francisco Esparza, with expulsion, issuing a cease-and-desist letter alleging that Francisco had been advocating wildcat strikes. The letter was publicly posted on social media with his home address visible (it has since been blocked out).<\/p>\n\n \n \n \n\n \n
\n Disclosure: Jimmy Castillo Matta\u2019s father, a former carpenter, is an owner of a minority-owned contractor business. Matta confirmed to\u00a0Labor Notes<\/em>\u00a0that he is a foreman in his father\u2019s contracting business.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThis post was originally published on Jacobin<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two thousand\u00a0Washington carpenters went on strike on Thursday, out of 6,600 who currently work under the master agreement with the Association of General Contractors (AGC). Five jobs were picketed, including construction projects at Facebook\u2019s Building X, Microsoft\u2019s Campus in Redmond, and Alphabet\u2019s Google. \u201cI didn\u2019t know what to expect. People can talk on Facebook, but [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":737,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317042"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/737"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=317042"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317042\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":317043,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317042\/revisions\/317043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=317042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=317042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=317042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}