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The following resolution on McCarron's corporate "market share" ideology was passed by Local 713 last night:

WHEREAS unions were built to provide a better life for their members and for all working people; and

WHEREAS despite the massive building boom in the United States the real wages of carpenters have fallen from about $30 per hour in 1987 to barely over $20 at present (according to the "Carpenter" magazine, January/February, 2000), and this disastrous fall in union carpenters' living standards has been followed by a similar fall in the real wages of non-union carpenters; and

WHEREAS the leadership of our Union claims that we must not strive to increase our wages so that we can help the unionized contractors "recapture market share", but this is impossible since the non-union wages are dropping as ours drop; and

WHEREAS union members will not rally round the union and fight to rebuild it once again as long as the union doesn't fight for them and this is proven by the fact that the per centage of work being done union has not increased despite the building boom; and

WHEREAS this is documented by "Construction Labor Report" (Oct. 6, 1999) which reported on a speech by Robert M. Gasperow, Executive Director of the Construction Labor Research Council, and in that report they stated: "CLRC's Gasperow said this has been a decade of missed opportunities for the union sector in the construction industry. The recent period of skilled labor shortages 'should have been a golden opportunity' for the union sector to expand, he said. 'Holding their own in market share is the best they can hope for,' he said. Union construction's market share will remain constant and may decline slightly in thenext decade, he said." Now be it

RESOLVED that this decisively shows that the corporate-oriented "market share" philosophy has been proven to be a massive failure in both organizing the unorganized as well as maintaining the standard of living of our present members; and be it further

RESOLVED that the Union shall reject this philosophy immediately and instead fight for the best contracts possible and use such a struggle in order to "agitate, educate and organize" (in the words of our Union's founder, P.J. McGuire). We must direct ourselves first and foremonst towards our own members and then use this campaign to build a mass, rank-and-file based organizing drive to convince the non-union carpenters to join with us in forcing their employers to sign the standard Master Agreement and fight for a decent live for all of our members as well as for working people in general.

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