Stuck in Mid-Summer Costruction Traffic? Here’s Who to Blame
The Herald-News reports Talks fail - Illinois construction strike drags on
Monday’s negotiations failed to produce a settlement between striking union laborers and operating engineers and their employers.Jim Sweeney, president and business manager of International Union of Operating Engineers Local 150, said he was ” … tremendously disappointed at the employers’ lack of urgency.”
Mish Translation: Local 150 wants employers to quickly cave into obscene union demands
“We are asking the employers to share the burden with us,” Sweeney said.
Mish Translation:
This is what sharing the burden really looks like.
A press release issued Monday night by MARBA said the unions “… have been unwilling to come to the table with a proposal that is in line with the state of the industry and the economy.”
The strike has stopped a wide variety of projects in nine Chicagoland area counties. Will County projects affected by the strike include the new Silver Cross Hospital in New Lenox, 159th Street work in Lockport and the Route 59 widening through Shorewood, Joliet and Plainfield.
What’s MARBA?
Inquiring minds are reading About MARBA.
Formed in 1971, the Mid-America Regional Bargaining Association (MARBA) is a multi-employer association focused on collective bargaining in the construction industry. It brings together various contractor associations in the Metropolitan Chicago region for the purpose of unified labor relations.MARBA recruits industry experts to serve in the leadership roles during negotiations. These individuals are usually one of the leading employers in the particular craft for which MARBA is negotiating. MARBA stabilizes the construction industry by unifying contractors and providing them with a strong, single voice to handle union relations.
Negotiating twenty-one separate collective bargaining agreements with ten unions is just one aspect of MARBA’s services to its members.
MARBA Press Release
I happen to have a copy of a document from MARBA that shows who is really holding up contract negotiations. Here goes.
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I am sorry but the facts on the statement I saw above are not completely true. $300 deductible per person, 90% coverage not 100% with a 3000 out of pocket per individual. Prescription drugs, when bought in-house (unions pharmacy) is $5 monthly generic and $10 name brand. No vision plan and only cleanings and xray every 36 months for dental. $1500 per family per year covers things not covered by the plan like eye care. This is the partially self funded plan of the IUOE. So now since corporate America has opened the floodgates to the enslavement of the working class by turning the blind eye to quality of life issues for workers should the unions just follow suit and lay down everything? Just abandon health care and pensions and allow contractors to pay what they deem fit to whoever walks up willing to due the work at cut throat wages? NOT!! At least the union stands up for the working class. I don’t know about this country anymore. This money is spent locally by the WORKERS working on the street. It is stimulus money. But no, let’s stick up for the guy who would take the money from the worker and employ more grateful people for $8 an hour and hoard the rest or spend it in China or some other place.