American building trades unions have historically played a critical and stabilizing role in the nation's construction industry, establishing uniform standards and leveling the competitive playing field. Union members have enjoyed better than average wages and benefits, excellent training opportunities, and decent jobsite conditions. But in the last thirty years the industry has undergone a dramatic transformation. This article describes the decline in union density, the drop in construction wages, the growth of anti-union forces, the changes in labor force demographics, the shift toward construction management, and the emergence of an underground economy. It also analyzes how building trades unions have responded to these changes, identifies structural impediments to union renewal, and proposes strategies for building trades unions to reassert their presence and power.

Abstract[Excerpt] The COMET (Construction Organizing Membership Education Training) is an educational program utilized by building trades unions to generate rank and file support for organizing new members. Since 1996, the Building and Construction Trades Department of the AFL-CIO has been sponsoring COMET training in multi-trade settings for its fifteen affiliates. Between 1997 and 1998, the Department undertook a systematic evaluation of its multi-trade COMET programs to determine their impact on attitudes toward organizing as well as on the nature and extent of organizing activities. This article summarizes the lessons the Department learned. Among other conclusions, the evaluation reaffirmed that COMET training is an effective way to build internal support for external organizing and that local unions using the COMET appear to be more deeply engaged in organizing than those not using this innovative labor education program. The COMET (Construction Organizing Membership Education Training) is an educational program utilized by building trades unions to generate rank and file support for organizing new members. Since 1996, the Building and Construction Trades Department of the AFL-CIO has been sponsoring COMET training in multi-trade settings for its fifteen affiliates. Between 1997 and 1998, the Department undertook a systematic evaluation of its multi-trade COMET programs to determine their impact on attitudes toward organizing as well as on the nature and extent of organizing activities. This article summarizes the lessons the Department learned. Among other conclusions, the evaluation reaffirmed that COMET training is an effective way to build internal support for external organizing and that local unions using the COMET appear to be more deeply engaged in organizing than those not using this innovative labor education program.

[Excerpt] The building and construction trades have historically been one of the most stable and secure sectors of the American labor movement. In the period immediately after World War II, their power in the construction industry was legendary, controlling over 80 percent of the work and setting standards that were the envy of workers everywhere. How did the building trades' position devolve so dramatically that it is now commonly described as a crisis of survival? How has the construction industry evolved in ways that have undermined the strength and vitality of building trades unions? How have construction unionists responded to the changed circumstances of their industry and their weakened position in it? How has the larger context of a labor movement in crisis influenced the strategic options of building trades leaders on both sides of the national split?

Union leaders in California have been engaged in an ongoing strategic planning process to build labor's power in the nation's largest state. This effort is being driven by a leadership committee of the California Labor Federation, which was established in 2004, after unions lost a strategically important ballot initiative by less than 1 percent of the votes cast. What began as a critical analysis of that political setback has since evolved into a systematic effort to identify and overcome weaknesses in the state's labor movement, to develop a common and coherent program for organized labor, to articulate standards and benchmarks to guide power building in California, and to encourage greater unity of purpose among various labor organizations across the state. The experience of California's unions provides an important model that other state labor movements should study and replicate wherever possible.

Abstract[Excerpt] Psychosocial capacity building, which is a more common approach in response to disasters outside of Western Europe and the U.S., was, in part, a reaction against the perceived "traumatization" and pathologizing of disaster survivors, as well as the over-emphasis on the individual at the expense of the collectivity and community (Ager, 1997;IASC, 2007;Kleinman & Cohen, 1997; Miller, in press; Mollica, 2006; Strang & Ager, 2003;Summerfield 1995;2000; Wessels, 1999;Wessels & Monteiro, 2006). The accent with psychosocial capacity building is equally on the social as well as the psychological. Some of the tenets of this approach are: an emphasis on families, groups and communities; focusing on strengths, capacities and sources of resiliency; a wariness of the medicalization of social reactions to abnormal situations; centralizing culture and its impact on meaning making after a disaster, expression of affect and its implications for healing; using local, indigenous, often non-professional people as the designers and implementers of projects; supporting and reconstructing mutual aid and self-help groups; taking into account socio-cultural variables such as race, class, and gender when considering the impact of a disaster and how to respond to it. Although there are clearly different points of emphasis, a mental health approach and psychosocial capacity building approach are not mutually exclusive and can be combined for effective, multi-systemic interventions to respond to disasters. There were elements of both approaches in the project described in this paper.