origin of the hiring hall in construction

P H I L I P R O S S ”

Origin of the Hiring Hall in Construction

THE HIRING HALL has been defined as an “arrangement under which an agency or institution which has control of or access to a particular labor pool agrees to supply workers to an employer upon request.”’ While useful, this definition is insufficient, Not only does it fail to distinguish between employment exchanges in general and union-run facilities, but it ne- glects the implications of calling a union referral service a “hiring” hall: unions are not employers, and their hiring halls employ nobody.

For the purpose of this paper, a union hiring hall is a union-administered job-referral system whose referrals enjoy advantages over all other job applicants. There are, of course, many kinds of hiring halls. The rules of dispatching and the degree of job preference accorded to those referred by union hiring halls may be established by collective bargaining, or unilaterally by the union, and the amount of job preference may be slight or absolute. But what is essential to all hiring halls as defined here is employer agreement or acquiescence in according job preference; it is both historically inaccurate and analytically useless to call union referral services “hiring halls” where there is no job preference.

The NLRB, relying upon a Senate subcommittee investigation, described the origin and benefits of what it called hiring halls as follows:

It was to eliminate wasteful, time-consuming and repetitive scouting for jobs by individual workmen and haphazard uneconomical searches by employers that the union hiring hall as an institution came into being. It has operated as a crossroads where the pool of employees converges in search of employment and the various employers’ needs meet that confluence of job applicants.2

Professor of Industrial Relations, State University of New York at Buffalo. 1 Exclusive Union Work Referral Systems in the Building Trades, U.S. Department of Labor,

Labor Management Services Administration (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1970), p. 3.

2 Mountain Pacific, Seattle G Tacoma Chapters (Associated General Contractors), 119, NLRB 883 (1958), 41 LRRM 1460 at 1461. The report relied on was Maritime Hiring Halls, Report of

366

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However, the NLRB wrongly assumed that all union hiring halls have a common origin and that the maritime experience, which was the basis for the Senate report, was readily transferable to the construction industry. This paper will show that construction hiring halls are a relatively recent phe- nomenon, largely adopted in the period immediately preceding and following the 1959 Landrum-Griffin Act.

Absence of Hiring Halls It is widely and erroneously accepted that union hiring halls

have always been the main means of getting jobs in organized construction. The reasons for the halls’ allegedly key role lie ostensibly in the peculiar characteristics of the industry. Duration of employment varies widely and many jobs are very short. While certain employees are attached to a particular employer by virtue of repeated re-employment, most employees are selected from an area pool of craftsmen who may work for several employers during the course of a year. This area pool is occasionally (and at times frequently) replenished by employees who drift from area to area. Under these conditions of intermittent labor demand a centralized employment exchange appears to offer advantages to both employees and employers. So runs the conventional wisdom as reflected in the NLRB report just mentioned.

In fact, there is only slight evidence that these special construction characteristics required the use of a hiring hall. Indeed, there is abundant evidence that for most of their history, the building trades behaved like other unions in facilitating employment for their members. A government survey made in the early years of this century makes this clear: “Nearly all unions maintain an optional list. . . in which the unemployed members’ names are entered , . . , From this list names are furnished to an employer i f he asks for men from the union . . . but it is not required that the employer take the men whom the union send^."^

On the other hand, in all of the copious documentary material spawned by repeated government investigations of early building trades disputes, it is exceedingly rare to discover any employer, however hostile to unions, who alleged that he was required to hire through the hiring haK4 One exception occurred in San Francisco, after 1911, at a time when that city was perhaps

the Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, Report No. 1827, 81st Cong., 2nd sess. (Washing- ton, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1950).

3 Eleventh Special Report of the Commissioner of Labor, 58th Cong., 2nd sess. (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1904), p. 20. (Emphasis added.)

4One of the few such alle ations was made by a representative of the Chicago Plasterers Association in 1900. Report of t a e Industrial Commission on the Chicago Labor Dispute of 1900, 57th Cong., 1st sess. (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1901), p. 329. Some part of the testimony was denied by the union. Ibld., pp. 440-142.

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the most tightly organized in the country. Here hiring halls were imposed upon employers only as a punishment for persistent violation of the rules of the Building Trades CounciL5

Another exception involved the marble cutters and polishers union in New York City where employers were required to hire exclusively through the union. But this was a very special arrangement, the purpose of which was to protect present employers in their control of the New York market. The employers agreed to do their hiring through the union hall, in return for which the union agreed not to work for any employer who was not a member of the association. The association, like the union, had a closed membership.6 The benefits which the union received were considerable including very high rates and superior conditions as well as protection against the competition of out-of-town members.

For nearly all trades elsewhere, men obtained jobs ordinarily by searching for work at the job site. At the turn of the century, an employer of unionized plumbers said, “We employ men who come around seeking employment; we ask them whether they are members of the union, and if so, set them to work.”? Contracts in New York City generally permitted union members to work for any unionized employer they wished.’ In 1900, a Chicago painting contractor testified that the union imposed “no limit, no restriction” upon hiring except for membership considerations and the president of the Chi- cago bricklayers union, responding to a question on the employer‘s right to hire any union man, said, “I have never heard of any union in Chicago that would not allow that done.”O

The Closed Shop Unions did have control over hiring-but through the closed

shop, not through the hiring hall. Employers were free to hire whom they wished, just as long as they were members of the union. Under the conditions of the industry, where there are large numbers of small contractors and a fluctuating stock of available labor, the closed shop is “the basic rule which makes the enforcement of other trade rules possible” including, above all, the maintenance of union wage rates. “If an influx of non-union men be allowed, it may result in a reduction of wages, an increase of hours, and a

6 Frederick L. Ryan, Industrial Relations in the San Francisco Building Trades (Norman:

6 Eleventh Special Report . . ., pp. 21,334,337,338. 7 lbid., p. 363. 8 Industrial Relations, Final Report and Testimony, submitted to Congress by the Commission

on Industrial Relations, Vol. 11, 64th Cong., 1st sess. (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Print- ing Office, 1916), p. 1391.

University of Oklahoma Press, 1936), p. 114.

9 Eleventh Special Report . . ., pp. 254,232.

Symposium: Industrial Relations in Construction 369

general breakdown of union conditions.”1° Professor Commons reached pre- cisely the same conclusion and maintained that “an open shop union cannot survive” in the building trades.ll

Since employers were almost universally free to hire any union member, the building trades had to devise techniques to enforce the closed shop. No other labor organizations surpassed the construction unions in the range of devices employed to secure member preference in employment, the inge- nuity of their application, or the strictness of their enforcement. The per- sistence of many of these practices for over three-quarters of a century requires scrutiny.

Closed shop enforcement. Early in union history, membership cards had to be displayed by new employees, but these were soon displaced by what was called the “working card” or “due book.”” The working card differs from a membership card or book in that it is periodically renewed when dues are paid. The working card became the passport to a job in the organized construction industry. All unions provided that working cards be in- spected by the union steward who was ordinarily the first man to be employed on a job.

In nearly alI cities, common interests resulted in the formation of building trades councils whose major purpose was typically expressed as using “the united strength of all trades represented herein to compel all nonunion men to conform to and obey the law of the trade to which they should properly belong.”13 The councils usually sold their own working cards to afFiliates who in turn issued them to their members. The revenue from these cards was the principle source of income for the councils who employed business agents to enforce the closed shop in all trades. The New York closed shop was “. . . enforced by the rules prevailing in the building trades council, which compelled all men of all trades to go out on a strike in the event that any man employed in any one of the 35 trades is not a member of the union. And their constitution provides for penalties to be imposed upon any union that does not strictly enforce that rule, calling a general strike against the employer of nonunion men. . . .”I4

Where unions did not control a decisive poition of the skilled work force, loSolomon Blum, “Trade-Union Rules in the Building Trades,” in J. H. Hollander and

George E. Barnett, editors, Studies in American Trade Unionism (New York: Holt, 1906), pp. 315-316.

11 John R. Commons, “Causes of the Union Shop Policy,” American Economic Association (1905), 155.

12 Frank T. Stockton, The Closed Shop in American Trude Unions (Baltimore: Johns Hop- kins, 1911), p. 43.

13 Constitution of the Chica o Building Trades Council, 1897, Art. XL. 14 Industrial Relations, Finaf Report and Testimony, p. 626.

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various techniques had to be applied to recalcitrant employers. These in- cluded the sympathetic strike, restrictions upon subcontracting, secondary boycotts, and the refusal to handle nonunion material or perform work on sites contaminated by nonunion labor.

Local members receive preference. Union membership was almost universally construed as meaning good-standing membership in the local union. Members suspended for dues delinquencies or for rules infractions lost their working cards. Traveling members of the same international union were normally not permitted to work and were treated as nonunionists until they exchanged their traveling cards for local working cards.

Travelers presented serious problems. The sheer number of migrant craftsmen posed dangers to the local's control of labor supply and local standards. By virtue of their skills, travelers constituted an attractive source of new labor for employers during strikes and periods of unemployment. The international union's concern with the welfare of travelers collided with the local's interest of retaining control over its labor market. This issue was eventually worked out by establishing national rules after much strife which witnessed the secession of some large locals. These rules ordinarily obligated local unions to receive travelers whose traveling cards had been properly issued.

Most contracts explicitly specified that local labor should be used even when the contractor was from out of town. A union officer responding to a question of who would do the work if a Harrisburg contractor were to build a building in Buffalo said,

. . . it is the first duty of the organization in the city of Buffalo to require, if they possibly can, the owners of that building in Buffalo to have specified in the contract . . . that this building shall only be constructed by local union labor. . . . Now, this being a responsible contractor , , . he knows the terms of this contract, and therefore he could not enter into a contract to bring men from Harrisburg. . . .16

Why the Hiring Hall Was Not Made Compulsory It seems appropriate to wonder why the construction unions

did not develop the exclusive hiring hall. After all, a hiring hall would increase the union's control over the labor supply, a benefit which could be used to serve membership and union interests. At the very least, a union controlled hiring hall could be utilized to reward cooperative employers during

15 Report of the Industrial Commission, 56th Cong., 2nd sess. (Washington, D.C.: US. Gov- ernment Printing Office, 1901), p. 154.

Symposium: Industrial Rdations in Construction / 371

periods of labor shortages and could also be used as a means of spreading the work when unemployment was heavy.

The unions’ failure to develop compulsory hiring halls is even more surprising since they generally acted as employment exchanges. The dispersion of employers and the intermittent nature of employment made it natural for both employers and employees to use the union as a clearinghouse for jobs. The operation of the closed shop worked to the same end. If an employer was unable to get workers and was required to hire union members only, the union office was the obvious place to call. Furthermore, most skilled men were union members. Employers frequently stated that union men were the most productive and highly skilled workers and preferred to hire them even in the absence of compulsion.

Whatever cost burdens the closed shop imposed upon employers through reducing their choice of employees, these effects were mitigated by two factors affecting hiring and discharge. The first concerns the meaning of hiring union members only. In the building trades where unpredictable peaks of employer demand for labor occurred in a setting of on-site job hiring, employer hiring of nonmembers was usually countenanced by unions if the nonmember was eligible for and actually did apply for membership. Many unions asserted that while their members refused to work with nonunion men, the alternative of joining the union was always available to prevent discharge. While it is true that some locals pursued rigid exclusionary practices in order to enhance local job opportunities and raise wages, the influence of the national union was almost invariably directed towards the open admis- sion of all qualified applicants. The evidence indicates that most locals con- ducted their closed shop system so as to afford new employees an opportunity to join the union. The closed union was a rarity in the building trades and among unions generally.lo High initiation fees, limitation of apprentices, and other restrictive devices were not common except in situations where the local could shelter itself from outside competition or in periods of large- scale unemployment.

The second factor which made the closed shop tolerable to employers was their freedom to discharge union members. Whatever the power of a local union, and regardless of labor market conditions, a contractor’s authority to discharge at will was seldom challenged or abridged. The head of an employers association in New York readily conceded that the question of discharge is “not an important item.”“ Nearly all contractors throughout the

16 Stockton, 9. cit., pp. 162, 176. 17 Industriul Relations, Final Report and Testimony, p. 1775.

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country agreed that they “could discharge men for any reason-for poor work or slow work.” As a general rule, having once secured the closed shop, construction unions “yielded” to employer freedom in employing and discharging his men so long as they knew that only union members at union wages would be employed in place of those discharged.l8

In short, the direct impact of the closed shop upon most employers was the establishment of local preference in hiring, a preference which did not operate to burden contractors with unwanted or inept employees and was effectively breached during periods of high labor demand. On the other hand, the closed shop was the pivot of building unions activities and was essential to their purpose of improving and protecting working conditions. Thus the closed shop system, as operated, satisfied the basic needs of both unions and employers. There was no reason for the exclusive hiring hall or any variant of it.

Additional factors. The effectiveness of the closed shop is not the entire explanation. There were other forces which actively worked against the establishment of a hiring hall system. The most important lie in the implications of two factors: the wide differences in the skills and working abilities of union members and the unequal desirability of construction jobs.

Both employers and members could well fear the imposition of a dispatching system, no matter what standards were to be employed. These fears could scarcely be appeased by the rigid use of objective tests of first in, first out. Such a system is impractical because some element of dispatching discretion is inevitable in order to match men with jobs, Once discretion is conceded to union officers, the inherent controversy immediately arises over who gets the most desirable work. A union office is an elective post and the political principle of rewarding your friends and punishing your enemies appears to be inherent in the exercise of power, including job dispatching.

While union members would be unevenly affected by the introduction of a hiring hall, clearly the most skilled and industrious members would run the greatest risks. Job preference limits not just the employer’s freedom to hire, it restricts also the member’s liberty to search for and find jobs.

Employers were also hostile to a union-operated hiring hall. Under the closed shop system, the union supplied them with skilled employees (a valu- able and desired service), but the employers retained the freedom to hire and discharge. On the other hand, a hiring hall system would have compelled

1sEZeventh Special Report . . ., p. 332. One of the few complaints made by employers on their right to discharge was made by an employer of lathers in Chicago. Report of the Industrial Commission, 1901, p. 335. The facts in this particular instance appear obscure and the contractor’s major complaint was directed against featherbedding.

Symposium: Industrial Relations in Construction / 373

them to take whomever the union sent. This compulsion would have jeopar- dized employer hiring and discharging rights no matter what safeguards were established.

We may conclude that the special characteristics of the construction industry did not naturally produce the hiring hall and that both employers and union members felt threatened by it, A hiring hall which gave preference to union referrals could tear the web of relationships between employer and member which was made up of past working experiences in which each acquired information about the other’s needs and requirements.

Direct Hiring Hall Antecedents The fact that the prevailing hiring pattern gave no advan-

tages to union referrals did not mean that some locals did not make a start in developing more rigorous controls over the hiring process. There were thousands of construction union locals scattered throughout the country, each with its own traditions and market problems. Against a background where employers relied more or less upon unions as a source of manpower, it would be surprising indeed if no union attempted to secure hiring advantages for certain groups of workers.

Working pemi t s . Some locals were able to restrict job opportunities by closing union books to new members and travelers. These restrictions usually took the form of a permit system, defined as “an arrangement whereby unions, for a fee, gave permission to nonmembers to work in an enterprise in which hiring or continuation in employment is controlled by the union.”1e

The original purpose of the working permit was to apprise union officers that nonunionists were at workzo and thus control the labor supply in favor of members. As one employer explained:

I want a man in a certain trade, and I call upon the office of the secretary of that trade and ask him if he can send certain men to my job. He says, “Mr. Ginle, we haven’t got any now; we will send you a permit man or two.” They give that man a permit. He comes to my job. The consequence is he may be a good, first-class mechanic, and I am pleased to have him. But just as soon as one of the members of the organization is out of a job they send that man to my job and take off my permit man whether I like it or not, whether the man they send is as competent as the one I have got.21

19 Herbert J. Lahne, “The Union Work Permit,” Political Science Quarterly, LXVI (Septem- ber, 1951), 366.

20 Stockton, op. eft., p. 63. 21 Industrial Relations, Final Report and Testimony, p. 3341. Most permit holders were trav-

eling members who were unable or unwilling to join the local.

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The permit was used by some building trades locals despite the fact that nearly all internationals condemned it because of its incompatibility with the trade union principle of organizing all competent employees and also because of the opportunities for corruption it presented. Unscrupulous business agents occasionally pocketed fees for placing permit holders on jobs while “members of the union with paid-up cards were not permitted to go to work as long as there were any permit men that could be secured.’’22

This use of working permits is the direct ancestor of referral slips or introduction cards signed by union officers which served as entrees to jobs. Local membership toleration of permits depended upon the degree of job security members had and the continuation of the permit system in the face of international hostility was directly related to the protection it gave to local preference. But the use of the permit system rarely interfered with rights of members of the ZocaZ union to engage in job search on their own.

Waiting lists. Other than permits, the most common form of union control of hiring that developed within the working card system was the spread of waiting lists” in which business agents were required to send out members

in the order of their registration at the union office. However, as generally practiced, the employers were still free to hire members directly on the job site. The device of the waiting list met with employer opposition because of the limitations it imposed upon his hiring freedom. On the other hand, it was more acceptable to members because it “was originally adopted in order to prevent the business agent from favoring one union worker over another.”23

Some of the uses of the permit system and the practice of waiting lists meet our definition of a hiring hall since some priority in hiring is associated with union referrals. Occasionally, other hiring practices emerged which further added to the value of union referrals, especially in large labor mar- kets with a high degree of union power. In New York City during the thirties, some unions required that an employer hire at least half of his men through the union office and in a number of places a practice developed of stipulating that a certain number of older men be hired.”

‘ I

22Report of General Officers of the Operating Engineers in Internutionul Steam Engineer, October, 1924, as cited in Garth L. Mangum, The Operating Engineers (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Universi Press, 1964), p. 85.

23 William Ha 2 er, Industrid Relations in the Building Industrv (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard v

UniversixPress, 1930), p. 224. -

24 Wi ‘am Haber. ‘‘Building Construction.” in How Colkctiue Bareainine Works (New York: Twentieth Centu F’md, 19427, p. 213. The requirement that half of The wzrkers be supplied by

ployer reliance on the union for much of his work force together with his freedom to ire at least half of the workers overcame his reluctance to union controlled hiring. Similar reasons a plied to members who could both take advantage of the employment exchange facilities of &e union without sacrificing their ability to hunt for jobs.

K the union is clear 7 y associated with the size of the union and the needs of the em loyer. Em-

Symposium: Industrial Relations in Construction 1 375

Work-sharing rules. The massive unemployment of the thirties had an impact upon the construction industry’s hiring system. Job protectionism became the most acute of all union issues. Some unions such as the IBEW altered their constitution to allow locals to refuse to clear traveling cards when unemployment reached a certain level.25 But these constitutional changes merely ratified existing practices.

Much more important were the inroads made upon the working card system with its concomitant right of member job search by the adoption of new rules designed to share the work. One upstate New York local adopted the following by-law:

The handling of jobs for unemployed members shall be under the full supervision and direction of the Business Manager. He shall devise such means as he considers practical and fair in distributing available jobs to such members-if they are qualified to do the work. Members violating any rule or plan established shall be penalized as decided by the Executive Board.20

Similar changes were made elsewhere, and job rotation, with registration of all unemployed members at the union office, and union dispatching took place where it was unknown previously. It is difficult to determine how wide- spread these practices became although the evidence suggests that they must have been limited because of employer opposition. Since dispatching was made on the basis of the length of unemployment, “Employers have often objected to the competence of the men employed in this manner, and to the ‘political power’ which it gives the business agent.””

With the exceptions noted and making all due allowances for wide varia- tion in local conditions and the probability that odd locals did otherwise, the prevailing system of hiring in the construction industry underwent no fundamental changes in the half-century before the enactment of the Taft-Hartley Act.

The Impact of Taft-Hartley In outlawing the closed shop, the Taft-Hartley Act struck at

the vitals of the construction unions. If enforced, the amended national labor law would have destroyed the industry’s hiring system and thus subverted the foundation of union work rules. The threat was real but the building trades reacted slowly and with a curious hesitation. Their initial response

25 As early as 1913, the IBEWs international constitution permitted locals to refuse travel cards during “difficulties” with certain limits and safeguards. (1913 Constitution, p. 20.) in 1935, the constitution stated that any time local unemployment reached 10 per cent travelers are not required to be accepted. (1935 Constitution, p. 40.)

28 1931 By-Laws, Local Union 193, IBEW, Elmira, New York, p. 15. 27 Haber, “Building Construction,” p. 213.

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lasted for ten years and took two forms: first, some changes in contractual language, and second, a search for changes in the law. Finally, unfavorable legal developments galvanized them into concentrated activity which resulted in the establishment of present hiring hall arrangements.

Contract changes. Taft-Hartley had a relatively slight impact on union contracts or by-laws at first. Although a majority of unions eliminated overtly discriminatory language, a surprising number did nothing at all. A few locals refused to execute written contracts and were content to operate under oral agreements.

In nearly all cases the closed shop continued virtually unchanged. Even where the contract conformed to the law, union work rules and constitutional provisions which supported the closed shop were continuously strengthened and elaborated." The continuation of these working rules with their prohibi- tion of working with nonmembers, the restrictions upon the hiring discretion of foremen, and the delegation of authority to stewards, all indicated that the unions' referring facilities were supplementary to and did not take prece- dence over member job search at the worksite.

Under these circumstances complaints streamed in to the NLRB, which found thousands of cases of violation, based on offensive contractual or constitutional clauses or on unlawful hiring arrangements. By far the most important beneficiary was the traveler; the nonmember was aided only under exceptional circumstances.

Legislative reform. Unlike construction unions, maritime and longshore unions focused their legislative efforts into amending the Taft-Hartley Act to permit the operation of hiring halls, which were essential to their function- inge20 The building trades did not lobby for hiring hall legislation until the McClellan Committee hearings opened up the legislative opportunity for Taft-Hartley amendments. The legislative maneuvering which preceded the passage of the resultant Landrum-Griffin Act coincided with the highwater mark of the NLRB's belated offensive against the hiring hall, the Mountain Pacific de~ision.~' Collecting their political debts, the building trades suc-

28 An examination by the writer of several hundred contracts of carpenter locals for the dec- ade of the fifties revealed that none of them was lawful. Those which eliminated all blatant discriminatory language still failed because they incorporated by reference the international's constitution which was not ''purified" until after 1959.

29 Hiring Halls in the Maritime Industry, Hearings before the Subcommittee on Labor- Management of the Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, 81st Cong., 2nd sess. (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1950).

30 119 NLRB 883 (1958), 41 LRRM 1460. This case was the vehicle selected b the Board

hall. These rules were innocuous and in themselves posed no g e a t to union hiring controls. HOW- in which three rules were laid down as indispensible to the o ration of a lawful exc Y usive hiring


ceeded in gaining legal authority to continue prehiring contracts and to reduce the waiting period before the union shop became obligatory from thirty to seven days. But frightened by Mountain Pacific, the construction unions also slipped into the new law those parts of Section 8 ( f ) which sanc- tioned contracts in the construction industry which provided that union referrals could discriminate on the basis of seniority, residence, and experience. The new legal standards added nothing to prevailing law and were in fact borrowed from the methods employed by the maritime unions to continue their hiring halls.31

Introduction of the Hiring Hall The Mountain Pacific ruling and Landrum-Grif€in’s Section

8(f) led to a fundamental shift in the form of the industry’s hiring practices. Unrealistic as many NLRB and court decisions were in coping with the closed shop, the enforcement of the Taft-Hartley Act was a disagreeable and at times costly experience for many locals. Under the prodding of the intema- tional unions who distributed to their locals detailed model referral systems embodying Section 8(f)’s priorities, thousands of locals formally adopted the hiring hall.

Member objections were swept away in many cases by the urgency of the internationals’ call for change. In other cases, doubts were overcome by the ease with which the new hiring halls could perpetuate traditional methods of giving job preference to local members.

Employer opposition was far more serious. Less impressed by internationals’ arguments and sensitive to their loss of freedom, many contractors fought hard against the adoption of hiring halls. Many bitter strikes took place over this issue. In the end, most employers acquiesced and adopted the hiring hall form proposed by the union.

The Hiring Hall Today The hiring hall today has many variants. For expository pur-

poses, we may identify two major contractual categories: hiring halls which are governed by few or no written rules in the employer-union contract, and those job referral procedures specified by an elaborate set of rules. The his-

ever, when combined with the drastic remedy contained in the Brown-Olds decision (115 NLRB 594 (1956), 37 LRM 1360) which provided union reimbursement to all members of dues paid for the six months prior to the filing of the charge, the danger to the building trades unions was immediate and real. A technical violation was hereafter converted into a potential awesome financial liability.

31 Unlon Financial and Adminktratiue Practices and Procedures, Hearings before the Sub- committee on Labor of the Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, 85th Cong., 2nd sess. (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing O5ce, 1958), p. 893.

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toric experience-member job search enforced by the closed shop-best describes current practices in the former category.

In the other category, the rules prescribe a different hiring method. Appli- cants for employment must register at the hiring hall where they are placed in iob preference groups depending upon their qualifications. In descending order of importance, these qualifications are: previous employment for a sig- natory contractor, years of experience in the trade, residence in the local geographical area, and technical competence (the union conducts competence examinations).

Most sets of rules establish a rotation system where applicants within each group are dispatched in order of their registration date. However, there are usually some specified exceptions to the normal chronological dispatching order, which incIude: employer requests for men with special skills, employer authority to hire "key" men, and employee freedom to work for employers for whom they have worked previously within a specified time period. In addition, employers usually have the right to hire anybody if the union is unable to furnish applicants, provided that the union is notified of such hires and the employer replaces them with registered men when they become available. The rules also give the employer the contractual right to reject any applicant, and reasons do not usually have to be given. The main difference, then, between the union hiring hall and condtions prior to its adoption is that today contractors are required to get their employees normally through the hall.

All contracts explicitly state that job referrals shall not be made or denied on the basis of union membership, and many of them forbid discrimination on the basis of race, color, or ethnic origin.

It is difficult to classify these exclusive hiring halls because the imposition of formal procedures upon a wide variety of local practices has produced situations where the formal hiring procedure exists next to a shadow system of job allocation which may or may not correspond to the written rules. The fact that two local unions have identical contractual hiring halls tells us little about how their job referrals are actually made. The most that we can say is that the degree of enforcement of the written rules depends primarily upon the degree of member unemployment and the inclination of union leaders to exploit the internal political opportunities offered by the hiring hall.

Conclusion The hiring hall in the construction industry is no single insti-

tution. It has many forms which are not susceptible to neat classification. But whatever its form and regardless of the contractual language, the purpose of


the hiring hall is to augment the closed shop system as a method of preserv- ing work standards and protecting local member preferen~e.~’ On the sur- face, all hiring halls conform to the legal requirement forbidding discrimination against nonmembers, however, any conflict between hiring hall rules and the attainment of union goals is inevitably resolved in favor of the latter.

Nevertheless, the switch to hiring halls is important in itself. As a new institution, the hiring hall has an independent force of its own. By increasing the authority of union officers, it has affected both internal union affairs as well as the balance of power in collective bargaining. Perhaps the high wage increases in the sixties which shattered pre-existing patterns of wage relationships owe something to the increased union strength based upon an un- precedented control of the hiring process.

Much of the current spate of attacks against the building trades hiring halls is misplaced. When Arthur Burns describes the hiring hall as a “medi- eval practice,” he is talking about a hiring system which in its present form and pervasiveness was less than 12 years old at the time of his remarks.33 The argument in favor of eliminating hiring halls because they serve as instru- ments whereby blacks and other minorities are denied entry into the construction industry is similarly defective. Racial discrimination originated and flourished among some building trades unions long before these unions acquired hiring halls.

In short, the hiring hall today in its scope and structure is an accident of history which developed only incidentally to meet the manpower needs of the industry. If the past is any guide, the purposes it serves will survive any foreseeable change including increased legal regulation.

82Following the enactment of the Landrum-Griffin Act, all international unions carefully examined and pruned their constitutions of illegal clauses of all kinds. For an analysis of this precautionary action, see Philip Ross and Philip Taft, “The Effect of the LMRDA upon Union Constitutions,” New York University Law Review, XLIII (April, 1968).

33 Testimony before the Senate Banking Committee, 76 LRR 197, March 15, 1971.

origin of the hiring hall in construction

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