ot?(but where does the canadian lobby stand? after all you're concerned about our housing costs)
WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE
UNION PICKETS AMISH, COMPLAINS OF UNFAIR COMPETITION
by Kevin Hoffman
Published August 15 - 21, 2001
In April, a man showed up at a construction site and began snapping photographs of Amish workers. The man was Milton Harris, a heavyset business representative for the carpenters’ union, and he had come to document alleged Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) violations. Peering up through a nest of tree branches, his camera captured photos of Amish men without safety harnesses picking their way across the skeletal roof of the building-to-be.
For at least a decade, Amish have hired themselves out as framers and carpenters on houses and garages in the city’s fringes. While union members didn’t exactly cotton to the practice, they didn’t consider it a major threat to their livelihood, either. But recently, the Amish encroached into the well-to-do Cedar-Fairmount neighborhood of Cleveland Heights, where they’ve been working on major townhouse projects. This comes at a time when the economy has gone south, leaving some union carpenters struggling to find work.
The carpenters’ union, the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, complains that the Amish represent unfair competition. Their religion exempts them from paying Social Security and Medicare because it would violate their principle of separation from the non-Amish world, and they’re also exempt from OSHA hard-hat requirements. This, the union says, allows the Amish to save money on overhead and outbid them on competitive contracts. Now, union carpenters have begun picketing sites that employ Amish.
Harris’ photo expedition brought the conflict into sharper focus. One picture shows a young man with a bowl haircut returning fire by petulantly taking a photo of Harris taking a photo of him. As Harris left the site, a man in a white Jeep Cherokee followed him and took pictures of his license plate. Harris pulled over and the man in the Jeep told him that the Amish don’t want their pictures taken. "That’s just too bad," Harris said. Later, Doug King, a lawyer friend of Ray Miller, the Amish man who employs the construction crew, called the union’s attorney and accused Harris of "ethnic intimidation."
Even after the accusations, Harris went back to the site a second time to document more alleged safety violations. He knew that that some Amish oppose having their photo taken – they believe it violates the Bible’s prohibition against graven images – but, he reasoned, he had seen pictures of them printed in newspapers. Besides, Harris says, "they’re standing right out there in the public. If you’re going to be in the mainstream, you’ve got to expect some of that. If they’re sensitive to cameras, maybe they should stay in the house."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Things change and you can’t expect to go out to Cleveland with a hammer and a handsaw to compete."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Twenty years ago, one would have been hard-pressed to find an Amish man working so close to the city, but times change, even for people who still live like it’s 1899. "When I was a youngster, there was no working up there, mostly on account of the unions," says John Kuhns, a 55-year-old Amish man in the heavily Amish enclave of Middlefield. "But the unions aren’t near as strong anymore, plus that’s where the work is."
The farming industry has become increasingly mechanized, squeezing out many small Amish operators who milked cows by hand and tilled their land with horse-drawn plows. Some Amish, such as Kuhns, turned to factories. He worked for 35 years in the Flambeau Products factory in Middlefield manufacturing Duncan yo-yos and hunting decoys before retiring to run a furniture store. But now factories seem to be relying more on part-time labor, Kuhns says, so Amish have increasingly been working in the homebuilding industry. Kuhns has four adult sons and all of them run work crews.
The trend has not been without growing pains for the Amish; the demands of the competitive workplace have begun to pull the Amish away from their simple lifestyle.
"It’s just kind of a fact of life," Kuhns says. "Things change and you can’t expect to go out to Cleveland with a hammer and a handsaw to compete." To get to Cleveland, many Amish rely on taxi drivers because their religion forbids them from owning cars. While Amish shun electricity at home, they have begun to use electric tools at work. Some Amish even carry cell phones and beepers at work.
This has brought them closer to worldly temptation and some Amish elders fear it could threaten their way of life.
Bill Byler, a 43-year-old Amish man who has two sons on work crews, says he knows of Amish men who have bought cell phones of their own. "I imagine the contractor handed one out and that may have tempted them to buy one," he says. The issue has created much consternation in the Amish community, Byler says, and sooner or later the bishops, who decide what to shun and what to embrace, will have to step in and make a ruling.
It will not be the first time the Amish have had to consider concessions to the modern world. In the 1960s, the Amish were forced to reevaluate their prohibition against electricity when the milk industry demanded that they store milk in containers that use electric motors. Donald Kraybill, author of The Riddle of Amish Culture, says economic impact is one of several factors the Amish weigh when deciding whether to accept a new technology.
Behind the counter in his dim and not air-conditioned Amish furniture store, Kuhns agrees. "A lot of the things that we never used to have are almost necessities to compete in the job market."
To the union, such concessions smack of convenient loopholes. If the Amish will use cell phones on worksites, why can’t they also break their prohibition against hard hats? If they can hire a taxi and use electric tools, why shouldn’t they pay Social Security and Medicare taxes like everybody else? "If you’re gonna be a bona fide contractor," says Thomas Perlatti, another business representative for the carpenters’ union, "maybe you oughta go with all the bona fide rules. Don’t be giving me that religious exemption crap."
The impact of those religious exemptions on the bottom line is hard to pin down, but estimates show it’s not insignificant. Workers and employers each pay 7.65 percent of the gross salary for Social Security and Medicare. The prevailing wage for union carpenters in Cuyahoga County is $25 an hour – or $1,000 for a 40-hour workweek. The total taxes paid on that week of income by the worker and the employer is $153. Ray Miller, who owns the Amish construction company, says he pays workers anywhere between $15 and $30 an hour, but he doesn’t have to pay 7.65 percent of that to Social Security and Medicare tax, and his workers keep 7.65 percent more of their paychecks than their union counterparts keep.
But the Amish also have expenses that union carpenters don’t have. To get to and from the worksite, an Amish work crew – usually between four and six men – must pay a driver, at a cost of about $120 a day. And while the Amish don’t pay Social Security or Medicare, they also will never collect the benefits, which means they must sock away money for retirement and illness and rely on their family and community for additional help.
Gary Naim, president of Petros Homes, says Amish demand market price and their profits are comparable to that of non-Amish crews. "There is a time and a day when you could contract with an Amish crew and get below-market," he says, but now, "the Amish have done their homework. They know how to run their business." Naim started with a framing crew of five or six Amish 10 years ago but now employs 30 to 40 Amish subcontractors a year. It’s not that their labor is cheaper, he says. What he likes is their work ethic: they show up on time, they’re excellent craftsmen and they leave the job site clean. Says King, Miller’s lawyer friend: "These guys are artists, Michelangelo with wood."
The union knows that forcing Amish to wear hard hats would do nothing to dampen their reputation for excellent work. Between complaints about the unfairness of religious exemptions, Harris also dismissed Amish craftsmanship: "These guys are not as great as a lot of people think they are. Twenty years from now, when the houses settle, you’ll see a lot of flaws." Amish also have a lifestyle advantage: they shun most materialistic possessions and so have less need for money.
The hard hats and taxes may be the most obvious weapons, but what is really going on is a war for limited resources. For Amish, who conscientiously object to war, the dispute with the union has been an unfortunate consequence of economic necessity, says Kuhns. "We’re not trying to antagonize the unions, it’s just, that’s where the work is," he points out. "We can see their point: someone comes in all at once and takes work they normally would get." It’s a difficult situation for all involved, says Kuhns, and it’s unlikely to change in the near future: after all, the Amish religion also forbids them from joining a union. |
