[Superman]

You heard right. This is an internal family squabble/shakeout that probably needs to happen. It's not so much about exiting the AFL-CIO as it is about exiting the Building Trades Department. Carpenters have been gone for a while and this latest move has been anticipated. Those major crafts (Laborers, Carpenters and Operators especially) are now positioned to disregard long-established jurisdictional guidelines in the interest of serving the contractors that employ their membership.

This is appropriate, at least in some ways. Union membership has fallen, and rolls do not justify separate leadership and overhead for two or three dozen crafts. In the end, some unions will be swallowed up by others. Contractors will benefit, at least in some ways.

Many of the skills that justified those second and third tier crafts are no longer used. Plasterers who know how to make rozettes on ceilings are 80+ years old. Today, rosettes come in a box and are glued on if necessary.

It's been an interesting squabble and will continue to be interesting. It's a "land grab." that's the internal view.

Externally, there will be better "one stop shopping" for contractors, but be careful what you wish for. These major crafts, after swallowing the smaller ones, will be organizations that large contractors will have to deal with. For everything from tying rebar to roofing to concrete finishing to steel erection to taping/mudding/painting to ..... Construction labor is not exactly unskilled. Not even close. One worker is not going to have all these skills. So, the Carpenter and Laborer unions will be like Labor Ready. Labor brokers. This is why there is such mention of training in the article.