EXECUTIVE OFFICER CORNER

Our Union has a great deal to look forward to in 2025. Major local, regional and national Carpenters Union elections will provide rank-and-file Members the opportunity to make their voices heard and select leaders to drive our Union’s continued successes. Rarely does a set of election cycles align to provide so much democratic opportunity for our Members in one year.

Locally, more than one-third of our Local Unions are holding their regular elections in 2025. Members of these Locals will directly elect individuals who will make the day-to-day decisions required to run their Local and their Delegates to stand for them at the Regional Council.

Regionally, our Regional Council election will be held in which Delegates will elect the NCCU Executive Committee Officers to a four-year term.

Nationally, the official General Convention call has gone out, and all Local Unions will hold specially called elections to elect Delegates to represent them at the 53rd General Convention of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America.

Convention Delegates will represent their Local Unions in all matters at the General Convention, including voting for the General Executive Board representing the working men and women of our great Union throughout the United States and Canada.

We encourage all our Members to seize the chance to get involved and make your voice heard.

Building Carpenters’ Power in Your Communities

Another opportunity to amplify the importance of the Carpenters Union is to get directly involved in the political elections in the communities in which you live.

I want to commend rank-and-file Members who answered the call to build power and who chose to step up and run for office or seek appointments to public positions and commissions.

· Executive Board member Jay Howard ran for City Council in the City of Martinez. He is in his third year of his term.

· Seth Webber, a member of Carpenters Local 152, successfully applied for a Planning Commissioner appointment in the City of Antioch.

· Gilbert Williams, a multi-decade member of Carpenters Local 22, was approved as a Planning Commissioner by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

Each of these Members brings a Carpenter voice and perspective to these vitally important bodies. By stepping up to serve, they lift up our Membership and the communities they represent.

The addition of rank-and-file to the many NCCU Representatives who have also gained positions on local, and state governmental bodies makes our voice stronger than ever.

Creating Housing, Union Jobs and Taking on the “Crime Scene”

Our agenda to change California’s housing industry is seeing wave after wave of progress and success. Not only have we helped streamline the approval process, enabling more housing to be built years into the future, we have done this with strong labor standards and enforcement language to provide real opportunities for our Members and bring dignity and respect to those who build housing.

These successes have had a real impact in the Bay Area’s most jobs-rich areas like San Francisco and Oakland, enabling developers to produce thousands of multifamily affordable apartments. While this is a great start and has created jobs for our Members, we must bring a “Carpenters” solution to the statewide housing crisis for all types of housing, not just publicly funded apartments.

Building new housing is crucial, but it must be done right.

The combined efforts of multiple NCCU departments and rank-and-file activists succeeded in dissuading the University of California at Davis from using a non-union general contractor to build a new $77 million housing project, despite the company being the apparent-low bidder. The project will now be built in compliance with the law, by Union craftspeople, and with the full support of the Nor Cal Carpenters Union. We won through outreach and actions that shined a light on crime scene construction sites.

The NCCU has also organized and stood alongside exploited housing workers to provide testimony before the State Treasurer and State Controller regarding publicly funded housing projects that are active crime scenes. These unprecedented actions have already produced regulatory reforms, but we will maintain pressure until we have stopped criminals from benefiting from public financial assistance.

Other focused Union Carpenter campaigns led to action by Attorney General Rob Bonta, who has taken unprecedented steps to address the issue. The Attorney General has expressed gratitude to the Carpenters Union Members from Northern and Southern California for past and ongoing partnerships in holding greedy contractors accountable to the laws of our state.

This is the kind of power that can only be built through your action, voice and efforts; the power to ensure our view is heard in the halls of power, the ability to ensure our priorities for enforcement of laws are addressed, and the strength to protect workers throughout the state.

Every housing issue we can be involved in helps build momentum, win victories, and drive our agenda for change!

Carpenters Unity = Strength

Lastly, I share some Union principles that many mentors have taught and continue to teach me.

Encourage and support healthy debate and passionate exchange of ideas within our “Union House,” but always show a united front to those on the outside, particularly those forces that try every day to tear us down.

United by our skills, intelligence, action, tools and our Union Card, we are unstoppable – from the job site to the Capitol. Please take care of and lift each other up. The old adage is as true today as ever before – “An Injury to One of Us – Is an Injury to All of Us”

I am proud of the work we have done together and look forward to another year building Nor Cal Carpenter Power.

JAY BRADSHAW

Executive Officer