Labor Agreements That Do Not Consider Professional Practice Issues Are Against Public Interest -ASFE

"When a union is insensitive to professional practice issues, the organization of field representatives by that union is against the best interests of the public." So says ASFE, a not-for-profit association of geoprofessional, environmental and civil engineering firms, in a position paper it developed in response to union organizing activities now occurring in Illinois and California, and reported also in Alabama, Minnesota, Tennessee and Washington.

"The Illinois situation is particularly onerous," said ASFE Executive Vice President John P. Bachner. "The same union that’s seeking to organize field representatives [International Union of Operating Engineers Local 150] already represents a number of construction trades. Our Member Firms’ field representatives would be put into the position of evaluating the work of fellow members of a union whose bylaws prohibit them from doing anything that would create dissension in the ranks. The conflict of interest would be huge."

Bachner said that professional engineers and geologists "have to have 100 percent confidence in their field representatives. Field representatives perform the construction QA/QC [quality assurance/quality control] services engineers and geologists apply to meet their legal and ethical responsibilities to preserve and protect public health, safety, and welfare. Engineers and geologists could not possibly have the confidence they need were conflicts of interest to exist."

Professional engineers’ and geologists’ need for independence is another professional practice issues to which union agreements must be sensitive, ASFE said. "The public’s health, safety, and welfare are on the line," Bachner said. "Field representatives review construction quality for any number of projects where hidden shortcomings could lead to tragedy on a massive scale. Professionals have to be able to reassign or dismiss people without having to worry about the potential for grievances and months of costly red tape."

Some union agreements also give field representatives the right to select the equipment they will use. According to the position paper, "This situation could result in professional engineers and geologists being forced to accept 100 percent responsibility — and liability — for testing means and methods in which the professional engineers and geologists have little or no confidence, because the testing means and methods fail to preserve and protect public health, safety, and welfare as effectively as alternatives that unionized field representatives prefer not to use."

"Field representatives" include engineering technicians (also known as field technicians and soil and materials testers, among other terms) who typically have little or no formal engineering or geological training; often are active at several sites during any given day; and are in frequent communication with the professional engineers and geologists to whom they report. But field representatives also include the "resident engineers" employed by civil engineering firms and, according to Bachner, Local 150 has made it clear that it will seek to organize resident engineers as well. ASFE’s position paper states that "[r]esident engineers usually are degreed or even licensed professionals who serve full-time during a major project’s complete construction phase and are capable of answering many technical questions on their own. However, no matter what their education, training, experience and degree of autonomy, field representatives provide the precise information professional engineers and geologists need to conclude that design conditions are being attained or that design modifications or other intervention is necessary to achieve the specified results."

ASFE has established a Labor Relations Task Force that is in the process of assembling resource material ASFE members can use to protect themselves.

Source: ASFFE