--------------------------------------------------------------X UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff,
-against-
DISTRICT COUNCIL OF NEW YORK CITY and VICINITY OF THE UNITED BROTHERHOOD OF CARPENTERS and JOINERS OF AMERICA, et al., Defendants. --------------------------------------------------------------X
90 Civ. 5722 (RMB)
THE TENTH THIRTY-DAY REPORT REGARDING ELECTRONIC JOB REPORTING AND RELATED COMPLIANCE PROCEDURES SPECIFIED IN THE COLLECTIVE BARGAINING AGREEMENTS BETWEEN THE NEW YORK CITY DISTRICT COUNCIL OF CARPENTERS AND THE ASSOCIATION OF WALL- CEILING AND CARPENTRY INDUSTRIES OF NEW YORK, INC., THE BUILDING CONTRACTORS ASSOCIATION, INC., THE GENERAL CONTRACTORS ASSOCIATION, INC., THE FLOOR COVERERS ASSOCIATION OF GREATER NEW YORK, INC., THE CONTRACTORS ASSOCIATION OF GREATER NEW YORK, THE CEMENT LEAGUE, INC., AND THE ASSOCIATION OF CONCRETE CONTRACTORS OF NEW YORK, INC.
District Council of New York City and Vicinity of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America 395 Hudson Street New York, NY 10014
1 Introduction The District Council submits this Tenth Thirty-Day Report pursuant to (1) the Decision & Order entered on May 8, 2013 (Doc. 1315), (2) the Order entered on June 11, 2013 (Doc. 1332), (3) the Order entered on July 16, 2013 (Doc. 1358), (4) the Order entered on September 3, 2013 (Doc. 1386), (5) the Order entered on September 12, 2013 (Doc. 1394), (6) the Order entered on October 23, 2013 (Doc. 1426), and (7) the Order entered on February 3, 2014 (Doc. 1481), in United States v. District Council, 90 Civ. 5722 (RMB). This report covers the period from March 1, 2014 to March 31, 2014 and sets forth statistics regarding electronic job reporting and related anti-corruption compliance measures established by the District Councils collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) with the Wall-Ceiling and Carpentry Industries of New York, Inc. (WC&C), the Building Contractors Association, Inc. (BCA), the General Contractors Association of New York, Inc. (GCA), the Floor Coverers Association of Greater New York, Inc. (FCA), the Contractors Association of Greater New York (CAGNY), the Cement League, Inc. (CLI), and the Association of Concrete Contractors of New York, Inc. (ACCNY). The order approving the CBAs with ACCNY provides, The District Council shall file with the Court approximately every thirty (30) days after entry of this Order and approximately every thirty days thereafter until further order of the Court a report describing (i) the progress and effect of the electronic jobs reporting procedures and the compliance and enforcement procedures under the CBAs between the District Council and ACCNY, the CBA between the District Council and the Cement League, the CBA between the District Council and CAGNY, the CBA between the District Council and the Floor Coverers Association, the CBA between the District Council and the GCA, the CBA between the District Council and the BCA, and the CBA between the District Council and the WC&C; (ii) the anti-corruption enforcement efforts of the 2 District Council; and (iii) additional information regarding the status of the CBAs between the District Council and ACCNY, the CBA between the District Council and the Cement League, the CBA between the District Council and CAGNY, the CBA between the District Council and the Floor Coverers Association, the CBA between the District Council and the GCA, the CBA between the District Council and the BCA, and the CBA between the District Council and the WC&C pertaining to enforcement of the Consent Decree. The reports may be consolidated. Order at 2-3, United States v. District Council, 90 Civ. 5722 (RMB) (S.D.N.Y. Feb. 3, 2014), ECF No. 1481. Electronic reporting is now in effect on jobs for seven of the associations for which this Court has approved CBAs containing full mobility provisions since May 2013. As the Court is aware, on March 12, 2014, Your Honor approved the CBA between the District Council and the New York Trade Show Contractors Association (NYTSCA), which includes full mobility and comparable electronic reporting requirements to the WC&C, BCA, GCA, FCA, CAGNY, CLI, and ACCNY CBAs. Electronic reporting and full mobility went live for the NYTSCA on Monday, April 7, 2014, and will be included in the Eleventh Thirty-Day Report, which will report on electronic reporting compliance for the month of April. Electronic Reporting The CBAs with the WC&C, BCA, GCA, FCA, CAGNY, CLI, and ACCNY each require District Council shop stewards to report all of the hours worked by members on their jobsites via the electronic reporting system. The District Council recognizes the paramount importance of compliance with the electronic reporting system and continues to devote the resources necessary to ensure that all shop stewards are meeting their reporting requirements. The District Councils focus on meeting this goal has spread awareness throughout the shop stewards and the District Council believes that the efforts of the compliance team have led to steadily improved 3 compliance. The District Council continues to keep a list of all stewards who fail to report their time within seventy-hours so that any habitual or willful offenders can be identified and brought into the Council for reprimand. During the past month, the District Council did not identify any shop stewards who were habitually failing to report via the electronic reporting system. The District Council continues to offer its monthly training session on the first Monday of the month, held so far this year on January 6, February 3, March 3, and April 7. The most recent training session had no attendees, so the total number of stewards trained on the use of the electronic reporting tablets remains at 1,467. The regular training session continues to be advertised to members on the District Council website and will continue to be offered going forward so that any steward who wishes to make use of it will have that option. As of April 14, 2014, 899 Enterprise ET1 tablets have been distributed to District Council shop stewards; two of these are in need of repair or troubleshooting. The Council has an additional 23 devices to be deployed to stewards for the first time. As reported in the Ninth Thirty-Day Report, the Business Representative Center has implemented a program to maximize the utility of the tablets purchased by the District Council, through which tablets not being used are reclaimed and reissued to another steward. When returning his or her tablet, a steward must certify that he or she continues to understand his or her reporting duties and will continue to comply with them. Twenty-seven tablets have been reclaimed in this way and, after being formatted with a new user and e-mail account, will be available to be distributed to another shop steward. Rate of Compliance As previously described to Your Honor, the electronic reporting compliance team has addressed compliance with the electronic reporting system by calling the shop stewards assigned to jobs for which no hours had been reported to determine whether the job was active and to capture any hours not reported. Letter from Barbara S. Jones at 1-2, United States v. District 4 Council, 90 Civ. 5722 (RMB) (S.D.N.Y. Dec. 3, 2013), ECF No. 1441. Because District Council shop stewards are only assigned to three+-person jobs, the electronic reporting compliance team has captured and the Thirty-Day Reports have presented the statistics of compliance within 48 to 72 hours for three+-person jobs, which make up the majority of the jobs worked by District Council members. In order to better monitor the reporting of hours, the electronic reporting compliance team has taken over the responsibility for managing compliance on one- and two-person jobs from the Out of Work List, centralizing this oversight function and keeping the same records for one-, two-, and three+-person jobs. In addition to its continued work monitoring shop steward electronic reporting compliance, the electronic reporting compliance team now designates two individuals to three+-person jobs, two individuals to one- and two-person jobs, and a fifth individual to troubleshoot, file grievances, and work on jobs of all sizes. With this transition of responsibilities, future Thirty-Day Reports will present a statistical picture of one-, two-, and three+-person jobs. This Tenth Thirty-Day Report presents the following statistics regarding the compliance of District Council shop stewards electronically reporting within the 48 to 72 hour window. While the District Council can report that all the hours worked have been reported for the one- and two-person jobs, it will be able to report the time periods within which these smaller jobs were reported in the next Thirty-Day Report. For the month of March 2014, the District Council shop stewards had an electronic reporting compliance rate of 99.68 % of the jobs worked under the seven CBAs addressed in this report, meaning the hours for these three+-person jobs were entered into the electronic reporting system and were accessible via Watch Dog within 72 hours of being worked. The electronic reporting compliance team continues to track the resolution of each previously unreported job, by accessing the related online databases and by contacting the District Council shop steward assigned to a given job. In this Report, the District Council reports the compliance statistics for 5 the period March 1 through March 31, 2014, based on the electronic reporting compliance teams work from March 3 through April 11, 2014. For this period, the District Council reports the following: Addressing Unreported Count Jobs for 3/1/2014 3/31/2014 1
Total Unreported Count Addressed by Electronic Reporting Compliance Team 2 : Failure to Report within 48 to 72 Hours: Delayed Report 3 : 1076 46 0
This means that, during this time period, of the total Unreported Count addressed by the electronic reporting compliance team, only 4.28 percent (46 of 1076) represented jobs for which a shop steward did not report hours within 48 to 72 hours of the work being done. As previously described, to determine the compliance percentage, one must also compare the total Active Count with the total Unreported Count. For March, the Active Count (open jobs) was 16,814, and the Unreported Count was 1265. 4 If, based on the Unreported Count jobs that were resolved by the electronic reporting compliance team, 4.28 % is a fair estimate of the actual failure rate for the month, then the actual number of jobs for which a shop steward did not report worked hours within 72 hours is 54 . And the percentage of overall noncompliance is 0.32 % , giving the compliance rate of 99.68 % reported above. In contacting shop stewards this month, the District Council analysis determined that the bulk of the failures to report during March occurred on the last day of a job. That is, a steward,
1 A spreadsheet detailing these results is attached here as Exhibit A. 2 The number of unreported jobs addressed by the electronic reporting compliance team is not the same as the Unreported Count at the end of the 72 hour reporting window, as described in the previous Thirty-Day Reports and infra note 4, because some unreported jobs close on their own as the steward submits time or informs the Council that the job is actually closed. 3 In previous Thirty-Day Reports, there were jobs for which the hours were not reported in 72 hours, through no fault of the shop steward, because there was a new or out-of-town member on the job which prevented electronic reporting until benefits had been paid for that member. As with the previous two Thirty-Day Reports, there were no such delayed reports in the current period. 4 To tally the Active and Unreported Counts, where possible, the District Council used the report run 72 hours after the day in question. If the report from 72 hours later was not run, the District Council looked to the report from either 24 or 48 hours after the day in question. If such a report was unavailable, the District Council used the report run at the earliest available date. A spreadsheet of the totals of Active and Unreported jobs is attached as Exhibit B. 6 who otherwise reported within the 48 to 72 hour time period, neglected to report the hours for the day the job closed within 48 to 72 hours. Because the District Council recognized this pattern, 5
the Business Representative Center is in the process of creating educational materials to remind all stewards to input time and close out completed jobs promptly. Current Experience The following charts identify all active WC&C, BCA, GCA, FCA, CAGNY, CLI, and ACCNY three +-person jobs by date from March 1, 2014 through March 31, 2014, the time period at issue in this Tenth Thirty-Day Report, as of April 14, 2014. Attached as Exhibits C through I are the reports for all active jobs for each of these associations, respectively, as they are produced by the AS400 computer system. 6
5 Though the District Council recognized such a pattern, it is worth noting that the actual number of failures to report time within 48 to 72 hours still remains extremely low. Of the 33 stewards identified as failing to report within 48 to 72 hours in the month of March, 26 failed to report the single day the job closed out. 6 The jobs under both of the ACCNY CBAs are combined in Exhibit I, the job report for ACCNY. 7
14 As this Court is aware, one- and two-person jobs do not require the assignment of a District Council shop steward. Rather, for one-person jobs, the contractors assign an individual to identify and report new jobs and to report the hours worked. For two-person jobs, the CBAs provide that the District Council designates one of the two members as the time keeper for the job. With the transition of responsibility for the one- and two-person jobs to the electronic reporting compliance team, the District Council discovered that a number of contractors were slipping past the 48 to 72 hour window for reporting hours on these small jobs. The District Council addressed this issue by filing a grievance against one offending contractor, preparing grievances against other contractors for use if they refused to comply, and by creating a protocol for the automatic filing of grievances should the problem recur. The electronic reporting compliance team now has a fillable PDF so that the team can electronically file a grievance if a contractor fails to report within the 48 to 72 hour window. The one- and two-person jobs for the month of March are presented in the tables below. Not all associations have active one- or two-person jobs. Namely, CLI had one-person jobs on March 8, March 15, and for the period March 18-31, and two-person jobs from March 4 through March 21, ACCNY did not have any one- or two-person jobs, and the GCA had a single two- person job open on March 22. 7
7 Because two-person jobs are not provided for by the CBA with the GCA, the Business Representative Center and the Out of Work List are in the process of investigating what occurred and, depending on their findings, will file a grievance against the contractor or take other appropriate action. 15
25 Additional Anti-Corruption Efforts The Inspector Generals Office (IGO) continues to publicize Operation Watch Dog and the anti-corruption hotline in its monthly report to the Delegate Body. As is its regular practice, the IGO continues to monitor its anti-corruption hotline, (855) UBC-TIPS, and e-mail address, ig@nycdcigoffice.org, where members or others may report violations of the WC&C, BCA, GCA, FCA, CAGNY, CLI, and ACCNY CBAs, or any other violation of another CBA, of District Council rules, or purported instances of corruption. The IGO Jobsite Integrity Inspectors continue to monitor one-, two-, and three +-person WC&C, BCA, GCA, FCA, CAGNY, CLI, and ACCNY jobs. The IGO Inspectorsretired District Council members with long records of servicevisit randomly selected jobsites to monitor employer compliance with the provisions of the applicable CBAs. From March 1 through March 31, 2014, the Jobsite Integrity Inspectors visited 557 jobsites: 8 335 one-person jobsites, 216 two-person jobsites, and 6 three+-person jobsites. Over the course of the inspections, they detected 24 violations. A report detailing these inspections is attached as Exhibit J. The IG has filed grievances against the offending contractor based upon each of these violations.
8 This is an increase in the number of inspections by 173 from the month of February. 26 Conclusion The District Council remains committed to ensuring the success of and compliance with the electronic job reporting and all of its anti-corruption programs. Respectfully submitted,
Report Compiled by the Offices of the Inspector General, Director of Operations, Representative Center, and Out of Work List of the District Council of New York City and Vicinity of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America 395 Hudson Street New York, NY 10014
Dated: New York, NY April 16, 2014
CONTACT: Scott C. Danielson Inspector General and Deputy Chief Compliance Officer District Council of New York City and Vicinity of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America 395 Hudson Street, 9th Floor New York, NY 10014 212-366-3361 sdanielson@nycdcigoffice.org