ABC Origins

How did an organization founded in Baltimore in 1950 by seven anti-union contractors become one of the loudest advocates for anti-union interests in one on the nation’s leading industries?  Beginning in the late 1960s, leaders of the nation’s largest construction “users” – the heads of some industrial corporations that eventually became the Business Roundtable – began a well-financed campaign to drive construction wages down and to drive the Building Trades unions and unionized contractors out of industrial construction, primarily construction of factories and power generation facilities.  These CEOs were drawn to ABC because of its advocacy for a “low road” strategy for labor relations in construction, characterized by low wages, minimal benefits and limited opportunities for training and advancement.  ABC’s alliance with the Business Roundtable  transformed ABC from a small, regional group to a national trade association with a well-funded presence in Washington DC and many state capitols. When the Roundtable’s campaign limited opportunities for unionized contractors, ABC seized this opportunity to claim representation of the entire open-shop sector.  As the data presented in this report demonstrates, however, only a tiny fraction of contractors actually belong to ABC.  What these data reveal is that ABC is more accurately characterized as an astro-turf political organization with a well funded PR and lobbying machine, and a slight capacity for workforce development.4  

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4. The Business Roundtable/ABC alliance is noteworthy from a historical perspective.  Most journalists and labor analysts commonly assume that the current attacks on organized labor began with President Reagan’s firing of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO), following a PATCO strike in 1981.  As important as the PATCO firings were, the current attacks on labor actually began with the formation of the Construction Users Anti-Inflation Roundtable (CUAIR) in the late 1960s.  It was CUAIR that orchestrated the campaign to drive construction wages down and limit the role for unions and unionized contractors.