The Local 1175 Sign Display and Allied Trades Union has declared war on convention shows that bus in nonunion workers. Photo by Dania Castellon.

As spectators filed into the large conference room at City Hall on the afternoon of June 29, just a stone’s throw away, the U.S. Fencing Summer National Championships were taking place at the Miami Beach Convention Center. Over 10 days, thousands of fencers would shuffle back and forth in battle on long wooden platforms divided by short walls constructed out of piping and red drapes. Just prior to the Miami Beach Finance and Citywide Committee meeting, Mayor David Dermer stood in the corridor of City Hall talking about the fencing matches.

Minutes later the finance committee decided it could not do much to help out upset union activists distraught over the use of nonunion labor at the Miami Beach Convention Center.

The Local 1175 Sign Display and Allied Trades Union, a union for the workers who literally set the stage for events and conventions (like fencing tournaments) has reigned at the Convention Center, contracting the vast majority of the work the center needs. Doug Tober, the Convention Center’s general manager, estimates that about 95 percent of the Convention Center decorators are union.

Yet it is the remaining 5 percent that worries Local 1175 Business Representative Alan Lichtman. He was at last week’s meeting to lobby for a union-only workers policy at the Center for the decorating contractors who provide the setup and tear-down of drapes, move freight, set up signage and build registration areas for large conventions.

The problems arose after Georgia company Urban Expositions, according to Lichtman, used nonunion, nonresident workers from Georgia for three events it produced, including the Miami Beach Gift Shows, held in January and August, and the Material World convention.

“At these trade shows on the Beach, the contractor is bringing in people from another state — Georgia,” Lichtman told the committee. “I’m almost 100 percent sure that these people are not trained.”

So for the last few years, Local 1175 has been staging what recent discussion on the dais and Lichtman himself label not a strike, but “an informational picket” during these events, charging that the Georgia workers receive “substandard wages and benefits.”

Lichtman’s claims are hard to verify since the city has no contract with the exposition companies, a city staff report maintains. Therefore those companies are not subject to the city’s Living Wage Ordinance, which requires that companies working for the city of Miami Beach pay their employees at least $9.81 an hour.

“It’s our right as Americans to picket,” Lichtman told the SunPost. “We’re just looking for fair wages for workers.” Lichtman says his union workers are paid around $28 per hour, which includes benefits.

“These subcontracted companies have no direct contractual relationship with either the City or SMG,” a staff report reads. “As such they are not subject to the provisions of the City’s Living Wage Ordinance either by category definition or by contractual relationship requirement.”

Lichtman said his attempts over the years to find out how much nonunion workers are paid have always been stonewalled, but his efforts to bring those companies into the fold of better pay and training for workers has led to some instructive commentary.

“They say to me, ‘You’re paying your workers too much,’” Lichtman said.

Commissioner Matti Bower questioned how it is even lucrative to bring nonunion workers into the city to work the events. “It’s almost illogical if you bring a worker for seven days and you have to pay them and they have to stay here,” she said.

Calls made to Urban Expositions by the SunPost were not returned by deadline.

“I would say it’s not our position to speculate,” Tober responded, adding that it’s generally not well-received “whenever a building tells you that you have to use an exclusive [vendor],” explaining that the exception is with food services, due to health issues.

Roger Abramson, who previously ran for a City Commission seat, spoke out in favor of a union-only status for the Convention Center.

“I guess in a way it’s like if any of us worked at a job and they said, ‘Well, we don’t need you this week,’” Abramson said. “Those workers are from another country.”

“There is a question of their status,” said Lichtman, who believes the labor company contracted by Urban Expositions is a Vietnamese business called Quickest Service Center.

Tober clarified that there have been no problems so far with the nonunion workers, and he doesn’t see a trend of hiring nonunion labor at the Convention Center. But Lichtman says that while there are now four conventions that hire nonunion, he remembers when there was only one.

However, at last week’s meeting, Tober asserted that a longstanding relationship between contractors and workers never allowed the city to mandate where booked event producers got their workers. “It has been our stance to not take a position on that,” he said.

Anticipating questions about how widespread the supposed nonunion hiring trend is, Tober sent out 70 surveys to convention centers in major metropolitan areas, asking if they had regulations like those the local union was pushing for. “I sent out a survey of other convention centers in major cities. Thirty-seven responded; only four had mandates about the labor force. Thirty-three of 37 have not.” Tober said surveys were sent to convention centers in Orlando, Dallas, San Francisco and Broward County, among other places.

The proposed union worker mandate, placed on the agenda by Commissioner Michael Gongora, had been referred to the Finance Committee after it was discussed at the City Commission’s regular May 16 meeting.

Then, in a memorandum dated June 29, City Manager Jorge Gonzalez referenced Lichtman’s assertion that the workers “are being brought in from out-of-state and thus taking the jobs of Miami Beach residents.”

Another argument — that the workers make their money here but spend it in Georgia — seemed geared toward tugging on the Finance Committee’s purse strings.

Lichtman told the committee that 80 percent of his union’s workers live in Miami-Dade County, while 20 percent live in Broward. All workers of Local 1175 undergo a state-certified apprentice program, and are trained in lifting, rigging and Occupational Safety and Health Administration standards.

But Commissioner Saul Gross was skeptical that the union’s argument was because the workers were from out of town.

“So you’d be OK with nonunion people who live here?” he asked Lichtman. “I don’t think you care about where they live,” Gross said.

When a convention decides to come to Miami Beach, it is SMG, the company that manages the city-owned Convention Center and that Tober works for, which books the event. The event exhibitors themselves are responsible for hiring their convention’s labor, in this case Urban Exhibitions. As a part of their contracts, the Convention Center is protected from any liability resulting from who gets hired.

That labor force has traditionally been a union one. According to city documents, SMG is responsible for insuring that “the decorators that work in the building are properly licensed and insured but there is no contractual relationship between SMG, the city and the decorators and the labor force.”

After its May 16 meeting, the commission was leaning toward establishing a union-only labor policy at the Convention Center. But some legal experts warned against it.

James Crosland, labor counsel for the city of Miami Beach, argued against the measure, touting long legal precedent against municipalities interfering with the private sector’s hiring practices.

SMG’s stated position was that “mandating of a certain labor force, effectively creating an exclusive [sic] that is in no way an industry standard, would place the city and the center at a competitive disadvantage.”

A letter from Urban Expositions partner Timothy von Gal seconded what could be construed as a veiled threat.

“As you evaluate and consider requests to mandate labor resources at the Miami Beach Convention Center, please keep in mind the necessity to maintain this flexibility in order to retain our business and the business of other event producers who also wish to have this same freedom of choice,” von Gal wrote to the City Commission.

Another suggestion made was to adjust the cost of union labor, possibly by adding a surcharge to nonunion labor, but the legal slope proved too slippery for the city.

“The legal issue here is very complicated. It involves the National Labor Relations Board and the federal court,” Crosland said, explaining that there is much legal precedent prohibiting states and municipalities from interfering in a private company’s hiring.

Crosland offered that warning to the committee “before the city decides to assert its influence on the private sector.”

“In your legal opinion if we were to mandate it, we’d be liable?” Steinberg asked Crosland.

“Absolutely,” he replied.

A preferred status suggested by Steinberg passed unanimously.

“I’d prefer that my people work,” Bower said later, commenting on the measure of simply preferring union labor but not requiring it. “That’s all we can do,” she said.

However, “I’m not done with it,” Lichtman said. “I’m going to keep coming up to [the city]. Somebody has to be responsible for the people coming into that building. I’m going to fight for the people that live here.”

Comments? E-mail angie@miamisunpost.com.