AV Unions Shut Out Of St. Louis Center

After 16 months of negotiations, the St. Louis Convention & Visitors Commission has locked out three unions that supply labor for audiovisual services to America's Center – unless they come back as CVC employees.

The conditional lockout began March 24 and, as of press time, a memorandum of understanding between the CVC, the Intl. Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 1 and two locals of the Intl. Alliance of Theatrical Stage, one representing stagehands (Local 6) and another, projectionists (Local 143), had not been signed.

Statements by representatives of both sides made clear how entrenched they were in their positions.

The unions have no intention of signing the existing memorandum, according to Steve Schoemehl, IBEW Local 1's business manager. America's Center Director Bruce Sommer said the unions can't return to work at the venue until they agree to substantial rule changes.

Sommer said the CVC decided to require union members to be CVC employees because their work practices had “caused the facility to lose business.” He also said there had been no disruption in services provided to events at America's Center.

It “was business as usual” for events at the center, Sommer added. “We have hired other people to do events. The unions need to start talking.”

Schoemehl said the CVC was attempting “union busting in its purest form.”

“They are just trying to get unions out,” he added, “and say they need tremendous rule changes in order to compete. The CVC should have presented the problems they have to us, and then, we would go back to our employees. The CVC has refused to do this.”

William Watkins, business representative for IATSE, Local 143, would not comment on the ongoing situation.

One week after the CVC, which manages the convention center, told union members to stay out of the center, the Parents as Teachers Natl. Center Conference moved in. “We had a conversation with the CVC (about the labor situation) beforehand,” said Pat Sampson, the organization's marketing and communications director. “We haven't experienced any problems, and people are attending sessions as normal.”

For the event, which drew more than 1,000 attendees, Sampson said the CVC arranged for personnel to perform AV tasks. “We only needed a few sessions worked on,” she added.

America's Center, built in 1977, typically hosts 55 to 60 tradeshows annually in its 502,000 square feet of exhibit space. The facility has no blanket commitment to use union labor. However, two AV contractors that do a considerable amount of the work there, Klance Staging and Swank Audio Visuals, do use union labor.

Neither contractor returned calls from TSW for comment.

Schoemehl blamed CVC President Kathleen “Kitty” Ratcliffe for the current conflict.

“There were minor disputes over the 30 years of (unions) working there, but America's Center always had the unions do the AV even without a contract,” he said. “All hell broke loose when she rolled into town, and now she's saying there have been problems for the last 30 years.”

Sommer, who has worked at the center for 24 years, said he had complained numerous times about the AV unions' work practices, but no one at the CVC was willing to do anything about it until Ratcliffe came along.

“She's well-respected and tough,” he added. “They say she's a union buster because she came here from New Orleans, which is a right-to-work state, but she used to work in St. Louis before, as well as other union cities. We are both pro-union.”

Ratcliffe took over as president of the St. Louis CVC in April 2006 after a stint as executive vice president of the New Orleans Metropolitan Convention & Visitors Bureau. When asked for comment by Tradeshow Week, she deferred to Sommer.

According to him, two of the unions' practices in particular drew complaints from America's Center customers.

One was about a practice called “shadowing,” in which a show would bring an AV contractor in from the outside and the unions would insist at least one of their members, if not more, be hired as well. “They make (the customer) hire an individual from a union to sit there and do nothing,” Sommer said.

The other union practice that Sommer said ruffled customers' feathers was “room monitoring,” in which the unions required a union member to be on hand in meeting rooms that have AV equipment in them, even if they were not needed. “Again, customers are forced to pay people to do nothing,” Sommer said.

Schoemehl said the CVC had “beaten us up over (shadowing). It does not exist, and we do not require union workers to work with out-of-town people brought in to do AV work.”

Three other unions also supply labor at America's Center: the Teamsters, Carpenters and Decorators. According to Schoemehl, 100,000 union members in the St. Louis area firmly back the unions involved in the dispute.

Sommer said he had “no idea what other unions might do” if a picket line was set up. “We are prepared to do what we need to in order to stay open,” he added. “There are plenty of non-union people ready to work.”

Schoemehl said as a “show of good faith” the AV unions had no plans to picket, for now. “The last thing we want to do is drive people away from a show down there,” he added.