Bush Finds a Friend in Carpenters' Union President
About as popular with the vast majority of American unions as a yellow-dog contract, President Bush has nonetheless developed a close relationship with President Douglas J. McCarron of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners (UBC). The relationship between Bush and McCarron has clear benefits for a U.S. president who lost several swing states in the last election because of union voters, and who has been trying to find Republican friendly labor leaders in order to fragment a labor movement that will present a major challenge to him in the next presidential election. Many unionists and labor relations experts, including Professor Richard Hurd of Cornell?s ILR School, have pointed out that McCarron---who recently pulled the UBC out of the AFL-CIO in the biggest split in the labor movement in the past three decades---has so far failed to parlay the relationship into any tangible gains for the UBC rank and file.
See "Bush Finds a Friend in Carpenters' Union President", STEVEN GREENHOUSE, The New York Times, September 10, 2002