Union leaders asked him not to, but Gov. Mike Leavitt spoke anyway Friday to members of the Utah Chapter of the Associated Builders and Contractors at their annual conference.
The Utah State Association of the Plumbing and Pipefitting Industry, an affiliate of the AFL-CIO, had asked Leavitt to withdraw from the Deer Valley conference because union members were not allowed to attend.The association also sought to discourage Thayne Robson of the Bureau of Economic and Business Research at the University of Utah and representatives of Kennecott Copper from addressing the 75 or so construction firm executives.
In a letter to the governor, association director Kirk Smith said that by participating "in an event sponsored by such an exclusionist organization, you would, in effect, be turning your back on 10,000 Utah workers."
That's not how Leavitt saw it. "My objective is to be governor of every worker in this state, union and nonunion," he said. "If I were unwilling to speak to a nonunion group, I would be discriminating against them."
The governor, who supports Utah's right-to-work law, said he was not aware of the union's concerns until after he gave a brief speech on economic development, but that the letter wouldn't have changed his mind.
Smith said in an interview that union members had been able to attend last year's Associated Builders and Contractors conference and were surprised the group refused to accept their $195 registration fees this year.
"We were not there to cause any trouble . . . we were just there for the information they had," Smith said, referring especially to a report from the construction managers on the massive modernization project at Kennecott Copper.
The union has complained that Utah workers aren't getting enough of the thousands of jobs associated with the $880 million project. Industry officials have said the real issue is the hiring of nonunion workers.
Attorneys for the Associated Builders and Contractors issued a statement Friday that said two men connected to Local 19 of the Plumbers and Steamfitters Union registered but were not permitted to attend the conference.
The statement issued by the law firm of Walstad & Babcock said the reason was that it "was the purpose of the union to disrupt the conference and to intimidate both ABC members and persons who has been invited to speak."
According to one of the firm's attorneys, Steven Crawley, the union members appeared at the conference anyway on Friday but left when asked to do so. "It wasn't a real confrontation," Crawley said.
The Associated Builders and Contractors is a 43-year-old national organization that supports the so-called "merit shop philosophy" that workers should be compensated based on individual merit.