Unions, local leaders, to meet Monday on CVC impasse

If there’s any room for reconciliation between the St. Louis Convention and Visitors Commission and the three audiovisual unions that it tossed from the America’s Center this week, the first steps may come Monday, when labor leaders are due to sit down with the region’s two top elected officials to discuss the impasse.

Bob Soutier, president of the Greater St. Louis Labor Council, and Gerald Feldhaus, executive secretary of the Building and Construction Trades Council of St. Louis, are set to meet Monday with St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay and St. Louis County Executive Charlie Dooley.

“I have high expectations that that meeting will push things forward,” said Steve Schoemehl, business manager for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 1, one of the three unions that were kicked out of America’s Center Monday. “I have high expectations that the mayor and the county executive will be able to get both sides together.”

Slay and Dooley have particular weight in this dispute because each appoints five of the 11 members of the CVC board. Both have been out of town all week on a trade mission to China. Slay’s office organized the last sit-down between the unions and the CVC, a mediation session last week, and has said it wants to work out a mutually-acceptable deal.

Together the three unions represent about 150 workers who set up, take down and operate audiovisual equipment at the convention center. In the past, they’ve worked for third-party contractors that conventions must hire when they come to down; the CVC wants them to work directly for it, and to let conventions bring in more of their own labor. They’ve been negotiating new work rules for 15 months, to no avail.

Both sides have said they’d like to continue talking and blame the other for the lack of progress.