Business Agent is to remain in office. Against this force are the myriad of employers - 870, 000 contractors - of which only ZOO, 000 are general contractors and only 1Z00 of these have over a hundred employees. A large percentage of these contractors are seriously under-capitalized and a prolonged strike would force them into bankruptcy. But more importantly there is little incentive to take a long strike because it's too easy to pass the increased costs on to the consumer. Furthermore, the national contractors have entered into national agreements in which in essence they agree to pay whatever rates are eventually agreed upon in local negotiations in exchange for no strikes on their work. They do not participate in the local negotiating process. So you can end up ludicrously like the Plumber's Negotiation in two California counties last year when, of the 1900 members in the local, 1600 were working for national contractors, another ZZ5 working for contractors that had signed "me too" agreements, and the ultimate settlement was being determined by the 75 workers actually on strike. Z. Besides the unequal strength of the protagonists, construction is different because the products it produces are different. They are local, long lasting, immobile, expensive, and usually individually designed and priced. There is competition within the industry but little competition from other industries such as you find in the mining industry from competing forms of fuel or between copper -6-