This article draws on ethnographic data to illuminate the problematic position of organized labor in terms of race and gender in the building trades. It argues that construction unions today are caught between the larger legal and moral mandates for equal opportunity and the reproduction of white and male privilege that benefit the majority of the union members. Unions are seen as needing to be highly responsive to matters of discrimination and harassment and thus less able to support and protect the traditional white male worker. On the other hand, union representatives are likely to be drawn from the workplace and thus previously socialized into the industry's distinct workplace cultures. These cultures, as demonstrated, simultaneously promote and make invisible patterns of racism and sexism. When these patterns are made invisible, union representatives are unlikely to intervene in much that occurs. As a result, unions satisfy neither constituency. Implications of this for the construction workplace and the larger labor movement are discussed.
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