From the Daily News:Big real estate developers, affordable housing builders and minority activists are teaming up to fight a Council bill they say will stymie local employment and economic development in the outer boroughs.
The bill, known as the Safe Jobs Act, would require all projects receiving $1 million or more in city subsidies or tax benefits to be built using state-certified apprenticeship programs.
Such programs are operated by the city's powerful construction unions — and the development coalition fears mandated apprenticeships would block minority contractors and local workers without ties to the unions.
“Minority firms are small and would be unable to devote the time and resources necessary to create approved programs," said Hazel Dukes, president of the NAACP state conference. "They will be effectively barred from participating in city-sponsored projects."
The apprenticeship programs will ensure safer construction practices on these projects, supporters say.
The bill, introduced by Councilwoman Diana Reyna (D-Brooklyn), comes amidst a big push by union workers for a share of outer borough projects.
3 comments:
We've all been to Community Board meetings where big unions use their union workforce to shout down citizens who are opposed to overdevelopment in our neighborhoods. Most of these folks don't even live in our Communities. The Contruction unions made their beds let them lay in it!
To the first poster:
So where is your councilman, community newspaper, community board members?
The only way those union goons can shut down the community is for the people listed in the above sentence enables this to happen.
You cannot fight a union guy from Orange, but you can go hammer and tongs against your neighbor that lets it happen.
Buck up bunkie and fight the bastards in your backyard.
Crappy, you hit the nail on the head. It's very difficult for a non-union contractor to have a state-approved apprenticeship program. It's a lot of money and effort, and most companies just don't have the capacity to do it. BUT, if you're a union contractor, you write a relatively small check to the union once a month and you can claim you're in the union's apprenticeship program - even if you never train anyone to do anything.
We used to call this a fugazy in the old country. "Apprenticeship" does not equal "safety."
But, if you call an undemocratic law a "safety law," then who can oppose it?
Like the unions pushed the "Employee Free Choice Act" a few years ago... it would have taken away employees' right to vote. But it sounded good.
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