One week before it was set to expire; building contractors, trade unions and New York developers agreed to extend their private Project Labor Agreement for an additional year. Bob Ledwith is the Business Manager for Local 46.
(Ledwith) “I would describe it as a win-win, we had to give relief to the developers and the owners; we did that, and we also kept our men working at wages and fringes that they can raise a family and have a good family life in a middle-income environment and we’re very proud of what we’ve done.”
Ledwith says the new agreement generally follows the lines of last year’s which produced labor cost savings of about 16% and in the process generated an estimated 10,000 jobs. He says the fine points of the one year extension, still have to be ironed out with the individual locals.
(Ledwith) “The total building trades is approximately 40 different local unions of which 36 are participating in this, maybe perhaps 37.” (Clifford) “How much work do you think it will mean?” (Ledwith) “Many of billions of dollars and many work hours for our men and our women, and we’ve got to continue to do this, so that we can provide employment possibilities for our people.”
At a forum on “The Jobs Crisis and What to Do About it” at the Murphy Institute for Worker Education and Labor Studies, Rutgers University Law Professor Phillip Harvey says these types of agreements make sense in a tough economy.
(Harvey) When unions feel that a prudent exchange of some of the gains in exchange for assurances of continued employment, it’s certainly a reasonable way for them to proceed: On the other hand, I don’t think that it’s an answer to the problem of unemployment that plagues the economy as a hole, it’s kid of an individual answer to an individual problem.
The specific problem in Manhattan a year ago, was that developers were threatening to reduce the size of projects of shut them down completely. Ledwith says the Project Labor Agreement kept the construction sector alive then… and the sector still needs help in the year ahead.
(Ledwith) Well we call this a market recovery P-L-A, but in many ways it’s a stimulus program, a local stimulus program that creates jobs for our people. Washington has been a bit slow in brining the stimulus money to New York, so we decided as a group of men and women to stimulate our own economy.
Professor Harvey told the forum that the current federal jobs stimulus is falling short because it uses an indirect approach where it will cost over 200 thousand dollars per job to create 3 or 4 million jobs.
He says direct job stimulus, like the nation employed under the New Deal, would create 5 to 6 times as many jobs for the same amount of spending.
(Harvey) As the New Deal demonstrates its particularly suited to infrastructure and construction work, but it’s also very well suited to the expansion of services, so that I think that across the board there are all kinds of opportunities to expand employment…using this kind of model.
Since Washington appears reluctant to adopt the professor’s approach, for now the renewal of the Project Labor Agreement may well be the best engine available to keep driving the construction sector of New York’s economy.
One week before it was set to expire; building contractors, trade unions and New York developers agreed to extend their private Project Labor Agreement for an additional year. Bob Ledwith is the Business Manager for Local 46.
(Ledwith) “I would describe it as a win-win, we had to give relief to the developers and the owners; we did that, and we also kept our men working at wages and fringes that they can raise a family and have a good family life in a middle-income environment and we’re very proud of what we’ve done.”
Ledwith says the new agreement generally follows the lines of last year’s which produced labor cost savings of about 16% and in the process generated an estimated 10,000 jobs. He says the fine points of the one year extension, still have to be ironed out with the individual locals.
(Ledwith) “The total building trades is approximately 40 different local unions of which 36 are participating in this, maybe perhaps 37.” (Clifford) “How much work do you think it will mean?” (Ledwith) “Many of billions of dollars and many work hours for our men and our women, and we’ve got to continue to do this, so that we can provide employment possibilities for our people.”
At a forum on “The Jobs Crisis and What to Do About it” at the Murphy Institute for Worker Education and Labor Studies, Rutgers University Law Professor Phillip Harvey says these types of agreements make sense in a tough economy.
(Harvey) When unions feel that a prudent exchange of some of the gains in exchange for assurances of continued employment, it’s certainly a reasonable way for them to proceed: On the other hand, I don’t think that it’s an answer to the problem of unemployment that plagues the economy as a hole, it’s kid of an individual answer to an individual problem.
The specific problem in Manhattan a year ago, was that developers were threatening to reduce the size of projects of shut them down completely. Ledwith says the Project Labor Agreement kept the construction sector alive then… and the sector still needs help in the year ahead.
(Ledwith) Well we call this a market recovery P-L-A, but in many ways it’s a stimulus program, a local stimulus program that creates jobs for our people. Washington has been a bit slow in brining the stimulus money to New York, so we decided as a group of men and women to stimulate our own economy.
Professor Harvey told the forum that the current federal jobs stimulus is falling short because it uses an indirect approach where it will cost over 200 thousand dollars per job to create 3 or 4 million jobs.
He says direct job stimulus, like the nation employed under the New Deal, would create 5 to 6 times as many jobs for the same amount of spending.
(Harvey) As the New Deal demonstrates its particularly suited to infrastructure and construction work, but it’s also very well suited to the expansion of services, so that I think that across the board there are all kinds of opportunities to expand employment…using this kind of model.
Since Washington appears reluctant to adopt the professor’s approach, for now the renewal of the Project Labor Agreement may well be the best engine available to keep driving the construction sector of New York’s economy.
