New York, NY — It is one of a dozen construction projects in Manhattan that faced an uncertain future, until developers and local unions sat down together to negotiate a unique agreement that kept thousands of building trade workers on the job through some of the worst months of the recession. Mike Clifford reports for Workers Independent News….

SOT-OPEN: “These guys only made ten hours of work this week so far, they want to work. They’d work if it was 50 below right now.”

Wire lather Billy Grogan with Local 46 says he is glad it is only high winter winds that shutdown work for a couple of days on  construction of the Beekman Tower in Lower Manhattan. 

The Beeckman is one of a dozen projects that were on life support until developers and labor unions joined in a project-labor agreement last spring that cut costs and in the process kept jobs alive for thousands of building trade workers.

SOT: “It was 12 jobs that started in May with this agreement, so if you have 400 people on each job times 12, that’s 48-hundred people that would have been out of work; and not too many new jobs started—so, it would have been scary out there.”

Developer Bruce Ratner had threatened to cut the Beekman Tower down to only 40 stories, but Grogan says labor was willing to meet him halfway so that construction work could continue on all 76 stories in the original plan.

SOT: Well we went to an 8 hour day, we went to an hour and a half for overtime; we were lucky, Local 46 did get a raise, but a lot of other unions didn’t get a raise and they took pay cuts.

You might night think there would not be all that much savings…. switching from a 7 to 8 hour day, but Grogan says that saves plenty when it comes to manpower related costs.

SOT: I had 40 guys on the job, so after the agreement now, I have 35 guys, so it’s big for the owners saving on those extra five guys every week so they’re saving on insurance and benefits and everything else. The owners wanted originally like 25% and they settled between 16 and 21 percent; so it was a compromise.  

Grogan says work training programs, like those for High School graduates and women have opened up building trades jobs to more diversified workforce bring a higher percentage of Asians, Latinos and Blacks to the Beekman Tower. And, there is Helmet to Hardhats program that is providing steady work for veterans.

SOT: Especially the veterans coming home from war, excellent workers, they really want to work; and it  helps spread the wealth through the economy, by opening doors to middle class life to many people who might not have the opportunity. 

Work on the Beekman Tower is nearly complete and the project-labor agreement that kept it and other projects going, is estimated to have generated 10 thousand jobs citywide.