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May 31, 2006
Who benefits from the city’s building boom?
Metro NY
Reporter Amy Zimmer interviews "Louis Coletti, president of the Building Trades Employers’ Association, which represents 1,500 union construction companies in the city. Coletti talked to Metro about how the unions get people working but are not the city’s magic bullet."
Coletti on the building boom:
Is there more work for your members?
We’re right at the beginning stage for really big projects. I think we’ll see a lot of shovels in the ground this summer and next. You’ll see Yankee and Shea stadiums; the Freedom Tower, the PATH station, Atlantic Yards and the city is putting $11 billion in school construction.
Coletti on Community Benefits Agreements:
Can unions meet the demands of community benefits agreements for projects like Yankee Stadium or the Atlantic Yards that call for a percentage of contracts going to minority or women-owned businesses?
There’s a disconnect because we have not been party to many community benefits agreements. Let’s say you have a project in the Bronx and you get the local politicians saying, you need 25 percent of jobs going to people from the Bronx. Well, construction doesn’t work like that. We have a lot of workers living in the Bronx, but what if they don’t want to work on that particular project. We’re not going to lower our standards. We won’t be held accountable for those numbers. We already have the most diverse work force. Match it against any non-union contractor. Too often elected officials see us as a panacea to a paycheck. Yes, there’s an unemployment problem, especially in the African-American community, but that’s not our job to fix. We’re not a social service agency.
Posted by lumi at May 31, 2006 8:21 AM