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March 17, 2011
Unions Outraged Over Ratner's Prefab Tower
Union leaders lamented potential plans to build a 34-story prefab residential building on the Atlantic Yards site.
Park Slope Patch
by Stephen Brown and Amy Sara Clark
Local union workers are reeling from developer Bruce Ratner’s acknowledgement that the first residential building at the Atlantic Yards site may be prefabricated — a move that would cut costs, as well as hundreds of union jobs.
The revelation, reported by The New York Times, would cut construction costs in half by requiring a smaller workforce making significantly less money.
“We understood that there would be a certain number of jobs generated by this project that would in turn support the local economy. Clearly farming out modular housing does not do any of those things,” said Richard Weiss, a spokesman for Construction & General Building Laborers’ Local 79. “The union supports projects based on one criteria only: are there jobs for our members in this project? If that’s not the case, then we’re not going to support it.”
Other union representatives were equally dismayed.
“It would be disappointing, very disappointing,” said Edward Walsh, president of the New York State District Council of Iron Workers, which works on the site of the $4.9 billion, 16-tower mega project at Atlantic and Flatbush avenues. “There are a lot less jobs for iron workers if this is built prefab.”
...“We have obvious concerns about the safety and quality of modular construction for larger buildings as well as its impact on estimates for job creation, wages and benefits that have been central to the economic justification for projects advancing,” said a spokesperson for the Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater NY via E-mail.
“Forest City Ratner has been a developer using union labor of the building and construction trades for many years, and it is on this basis that we have consistently supported projects its pursues.”
Posted by eric at March 17, 2011 10:56 PM