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November 16, 2011
Bait and switch? Ratner sued over ‘sham’ job-training program
The Brooklyn Paper
by Daniel Bush
Atlantic Yards developer Bruce Ratner set up a “sham” job-training program that ended up screwing workers out of promised union positions on his $5-billion mega-project, a bombshell lawsuit charged on Tuesday.
The workers say that they were promised union membership and jobs in exchange for taking a 15-week apprenticeship course in 2010, but were never hired on at the Prospect Heights site — which includes the Barclays Center and 16 residential towers on a 22-acre parcel of land stretching from Flatbush Avenue to Vanderbilt Avenue.
“They told us they would set aside jobs,” said Kathleen Noriega, one of the plaintiffs. “What they did was wrong and misleading.”
Noriega and six other plaintiffs are being represented by South Brooklyn Legal Services, which has long been involved in Atlantic Yards-related suits.
“The project developers … blatantly violated many federal and state statutes designed to protect individuals from exploitation,” said lawyer Molly Thomas-Jensen. “The project developers … also made promises, to community members and directly to the plaintiffs in this case, that they have broken.”
NoLandGrab: We don't see how this could have happened. We had Bruce Ratner's word, for crying out loud.
Posted by eric at November 16, 2011 12:14 PM