Measures submitted to block change in Wicks law
ALBANY — Legislation has been introduced in the State Senate and Assembly to block implementation of a law that critics say will prevent nonunion, upstate construction companies from bidding on public works projects.
The measure, which would become effective July 1, would remove a provision from this year’s budget that requires companies building new schools, college dormitories and other public projects to use union workers. Opponents say it will have a chilling effect upstate, where 75 percent of construction workers are non-union. They say it will impact especially hard on minority-and women-owned construction companies, which are often smaller and non-union.
“If my company can’t bid on public works, I don’t work,” said Ben Stubbs, a father of three who works in the mill shop at Gypsum Systems in Buffalo. Gypsum executives say their 200 workers will be shut out of government construction projects if the looming law is not changed.
The Buffalo News reported last week on the union-backed statute, which critics say has sharply increased the cost of public construction projects by requiring multiple contractors on bids over a certain amount. Upstate projects less than $500,000, for example, do not have to meet the Wicks provisions.
But the other way municipalities can escape Wicks is by signing project labor agreements, which contain a provision opponents say will both increase the cost of the projects and guarantee only union workers can be used. That, they say, shuts out hundreds of upstate companies from bidding or using their own workers.
Assemblyman Robin Schimminger, D-Kenmore, and State Sen. George Winner, R-Elmira, have introduced legislation over the past several days repealing the project labor agreement provision. If not overturned, lawmakers say many upstate construction companies that rely heavily on public projects will close.
“We’re trying to fix it,” Schimminger said.
It will not be an easy task, though, because Senate and Assembly members are facing reelection this fall and — before the 2008 session ends later this month — have little interest in alienating politically powerful labor unions. The AFL-CIO strongly opposes the change, which they claim is led by nonunion companies that don’t train their workers as well as union-run apprentice programs.
Denis Hughes, the state AFL-CIO president, recently said the companies now trying to halt the new law are “predisposed to holding down the wages, benefits and skill levels of construction workers. That’s what they do.”
But officials of minority-and women-owned businesses said the changes will harm their companies especially. Construction industry groups say the new law requires companies to have had apprentice programs in place for three years. But only 15 of 700 minority-and women-owned construction companies in New York have such programs, according to John Faso, a lobbyist for a trade group of non-union construction companies.
“It is unfair and discriminatory,” said Trisha Nowak of Erie Contracting in Lancaster, one of several public works construction companies that came to Albany Wednesday to push the repeal or at least a delay of the new law on July 1.
Juan Flores, an apprentice electrician with Wittburn Enterprise in Buffalo, said he is a former state prison inmate who was given a chance by the company to learn a trade.
“Under this law, I would not longer be able to work,” said Flores, a Buffalo resident and father of a 3-year-old daughter.
The Paterson administration has so far defended the changes to the Wicks law.
State Labor Department officials recently said many big upstate projects, such as the Buffalo schools construction program, are the result of project labor agreements and that such deals often include concessions from unions to lower wage rates or agreeing not to strike.
Critics, meanwhile, said the Legislature must realize that the changes they adopted in April will disproportionately hit upstate companies that either won’t be able to bid on contracts or will have to replace their workers with union employees.
“If this goes into effect, it locks these folks out of work. Is that what the goal was?” said Kenneth Adams, president of the Business Council of New York State.
