By Peter Hirschfeld Vermont Press Bureau
MONTPELIER – Lawmakers say they’ll sort through the details of a proposed labor agreement for the Lake Champlain bridge replacement project before deciding whether to exert pressure on the Douglas Administration to accept the controversial plan.
As a spring groundbreaking on the $110 million project approaches, union officials are urging lawmakers to endorse a “Project Labor Agreement” they say will save taxpayer money and ensure good working conditions for Vermont workers.
The proposal though has been rejected by transportation officials in the Douglas Administration, who say pro-union provisions in the contract would effectively keep Vermont contractors – the majority of which run “open shops” – from participating in the two-state bridge replacement project.
On Wednesday, during a joint hearing of the Senate committees on economic development and transportation, officials on both sides made their case to a body that could, through legislative action, force the Vermont Agency of Transportation to reverse its opposition.
Union testimony convinced one powerful lawmaker that the PLA has merit.
“It seems to me that Vermont needs to get its act together, get on board with New York and put Vermonters to work,” said Senate President Peter Shumlin. “It seems to me the Administration is saying ‘no, no, no,’ without having all the facts.”
Shumlin, a Windham County Democrat, voiced support for the PLA during a gubernatorial debate last week (the other four candidates also expressed support for the contract). Shumlin says the Project Labor Agreement, negotiated between union officials and the New York Department of Transportation, which is overseeing the project, would save money and ensure jobs for Vermont workers.
“I’m a fiscal conservative, and when someone tells me in these tough financial times that we can save $2 million to $3 million on a bridge project, I want to save the money,” Shumlin said Wednesday.
Shumlin was citing a feasibility study that found the PLA would save millions of dollars in total project costs. While wage rates have already been established in a separate contract – workers in New York and Vermont will get prevailing wage rates in New York – experts have said that PLA provisions will avoid overtime and unify work schedules in a way that reduces labor costs and averts project delays.
Vermont has never had a transportation project governed by a PLA, which, in general terms, establishes labor rules in a contract negotiated between union heads and the state or federal government overseeing the project.
Lawmakers are struggling to reconcile testimony between union representatives and Vermont transportation officials, who have offered vastly different versions of what the Project Labor agreement would mean for employers and laborers here.
Secretary of Transportation David Dill is among the proposal’s chief opponents. A provision in the contract that limits non-union laborers to comprising no more than 16 percent of the bridge-project workforce, he said, is particularly troublesome.
Dill said Vermont contractors have told his agency that the requirements would either force higher bids or, more likely, keep them out of the bidding process altogether.
“If they don’t bid, that makes the process less competitive, and as we’ve seen time and again in Vermont, less competition means higher costs,” said Dill, who disputes the projected cost savings in the New York study.
Union officials on hand Wednesday however said the 16-percent “drag-along” cap contained in the PLA will actually help Vermont laborers. The cap, according to union representatives, applies to both union and non-union contractors, and means that 84 percent of workers must be hired through local union halls. That would prevent out-of-state contractors, they said, from bringing their own labor force in from other states.
Andrew Martin, vice-president of the construction firm Pizzagalli, Inc., is a member of the board of Associated General Contractors of Vermont, which is stridently opposed to the PLA. He said open-shop contractors, whose employees would have to temporarily affiliate with the local union halls, shouldn’t be forced to adopt an organized-labor framework in order to participate on a taxpayer-funded project.
“The issue here is fair and open competition,” Martin said. “A Project Labor Agreement is doing nothing more than excluding people from using open labor to construct a bridge. If you are an open-shop contractor, you can participate, but you have to fundamentally change the way you do business.”
Michael Morelli, business agent for Ironworkers Local 7 in Vermont, said hiring through union halls ensures that business is done properly, safely and fairly. The union framework, he said, also means livable wages, quality benefits and good working conditions for laborers.
“We advocate for workers,” Morelli said. “Associated General Contractors advocates for owners.”
With a bridge contract already in place between the two states and bids due back in less than a week, Dill said, the project is ready to move forward. Since Vermont officially rejected the PLA in a March 25 letter to the state of New York, Dill said, there’s been no indication that officials there seem worried about negotiating a compromise.
“Our request to the Legislature is to do nothing,” he said last week. “We believe this project will move along without a PLA, and we don’t want them to interfere in this process.”
Changing the terms of the project with a PLA now, Dill said Wednesday, would force contractors to recalculate their bids and potentially delay the project. Dill said Associated General Contractors of New York has threatened to file a lawsuit if the PLA is accepted, a legal maneuver that Dill said could delay the project indefinitely.
Sen. Vince Illuzzi, chairman of the Senate Committee on Economic Development, said the time constraints mean lawmakers will have to decide in the next few days whether to compel the administration to reconsider its opposition.
“The argument that carries the day for me is to get the job done in a timely fashion at the lowest cost with local workers,” Illuzzi said. “What we need to do now is determine the best way to achieve that goal.”
This article appeared in the Barre-Montpelier Times Argus
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