By DAVE GRAM – Associated Press
MONTPELIER, Vt. – A day before bids were to be opened for construction of a new Lake Champlain Bridge linking Vermont and upstate New York, debate heated up at the Statehouse on Wednesday over how big a role unions should play in the construction project.
Gov. Jim Douglas defended his administration’s decision to reject a “project labor agreement” governing the 15-month, $75 million job to build a span to replace one that linked Crown Point, N.Y., and Chimney Point, Vt., for 80 years before it was demolished in December due to safety concerns.
A ferry has served in place of the bridge since then, but area business people and commuters say it’s a much slower trip across the lake and a big headache.
Douglas said a draft project labor agreement would have required that 84 percent of the hundreds of engineers, iron workers, carpenters, teamsters, masons and laborers expected to find work on the bridge be union members at least for the duration of the project.
“I don’t think it’s fair,” the governor said. “It puts Vermont contractors at a disadvantage,” because most are nonunion, he added.
Shortly after the governor spoke, two Senate leaders, President Pro Tem Peter Shumlin and Vincent Illuzzi, chairman of the Senate Economic Development Committee, joined House Majority Floyd Nease and labor leaders to promote a Senate resolution calling on Douglas to reverse himself and support a project labor agreement.
“In these difficult economic times our government needs to do everything we can to get Vermonters working again,” Shumlin said. “It is not enough to just pay lip service to job creation, we need to take decisive action that will create jobs and get our economy moving again.”
A project labor agreement is a master document under which multiple trade unions working usually on big and complex projects agree to harmonize work rules and often agree to make concessions on wages, shift differentials and other working conditions.
A New York consulting firm hired by the new bridge’s design firm released a report in February estimating that a project labor agreement could save more than $1.7 million off the project’s $75 million estimated price tag.
The savings could be more, depending on what concessions the unions agree to, said Ed Arace, president of Arace & Company Consulting, the Warwick, N.Y., firm that did the study.
But Arace also said the debate at the Vermont Statehouse might have come too late to change the fate of the bridge project. Since a request for bids went out March 1 without telling prospective bidders there was to be a project labor agreement and bids were to be opened Thursday, it would be difficult to change course now.
“Once the bids are open, it’s kind of late,” Arace said. “I think the clock is running out on this.”
Jill Charbonneau, president of the Vermont State Labor Council, AFL-CIO, joined other labor leaders at Wednesday’s news conference in saying the agreement would call for priority hiring from local union halls. She and other labor leaders said without an agreement, contractors could bring in workers from anywhere in the country, denying local workers employment.
Those arguments were countered by Carole Pouliot, president of board of directors of Associated General Contractors of Vermont, an industry group. She said since most of her member firms are nonunion, many might have trouble bidding for a share of the bridge project.
Nonunion companies that did bid on the project would see their employees become unionized, at least for the duration of the project, she said.
“Most workers I’ve met who are working for an open (nonunion) shop generally are working for an open shop because that’s where they want to be,” she said. “If they wanted to be in a union, they’d work for a union shop.”
Arace said nonunion workers would not actually have to join a union if there were a project labor agreement, but would have to pay fees to the unions in place of membership dues and would have money taken from their checks for union-sponsored pension funds and other benefits.
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