Do Union Demands Stymie Affordable Housing?
A right-wing think tank has issued a big report that, according to the Sun, says affordable housing construction would be sped up by the use of nonunion labor. The Manhattan Institute is—not surprisingly—arguing that soaring construction costs are slowing development, and a big part of that slowdown is caused by unions that demand a prevailing…
A right-wing think tank has issued a big report that, according to the Sun, says affordable housing construction would be sped up by the use of nonunion labor. The Manhattan Institute is—not surprisingly—arguing that soaring construction costs are slowing development, and a big part of that slowdown is caused by unions that demand a prevailing wage for their workers. Also not surprisingly, not everyone agrees with the report’s findings. “This is a valid area of investigation, but I would not support this recommendation,” says Richard Anderson, the president of the New York Building Congress. And Louis Colletti, president of the Building Trades Employers’ Association, said the recommendation was “absurd” and the use of nonunion labor results in “substandard housing in terms of quality and safety.” Of course, some affordable housing developers in Brooklyn, like the Fifth Avenue Committee, acknowledge that it’s very difficult for them to use union labor because of its higher costs, and the rapidly rising Toren is basically a textbook example of how quickly you can build when you leave unions behind. (The skyscraper has 42 affordable units.) Where do you stand on the issue?
Report Urges Nonunion Labor Use [NY Sun]
Photo by arecee.
Some of you are certainly convinced that there has been no history before you showed up, no one alive or dead who didn’t have the opportunities for better education and better paying jobs before you, and best of all, there are some who seem to get their history and information about things you know nothing about from popular TV fiction – the Sopranos.
This capitalist country owes much of its success as the wealthiest industrialized nation in the world to unions and union labor. If it were not for the people who were beat up, run out of town and died to establish unions during the last part of the 19th century, on into the 20th, the robber barons who ran (run) this country would still be paying workers wages that would rival your average Chinese factory worker. There would be no safety standards in anyone’s job site, including white collar worker sites, and the environment would be far worse than it is now, and sex discrimination and harassment in the workplace would be even worse than it is now. If it weren’t for people like A. Phillip Randolph, low paying service workers like Pullman Porters, and countless other service workers, would still be getting sharecropper’s wages, would have no health insurance, and would not even be making a minimum wage. There would be no minimum wage.
If it wasn’t for the millions of union workers who were able to move into the middle class after WW2, a lot of you MBA’ers would not have been able to go to college, and some of this country’s best and brightest would not have had the opportunity to succeed.
I’m not going to say that all unions are great, or all union members or union officials are saints, or even honest people. I am well
oops- I meant to say “knocked themselves out to do the clean up at the WTC
the organization I work for does a lot of training with first responders, military and trades. we get to hear the stories the public doesn’t. Union jobs, civil service jobs are not nearly as cushy and easy as the public thinks. The rank and file of every union get the brunt and blame for almost everything. And little to no recognition for what they do. The transit workers were not only a huge help in 9-11 in getting people out of the area, many of them worked alongside rescuers because they knew the tunnels far better than the FDNY and NYPD. Ironworkers, electrical workers and construction workers as well as engineers and planners went down into the ruins with fire and police because they knew the layouts and the wiring and the building construction- many times they were able to lead responders into highly dangerous areas because of their knowledge and know-how. You never hear about them. You don’t hear about the tradesmen who knocked themselves to do the clean-up- often putting themselves in great danger. Many many of them came down and worked for free, and on their own time.
I’n not telling anyone there are no problems with union or management but I do believe in giving credit where credit is due.
i get paid through a no-show union job thanks to the mob. How else can I afford to pay my friend my “market rate” rent in her basement? 🙂
I am so hungry. Time to steal my landlord’s dinner before she eats eat.
I think the reason why people pick on the TWU is because they have (repeatedly) violated the no-strike provision of the Taylor Law – and whether they are treated well, payed well or whatever – it is the LAW (for many good reasons), and most importantly – was the law when EVERY single TWU member choose to be a transit worker.
Why pick on MTA unions particularly the TWU? I will let you in on something I was in Transit as a manager, never worked a day on a line and always worked in a clean office with as many breaks as I chose. Swear to God. But I also dealt with many union people and got to know many. The rules that they have to undergo stretch the imagination. Think about sitting in a booth in a station where you might not get a relief for 8 hours and with just a bucket as a receptacle. And that’s a clean job. Sometimes they don’t get relieved for lunch or dinner or breakfast. If they leave and have no relief they get written up and end up being docked pay. A booth employee at the top or say after 20 years makes about 15/hr. There are many dirty, disgusting jobs where you can’t have regular meal and bathroom breaks, where you have to be close to fainting in order to book off sick. You dear public try eating something when your hands are filthier than if you dipped them in shit and you’re not allowed to wash them. Men and women who work the road–the conductors and the engineers, the signal tower workers get paid tops around 22-23/hr. Not a bad wage , but imagine yourself standing for hours on end, particularly conductors, with people coming up to you asking things through your little window and then spitting in your face when they don’t like the answer? Try that for 23 an hour, 8 – 10 hrs a day, 5 days a week for 30 years. And back in the old old days in less technological times the pay was horrid, the air unbreathable and so on, no a/c, no heat.
From the Manhattan Institute report:
“One contractor who builds primarily for-sale housing in the affordable range uses only union labor because he believes that the savings realized from more efficient and professional execution justify union labor’s higher wages. Several of our interview subjects stated that New York’s union labor force is appreciably more efficient than union labor elsewhere. They say it is also more efficient than local nonunion labor, although, as one contractor related, nonunion contractors who have built projects in Harlem and upper Manhattan “have honed†their high-rise construction skills in the process.”
So, I guess the report isn’t as unilaterally anti-union as many of the posters would like to believe.
Also, to those of you arguing that you are competing in the market place and making all that money because you are so hardworking and qualified, remember this. Visas for people like you are restricted by the federal government, while illegal immigration of lower-skilled workers is rampant. So, you aren’t really competing; you just think you are.
2:41 Thanks for the explanation.
2:33 – DOB for 1