Philadelphia's building-trades unions traded lower wages for
guaranteed jobs; in exchange, affordable
housing will be less costly to build for the Philadelphia Housing Authority.
According to the deal struck on Thursday, the Building and
Construction Trades Council promised a 20 percent reduction in labor wages in
return for long-term construction job guarantees.
At least $100 million worth of affordable housing
construction projects could be awarded over the next five years, said Pat
Gillespie, council business manager.
"It's a substantial amount of jobs," said
Gillespie. "More importantly, we'll be able to enlist people from various
communities into the trades, and also get people into adequate housing. It's
kind of cool."
Calling it a "monumental" deal, PHA President
Kelvin Jeremiah said that cheaper labor will enable PHA to build six family
homes for the price of five.
"We have a very ambitious development agenda that calls
for the preservation and construction of some 6,000 units of affordable housing
over five years," said Jeremiah. "The reduction in labor cost allows
us to build more."
It will be more than current building-trades union members
who benefit from the new arrangement. Twenty-five percent of the new
construction jobs are guaranteed to go to current PHA residents.
As part of the agreement, an "incubator" program
designed to train women who are entering the trades field will be reintroduced
after it was dismissed a few years ago.
In 2012, when Jeremiah served as executive director of the
PHA, he was forced to eliminate 335 provisional union maintenance jobs. Under
the new deal, building-trades unions will have first crack at any provisional
worker jobs when needed.
"One of the things you can't harbor is grudges because
all of us have made mistakes," said Gillespie. "He made a whopper
there, but you can understand his thinking, that there wasn't anything of value
in this place and he had to redo everything. I was glad to see the training
program reinstituted."
PHA has given no indication when projects under the new
agreement will begin, but Gillespie anticipates that it will be soon.
"We're at the ready," said Gillespie. "We
have people who are, unfortunately, unemployed right now who are ready to
go."
Source: Newsworks.org
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