Woburn contractor becomes union shop

Woburn contractor Tocci Building Cos. is trying to land more jobs in the city of Boston, and as a result is looking to the New England Regional Council of Carpenters for help.

Here’s what’s unusual about this partnership: Tocci for decades has been a nonunion shop in New England.

But that all changed on Friday when Tocci signed an agreement with the council to only use union carpenters on its New England projects going forward. John Tocci said his company has embraced newer approaches to construction that have allowed it to bid on more sophisticated construction projects in recent years.

“As we were getting more and more into the city, where Boston’s building trades have much more of a presence and influence, we were finding ourselves locked out of the kind of work we wanted to do,” Tocci said.

Tocci already has about $300 million work of projects in the pipeline over the next two years or so. Because those projects’ budgets are already complete, Tocci won’t have to necessarily use union workers on those jobs. But Mark Erlich, the union group’s executive secretary-treasurer, said the union will work with Tocci to see where union labor could help on those jobs as well.

The agreement resulted from a series of meetings that started in mid-2014. Tocci said he was impressed by the union carpenters’ willingness to embrace cost-saving measures, such as installing prefabricated elements such as doors, windows, and wall panels. Tocci said he was also impressed with the training that the union gives its workers.

“For both of us, there were some surprising levels of alignment about the future of the industry,” Erlich said.

Source: The Boston Globe