The “community-benefits agreement” between the city and the Columbus Building & Construction Trades Council, AFL-CIO, will cover work done on the city’s planned new fire station No. 35, to be built at 711 N. Waggoner Road between Chapel Stone Road and Waggoner Grove Boulevard on the Far East Side.
Work on the $8 million project is scheduled to begin in May 2018. The 22,000-square-foot station will have room for medic vehicle, engine and ladder truck, plus living quarters, training rooms, and a workout area. The city has yet to select a contractor.
When the city solicits bids for the project, contractors will have to account for the agreement, but Ginther’s senior policy adviser, Bryan Clark, said “You don’t have to be a union shop to get this job.”
The 14-page document spells out goals for ensuring that a portion of the work is done by residents of Columbus, Franklin County and other contiguous counties. It also requires the trades council to host apprenticeship-recruitment fairs and to charge its members 5 cents per hour worked, to be deposited into a scholarship fund for apprenticeship programs.
Ginther plans to announce the agreement at a news conference Tuesday, along with scholarship seed funding, money for middle-school exposure to trades, and a plan to work with schools.
“I think the win for (the unions) is the opportunity to grow the building-trades workforce,” Clark said. “The win for us is these are folks who have jobs for a lifetime.”
The agreement establishes goals that 25 percent of work on the firehouse would be done by residents of Franklin County and the contiguous counties, and 20 percent of the work would be done by Columbus residents.
“We would have a lot of concerns with what they’re trying to do,” Hobbs said. “From a construction standpoint, it’s difficult for contractors to figure out what and how they bid something the way it is now, let alone throwing these additional layers in they’ll have to comply with.”
Clark said the city looked at similar agreements across the country, including in Cleveland and Los Angeles. He said those agreements did not hurt competition.
“This is something that is going to be disclosed to the contractors through the bidding process,” he said. “This benefits them, not something that would harm their bottom line.”
Within one year of the contract, unions would be required to put on three apprenticeship-recruitment events — one in each of three neighborhoods the city already has identified for another program aimed at reducing infant mortality. The city and unions will work together on recruitment activities in five other neighborhoods.
The trade council’s workers on the project will be charged 5 cents per hour worked; that money will go into a scholarship fund that the city will use to help cover apprenticeship costs such as hand tools, transportation and books.
“It’s going to create opportunities and pathways to the middle class for adults and members of the community here in the city of Columbus,” said Dorsey Hager, the trade council’s executive secretary-treasurer.
With existing funds, Clark said the union apprenticeship programs probably could handle 100 to 200 additional people, but the city is starting to look at nonunion programs and those that are specific to contractors as well.
“Unfortunately, vocational education became a dirty word for a long time,” Clark said. “Most folks will not graduate from high school with a need or desire to go to college because there are fantastic opportunities here in the city of Columbus that don’t require a college degree.”
The agreement also will require unions to have written plans for diversity and hiring and retaining Columbus residents, and to work with organizations that provide job placement for “displaced workers.”
A committee that includes Clark, Hager and Nana Watson of the NAACP Columbus chapter will monitor whether the project is meeting the benchmarks.
Community-benefits agreements have been controversial in some areas. Chicago unions and activists have been pushing for an agreement for the Obama Presidential Center project, but former President Barack Obama said “he doesn’t agree that a community-benefits agreement is the right tool for this project,” according to the Chicago Tribune.
Source: The
Columbus Dispatch
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