Convention Complex to use local workers

Eight years ago, members of Carpenters Local 308 here picketed outside the Veterans Memorial Building that houses City Hall because the city hired a non-union contractor to install new windows in the building.

Times change.

On Tuesday evening, City Council member Tom Podzimek was on the short end of a 7-2 vote, saying that the council's approval of a project labor agreement as part of the city's $75.8-million Convention Complex project was nothing short of “intimidation” and a document that “steers all the work to organized labor.”

The council majority, though, disagreed with Podzimek and council member Pat Shey - both of whom are small contractors - and said the project labor agreement will help guarantee that contractors on the city's largest post-flood building project hire at least some qualified “local” workers.

Council member Kris Gulick, an accountant and private-business consultant, said he generally is an advocate for “open markets,” but Gulick said his concern was that a large out-of-state contractor would win a bid on the Convention Complex project and bring all its own employees into the city to work on the project and not hire workers who are part of the local economy.

“And the only way I can control that is something like this (project labor agreement),” Gulick said.

Council member Monica Vernon, a small-business owner, cited one multimillion-dollar renovation project, which obtained a large amount of public money, as a example of a project that used too little local labor.

The project labor agreement must be approved by the U.S. Department of Commerce's Economic Development Administration, which is providing a $35-million grant for the Convention Complex project.

Drew Westberg, special assistant to the city manager, reported that the federal agency has given preliminary approval to the agreement by saying it did not find problems with similar agreements used by Linn County and Polk County on which the city is patterning its labor agreement.

Westberg said the Convention Complex labor agreement will allow a contractor to retain a “core” group of its own employees as it also requires the contractor to hire employees other than a limited number of core employees through the local labor halls for particular trades. Contractors can register employees other than core employees at the halls and non-union workers can also register there, he noted. Using the labor halls as referral sources, he added, is intended to assure that all employees will be qualified.

Westberg said the contractor will retain all management rights and can turn down employees the contractor does not want.

Council members Chuck Swore, Chuck Wieneke and Pat Shey along with the city attorney, city manager and Westberg met with local labor representatives to hammer out the project labor agreement.

In the end, Shey said such an agreement will prevent a contractor from using many of his or her own workers and, as a result, will mean that fewer contractors will bid on the Convention Complex project.

The whole point of open, public bidding is to protect the public and keep the cost of projects down, Shey said. Fewer bidders, he added, will mean a higher price.

Gulick said contractors need the work and will bid despite the labor agreement.

Wieneke said federal dollars going into the Convention Complex project means that the city will be required to pay prevailing wages, which typically are union wage rates. The labor agreement, then, won't affect cost, Wieneke said, but it will assure, he added, that local workers work on the project.

Swore noted that the city intends to bid the project in pieces: demolition and site preparation, mechanical and plumbing, electrical and all other construction work. Breaking it into pieces may give local contractors a better chance of competing for the work, he said.

The Convention Complex project includes the renovation of the city's U.S. Cellular Center arena and the construction of a new convention center next door. The project is slated to be completed in February 2013.

The arena is slated to close in August and reopen in late 2012.

At the same time, the city has bought and will renovate the Crowne Plaza Five Seasons Hotel attached to the arena. The hotel will close on Feb. 11 and is scheduled to reopen in September 2012.