City Council backs pro-union project labor agreement for Convention Complex project

The City Council this week followed the recent practice of the Linn County Board of Supervisors and the state Board of Regents and decided to use a project labor agreement on a big construction project.

In the city's case, the council, on a 6-2 vote, directed City Manager Jeff Pomeranz to negotiate a project labor agreement with the local building trades council as the city prepares to build the $75.6-million Convention Complex project.

A project labor agreement is a collective bargaining agreement negotiated between the project owner, in this case the city, and local unions, and advocates for the agreements argue that they result in the hiring of more local workers.

Such agreements usually generate debate because they touch on sentiments that can arise in discussions about union workers and private contractors having the ability to make their own decisions.

City Council member Pat Shey, a small contractor and a lawyer, is opposed to project labor agreements because they take control away from contractors and limit whom a contractor can employ on a job site, he said Thursday.

Opposition aside, Shey is displeased because he says the council did not fully discuss the concept of a project labor agreement before voting on it on Tuesday evening. Council member Justin Shields, a local labor leader, said the council had discussed the matter sufficiently.

The city's big, post-flood projects like the Convention Complex already require contractors who work on the projects to pay “prevailing” wages, which in a metro area like Cedar Rapids means union-scale wages.

The project labor agreement, Mayor Ron Corbett and City Council member Chuck Swore said this week, is intended to have contractors use as much local labor as possible on the project.

Corbett and Swore noted that state bidding laws require the city to award contracts to the lowest responsible bidder, which they said means that an out-of-state firm may win the bidding on the Convention Complex project. They said the project labor agreement will require some of the workers to be those working out of the local union halls. Thus, a contractor can't bring all the workers in from out of state, they said.

Corbett noted that the Linn County Board of Supervisors had settled on a project labor agreement that requires contractors to hire one union worker from a local union hall for every worker that is not a member of the union. That will be one agreement design that the city looks at, the mayor said.

Project labor agreements, he said aren't one-sided. Workers, for instance, can't strike while on the project, he said.

“This helps ensure the project gets done on time and you're using good quality workers and you're using local workers,” said Corbett.

Tom Amosson, president of Cedar Rapids contractor Rinderknecht & Associates Inc., noted on Thursday that he runs a union shop, and he said he is happy to see that all companies competing for projects like the Convention Complex project will have to pay prevailing wages. However, he doesn't like project labor agreements.

For one, Amosson said the agreements are negotiated between the government entity and unions with the contractor left out.

“So you can imagine, it's a little slighted to the union,” he said. He added, “It doesn't let us manage our own business.”

Amosson added that most agreements require that 50 percent or 25 percent of workers come from local union halls, which can create a workplace “atmosphere” where some workers are traditional union members, some not. A few crafts don't have any local union members, he added.

Linn Supervisor Brent Oleson - who like Mayor Corbett and council member Shey is a Republican - said Thursday that Linn County's project labor agreements on three projects now under way and two to come are delivering as promised.

Oleson said the county's construction manager reports that 80-85 percent of those working on the county projects are local workers, and he said there is no evidence that project costs are going up because of the agreements.

The projects would be paying prevailing wages even without the project labor agreement, so the agreement doesn't add to the cost, Oleson said.

“We heard the horror stories that it's going to cost all this money,” he said. “We don't see that.”

Oleson, who grew up in a union household, said it would be an “embarrassment” if most of the workers and materials used in the city's Convention Complex come from Chicago or some other out-of-town area.

“We've had a national disaster and we're trying to rebuild, and I want as many local people involved in that as possible,” he said. “That goes from the president of the company to the guy swinging the hammer. … Sometimes you have to stand up for jobs, and this is one you can do it.”

In August, by a 5-3 vote, the state Board of Regents approved a project labor agreement for construction of the $72-million University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics and Clinics outpatient clinic in Coralville.