Project Summary

The Issue: Construction in Albany and the Capital Region has been strong for a number of years, and major projects on the drawing boards indicate that it will continue to be strong for the foreseeable future. Jobs in this field require skilled workers and the pay is well above what is available in other occupations available to inner city residents. Locals in the construction trade unions indicate that they are in need of new workers because the traditional pipelines — family and community connections — no longer hold the same appeal. In addition, union membership as apprentices and journeymen allows for a stability of work and income that can lead to home ownership and a level of community involvement not often achieved by low-wage workers. Yet minorities and women, especially inner city residents, continue to be under-represented in construction projects in the region, and have a much lower rate of retention than whites.

Background: Following a six-month campaign that included meetings with (then) Albany School Superintendent Michael Johnson and frequent speaking appearances at Albany School Board meetings, ARISE succeeded in the spring of 2004 in getting the Albany School District to hire a compliance officer to monitor and implement commitments by local construction trade unions to hire minorities and women on the district’s $185 million school reconstruction project. That commitment was part of a Project Labor Agreement that the district had entered into with the unions prior to seeking bonding approval from the Albany voters.

The district hired Windell Gray, of Landon Rein, a Rochester compliance firm that also has contracts with Albany County and New York State. Members of our task force first met with Mr. Gray on July 16, 2004, and all agreed that an important next step would be to obtain more information on the status of minority hiring in the construction trades in the Capital Region.

In August, 2004, ARISE filed a Freedom of Information Request with the NYS Department of Labor requested the following information regarding apprenticeships in the Capital Region (including Albany, Rensselaer, Schenectady, and Saratoga) for the past five (5) years: Records of apprentices in the building trades by county indicating gender, ethnicity, union or nonunion, start date, trade, completion status, and reason why they left if non-active.

The request was filed with: Apprenticeship Training, NYSDOL, State Campus Building 12, Room 436, Albany, NY 12240. After an excessive wait, I finally made contact with that office and and eventually with Kathy Peak ((518) 457-0224), who was assigned to compile the information. I learned from her that DOL had no way of extracting this information easily from their computer system. However, she did take it on, and after several months (including review time by her superiors), the information we requested was produced. (I should add that since we started this project the state Freedom of Information Law has been reformed to make it less easy for state agencies to dawdle or procrastinate. The NYS Committee on Open Government (474-2518) has always been very good to work with, although I did not use them this time.)

The report we received this spring is 48 pages of data. I have included only a sampling here.

The DOL report shows that of the total population of 1,923 current and former workers covered, 82 percent of the males were white and 49 percent of the females. African Americans made up 9.6 percent of the male population and about 20 percent of the female population. (However, female participation in the construction trades is very small — a total of 65 workers.)

Specific unions fared better than others: The carpenters had 11 African American members and 5 other ethnicities out of a total population of 119 members. The electricians had 8 African Americans and 5 other ethnicities out of 236 members. The iron workers had 4 African Americans and one other out of 55 members.

Of still further concern is the breakdown of worker status by race. The report shows that 57 percent of white males remain active in their union, 20 percent had quit, and 10 percent had been terminated for cause. By contrast, 48 percent of African American workers remained active in their union, 16 percent had quit and 31 percent had been terminated for cause. The same disparity holds true for women — much higher termination and quit percentage for African Americans than for white workers.

It is clear that a number of barriers continue to exist, chief among them lack of transportation to work. It is also clear that trade unions have been reluctant to recruit in high-minority areas, complaining that there is little point in hiring people who cannot get to work.

Next Steps: Project Labor Agreements constitute one area where unions and advocates for minority hiring find common ground. However, without active compliance monitoring and problem-solving PLAs appear to have little effect on the low income communities.. In addition, new PLAs are on the horizon — especially for the proposed Albany convention center. This is a good time to be raising these issues publicly.

In August Windell Gray, of Landon Rein, and his associate Carl Worth gave us an update on their work and the issues they had encountered in their first year.

Among the concerns and difficulties encountered by Landon Rein are:

• There is a marked difference in performance in hiring and retaining minorities and women by unions and contractors in the period before Landon Rein started work and the 18 months since they has been on the job. No contractor on any of the Albany School District construction project jobs was able to come close to meeting hiring goals prior to that point, and now most are in compliance, or close to it. This indicates that only a hands-on approach to meeting goals set in PLAs is productive.

• Unions continue to resist recruiting in low income, minority neighborhoods, apparently in the belief that they will not find qualified workers there.

• Transportation is a major issue in recruiting new minority workers, but not an insurmountable one. Unions maintain that all workers must have cars in order to reliably get to jobs, and most inner city residents do not. However, all of the Albany City School District project work is reachable by public transportation or by foot, so unions that are willing to be flexible could take on apprentices for these projects, who would have the opportunity to save for a car before the next job comes up.

• Albany needs an accessible “Wheels to Work” program providing low-cost but reliable cars that can serve this population of eligible workers — mostly single young men. The only existing Wheels to Work program is run by Schenectady Catholic Charities and is designed to serve TANF-eligible women retuning to the workforce in Schenectady and Albany counties.

• Landon Rein has found that new minority and women apprentices are not being given consistent work. They tend to be hired for specific jobs in order to meet hiring goals, and then are not considered for further work once those jobs are done.

This variation in retention rates by race is reinforced by information obtained this spring by ARISE through a Freedom of Information Request with the NYS Department of Labor. While 57 percent of white males remain active in their union, only 48 percent of African American workers remained active. Of the African American workers who started, 31 percent had been terminated as compared to 10 percent of the white workers. The same disparity holds true for women — much higher termination and quit percentage for African Americans than for white workers.

Action: ARISE believes that an unprecedented opportunity exists to open access to well-paying and long-lasting jobs in the construction trades to residents of Albany’s inner city neighborhoods. This requires a cooperative relationship with the construction trade unions that are the pipeline to stable employment in these trades, as well as with contractors and local governments that are the owners of new construction projects in the city.

Project Labor Agreements — a compact between labor and owner that insures no interruptions on the job while providing public benefit provisions in areas including minority and women hiring — in one model with ample precedent in the Capital Region. Other communities across the country have used Community Benefit Agreements to achieve this purpose and others. These CBAs have the advantage of being an agreement between some representative of the community itself – anything from a legislative body to a citizens group to a group of churches — and the developer.

Two major construction projects appear good candidates for the expansion of the current PLA structure in Albany. They are the proposed Albany Convention Center, which has been approved by the state legislature; and the proposed construction of a new or remodeled Albany High School (and possibly other city schools), which will require a new public referendum.

ARISE has drafted language for a Community Benefit Agreement that could be applied to the convention center. This will require a community-wide effort and we are actively seeking allies and supporters.  We are inviting all who support this effort to our Public Meeting, Oct. 23 at 4 p.m. at First United Methodist Church in Schenectady, where we will call on our elected officials and the members of the new convention center board to commit to a broad new local hiring initiative.

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