Open-shop contractors say that a new proposal to encourage the use of Project Labor Agreements on large city projects is the latest effort by the administration of Mayor Steve Noble to boost local building trades’ unions at their expense. Noble pushed back on the criticism, saying that while he supports PLAs where appropriate, the legislation did not come from his office.

Project Labor Agreements are negotiated before construction projects and address issues like working conditions at the job site, timelines and budgets. They also require most workers on the project to be hired through local union halls. A proposal put forward by Alderman Bob Dennison (D-Ward 6) would require the city to hire an outside consultant to carry out a PLA feasibility study on all projects where labor costs are projected to exceed $1 million. If the study showed a financial benefit to using a PLA, the city would be required to include one in the final contract.

At a Sept. 18 meeting of the Common Council’s Laws and Rules Committee Dennison, a former chief engineer for the State Department of Transportation, touted the benefits of PLAs even as he acknowledged his plan was likely to face pushback.

“For big projects, my experience has been that [PLAs] help us get them done on time and within our budget,” said Dennison. “There are some people who are [non-union] contractors who will not be enthusiastic about this. They can still participate, no one is barred, it will just be a little more difficult for those who are open-shop contractors.”

But Val Dwyer, owner of Kingston-based non-union contractor Arold Construction, said the new rules would make it nearly impossible for open-shop companies to compete for large city projects. Dwyer said that while open-shop contractors can compete for PLA projects and have their supervisors oversee the work, their rank-and-file workers would be barred from the job, while the supervisors would have to work with a new crew whose capabilities they were unfamiliar with.

“They get cute and say [open shop-contractors] can still bid it, but the fact is our employees are open-shop because they choose to be, not because I chose it,” said Dwyer. “And by putting these kinds of restrictions on you they’re trying to pull people out of that.”

Last year, Dwyer helped lead a successful effort to lobby the Common Council to roll back new, stricter standards for apprenticeship programs that, like the PLA mandate, she said would make it much harder for smaller non-union contractors to compete for city-sponsored projects. As part of that effort, she analyzed 18 months of city contractors and found that had the apprenticeship rules been in place, 11 of 13 low bidders would been disqualified and the projects would have cost taxpayers an additional $2.7 million.

Dwyer called Dennison’s proposal just the latest effort to tip the scales in favor of union contractors.

“They had to walk back [the apprenticeship rules] and now this is just another way to accomplish the same thing,” said Dwyer.

Meanwhile, in a scathing statement issued on Sept. 20 the Association of Builders and Contractors tried to tie the PLA mandate to a surge in campaign contributions to Noble from local unions during the last election cycle. The statement said that in 2019 Noble had seen minimal financial support from unions while during the 2023 election cycle, contributions from organized labor made up a full third of his war chest. The statement alleged that the flood of union campaign cash coincided with Noble’s decision to enter into a PLA on a major overhaul of Dietz Stadium without going through the Common Council. The statement also accused Noble of “lying” when he said recently that the stadium rehab, the PLA for which called for an Aug. 30 completion date, was “substantially complete” despite the fact that work on new bathrooms, locker rooms and practice fields was ongoing.

“In his rush to please his financial backers, the mayor bypassed good government practices,” the statement reads. “This overreach undermines transparency and accountability in government, raising serious concerns about the influence of campaign donations on public policy.”

In an email to Kingston Wire, Noble said that while Dennison had informed him that he planned to introduce the legislation, it did not originate with his office. Noble also defended PLAs, saying that they’ve been successfully implemented on the Dietz Stadium project and the rebuilding of the Kingston Water Department’s dam at Cooper Lake. Noble called the Association of Builders and Contactors an “out-of-town group” that he had never heard of before. Noble added that Dennison’s proposal was indeed a response to the failed effort to impose new standards on apprenticeship programs.

“The PLA proposal that Alderman Dennison has introduced is in response to the open shop’s dissatisfaction of requiring apprentices to actually graduate students in each of the trade programs,” Noble wrote. “I believe this PLA effort levels out the playing field, allowing all contractors to participate and will allow the city to have the best outcome for each of our large projects going forward.”

Speaking with Kingston Wire, Dennison said that while he had spoken to Noble “in passing” about his proposal, the mayor had no input on the plan. Over the course of his 40-year career with the DOT, Dennison said he had seen PLAs used successfully on many large projects. Along with other benefits, Dennison said the agreements exempted projects from the state’s Wicks Law, which mandates separate contracts with each subcontractor on public works projects. Dennison added that small open-shop contractors would feel minimal impact from the new rules since the kinds of multimillion-dollar projects they cover are beyond the capacity of most.

Following his presentation to the Laws and Rules Committee, lawmakers voted 4-1 to place Dennison’s legislation up for a vote at next month’s meeting of the full council. The vote came over the objections of committee Chairman and Council Majority Leader Rennie Scott-Childress who said that it would not be enough time to have a meaningful community conversation about the new regulations. Scott-Childress (D-Ward 3) also questioned why the mandate was necessary at all since the city was already capable of pursuing PLAs anytime they seemed beneficial.

“I want to make it plain that we’re going to go in this direction,” said Dennison. “I think it’s important that we make a statement that we should do Project Labor Agreements.”