New York, NY – “One day we’re gonna shut down this city — but today, we’re gonna shut down this f—ing street.”
With that, well over one hundred trade unionists and nonunion workers on Thursday February 17, briefly blocked traffic along 12th Avenue and W27th Street in Chelsea to protest the further loss of good union jobs and widespread exploitation of vulnerable workers across New York City’s construction industry.
“We ain’t no choir boys or choir girls out here — we’re tough motherf—ers. “So, let’s go!” Joe Scopo, organizing director for the Laborers Union’s Cement and Concrete Workers District Council 16, told workers rallying outside the Terminal Warehouse development at 261 11th Avenue.
The massive project is just one case amongst a slew of others where big money developers throughout the city are actively cutting out union carpenters, laborers, concrete workers and others in favor of cheap, exploitable nonunion labor.
This one, however, like the large rental and retail development going up at 1515 Surf Avenue in Coney Island, is especially galling to trade unionists because union pension funds are actually being used to help build it.
Both PIMCO — the Pacific Investment Management Company and CalSTRS — the California State Teachers Retirement System — are heavily involved in the Terminal Warehouse development.
“There’s $10.5 billion in pension money in all the trades here,” Gerald Matthews, lead Area Standards Representative for the NYC District Council of Carpenters told angry demonstrators this week.
PIMCO bought Columbia Property Trust — the real estate investment trust redeveloping the Terminal Warehouse site — for $2.2 billion last September.
“[Columbia Property Trust President] Nelson Mills and [Senior VP of Construction] Steven Trapp jerked us off, basically,” Matthews said. “They told us they were going to work with the [Building] Trades. But when it came down to the last minute and PIMCO made the sale — they gave it to someone else who doesn’t get health benefits, or an area standard wage, or any type of dignified pension.”
Five immigrant workers doing demolition work for Alba — the anti-union demolition and carting outfit now operating at the Terminal Warehouse job site— reportedly walked off the job on Thursday to protest the ongoing racism and exploitation employees are experiencing there.
Worker advocates allege Alba has gone as far as putting up $5,000 reward posters around the job site for any employee who can help the company prosecute twenty-two former employees who had the temerity to file a workers’ compensation claim.
“Shame on PIMCO,” Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine shouted. “Low-road contractor, bringing in ALBA, which has disrespected and mistreated our immigrant and Latino brothers and sisters in the labor movement. It is outrageous that union money is being used to bust up these contracts. We need union money invested in union projects.”
Diana Florence, former head the the Manhattan District Attorney’s Construction Fraud Task Force, blamed the exploitation and loss of good union jobs directly on the pension funds as well.
“ALBA are committing crimes —and the reason why they continue to do it is because pension funds don’t care,”‘ she said. “They’re looking at the [financial] return. Until we value workers’ lives — everyday working people above the bottom line — this is gonna continue. What is going on here is not new — I’ve seen this time and time again. We need to demand more of the pension funds, demand more of our government, demand more of our city.”
CalSTRS Media Relations Specialist Thomas Lawrence once again touted the organization’s Responsible Contractor Policy [RCP] and its commitment to “promoting diversity.”
“We are committed to promoting diversity and effective human capital management and denounce discrimination based on race, sex, disability, language or social status,” he told LaborPress in an email.
PIMCO refused to comment on this story.
Jill Watson, communications director for the NYC District Council of Carpenters, says PIMCO’s silence says it all.
“All of the people with money are tight lipped, holding their wallets close to them,” Watson told LaborPress in an email. “Given their silence it appears that they value money over workers’ rights.”
Chaz Rynkiewicz, assistant business managers at Laborers’ Local 79 and trustee of the union’s pension and annuity funds invested with PIMCO, said the union was dismissed when members objected to the use of irresponsible contractors like Alba at the Terminal Warehouse site.
“We were told that there was nothing that they could do,” Rynkiewicz said in a statement. “We find that answer dangerous and unacceptable.”
Matthews says the answer is “not to drop them as investors — but to “stay in there and steer their way towards a proper RCP.”
