6 building-trades unions agree to lower suburban rate
With construction going on around the city and building projects on the rise, six of Philadelphia's building-trades unions settled contracts Thursday designed to make them more marketable in the suburbs.
With construction going on around the city and building projects on the rise, six of Philadelphia's building-trades unions settled contracts Thursday designed to make them more marketable in the suburbs.
"We are trying collectively to become more competitive in the counties," said Emily Bittenbender, chief executive of Bittenbender Construction L.P. and chairwoman of the General Building Contractors Association (GBCA).
Most Center City projects are built by contractors using union labor, but union construction projects are less prevalent in the suburbs.
The three-year contract between the six unions and the GBCA includes a lower hourly rate for projects in the Pennsylvania suburbs.
"Obviously, this is going to help," Bittenbender said.
The GBCA negotiates master contracts on behalf of builders using union labor.
A spokeswoman for the GBCA and a spokesman from the Carpenters union declined to give average pay rates or a range of rates. An official of the Laborers union said its raises were between 2 and 3.8 percent, depending on the year and locale.
"There's a big price difference between the union rates and nonunion guys," Bittenbender said. "We sell that we are a much better-educated and better-trained group, but we're trying to be more competitive in the rates."
Contracts expired Thursday for four of the six unions - the Metropolitan Regional Council of Carpenters, Laborers District Council of Metropolitan Philadelphia, Cement Masons Union Local 592, and Local 1955 of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, representing drywall finishers.
While the Carpenters have long had different city and suburban rates for the union's 17,000 members, the two-rate structure is a change for the other unions.
"We are repositioning ourselves in the market," said Chuck Murtha, who leads the drywall finishers, who will vote on the contract next week. He predicted that his 400 members will ratify the agreement: "I think it's an investment, and they'll gain work hours."
The contract comes as employment in construction has finally recovered from the recession.
In the last year, construction work increased by 1,200 jobs in Philadelphia, 1,800 in Montgomery, Bucks and Chester Counties, and 400 in Delaware County, according to research by the GBCA's national organization, the Associated General Contractors of America.
Laborers business manager Ryan Boyer, representing 6,300 members, said both sides agreed to an increased commitment to joint marketing - "whatever it takes to get that market back."
Boyer said laborers would get a 2.8 percent increase the first year, a 3.2 percent increase the second year, and a 3.4 percent increase the fourth year. In the suburbs, it will be 2 percent each year.
He said the renewed emphasis on marketing could reassure potential customers put off by news of criminal convictions for acts of arson and vandalism committed by union ironworkers.
"I look at that as a one-off situation," he said. "We don't do a good enough job" of publicizing the many pro bono projects done by the building trades.
"We absolutely envision going out on sales calls with the contractors," he said. Then, "the end user knows that we're business people and we're here to listen to their needs."
The contract for Ironworkers Local 405 was set to expire later in 2015, and the contract for Local 542 of the International Union of Operating Engineers was not up until 2017.
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