Construction industry and union leaders in Westchester have opposed a move in Albany to repeal the state”™s Wicks Law requirements for school district projects, claiming two-year-old reforms to the law already are saving costs and its repeal would open the way for outside contractors with nonunion workers to take local jobs.
Gov. David Paterson in his executive budget proposed to repeal the 98-year-old law as it applies to school districts. Originally enacted as a public shield against corrupt general contractors who made secret deals with subcontractors and pocketed extra money on awarded bids, the law requires schools and municipalities with capital projects to award four or more separate contracts for plumbing; electrical; heating, ventilation and air conditioning and general construction.
The governor”™s repeal effort, part of a broader mandate reform agenda, recently was publicly backed by three state legislators representing Westchester: Assemblywoman Sandy Galef, Assemblywoman Amy Paulin and Sen. Suzi Oppenheimer. They said the change to allow a single project contract award could save school districts in the state $200 million annually. By a conservative estimate, the Wicks Law added at least $1 billion in costs to school construction projects statewide in the past five years, according to the legislators.
Yet those savings already can be realized on school and municipal projects through project labor agreements that are part of Wicks Law reforms enacted in 2008, state officials were told in a recent letter from Edward Doyle, president of the Building & Construction Trades Council of Westchester & Putnam Counties Inc., and Ross J. Pepe, president of the Construction Industry Council of Westchester & Hudson Valley Inc. and the Building Contractors Association of Westchester & Mid-Hudson Region Inc. Their organizations together represent 35,000 union construction workers and more than 600 construction contractors and related firms.
The amended law allows schools and other public entities to award a single construction contract for projects if they first sign a project labor agreement, or PLA, with unions. By signing a pre-construction PLA, “You don”™t have to do the Wicks Law mumbo-jumbo,” said Construction Industry Council spokesman George Drapeau.
Among other benefits, the PLA ensures that a project will not be shut down by a costly strike in a labor dispute, Drapeau said, “one of the things that makes it very attractive for an owner.” Pepe said the PLA chiefly yields cost savings as a tool for efficient project scheduling by contractors.
Drapeau said a PLA ensures that local tax revenue spent on construction projects will go to the local work force and circulate in the local economy.
Pepe and Doyle in their letter said public entities “have saved millions of dollars for their taxpayers and stakeholders” through the combined efficiencies of non-Wicks construction and PLAs. Savings on initial construction budgets have ranged from 10 percent to 30 percent for many projects, they said.
Pepe said 90 percent to 95 percent of all school projects in the area are done by union work forces. Yet to date the Pleasantville School District is the only school district to avoid the Wicks Law requirements, signing a PLA for a $30 million improvements project. Westchester County has regularly used the PLA and non-Wicks construction for large building projects, he said.
If the Wicks Law were repealed, the PLA “would be moot,” Drapeau said. Repeal would invite more outside contractors to bid on projects, he said.
“There”™s a big-time hurt being put on this industry in this economy,” said Pepe. He said 35 percent to 40 percent of union workers in some mechanical trades are unemployed in this region.
The Westchester legislators who recently joined in supporting the Wicks Law repeal also voted for the reforms two years ago that allow schools to do now what the repeal would do, Pepe and Drapeau said. “I”™m not sure they fully understood what was transpiring here,” Pepe said.
