The famed “union rat” was perched near the top of Gannett Drive in Harrison Sept. 17 as representatives from Tile, Marble & Terrazzo B.A.C. Local Union No. 7 of New York & New Jersey protested work being done at the Life Time Athletic Westchester complex.
“The project is not using our people,” said Patrick Bonici, the Long Island City-based group”™s field representative. “They carry their own people from what I understand.”
Bonici said while there might indeed be “some unions in there,” his group was unhappy with the bypassing of its workers in the region by Life Time Fitness Inc., the Minnesota-based company building the 200,000-plus-square-foot family fitness center.
Jason Thunstrom, vice president of corporate communications and public relations for the company, said when Life Time, which operates centers in 19 states, begins new construction, “We generally take an open-shop approach.”
An open bidding process “has the goal of attracting the highest-quality talent” in the region with an eye also on the sustainability of the project, he said. In Harrison, as with all the Life Time projects, he said, that leads to “a mix of union and nonunion labor.”
In Westchester, he said, “I would venture to say about 90 percent of the project is union.”
And with regard to the Local Union No. 7, Thunstrom said, “They chose not to engage in the bidding process.”
He added that the class-A Harrison center is on target for its opening next year, at 1 Gannett Drive (soon to be renamed Westchester Park Drive).
The site, undergoing a dramatic transformation, was formerly owned by Gannett Co. Inc. and served as the longtime home of The Journal News until September 2012.
