NABTU Statement on NY Wage Standard for Affordable Housing

Washington, D.C. – March 29, 2024 – North America’s Building Trades Unions (NABTU) President Sean McGarvey issued the following statement:

“North America’s Building Trades Unions (NABTU) fully support the efforts of President Gary LaBarbera and the Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York & Vicinity (NYC BCTC) to create a meaningful wage standard for affordable housing. A good housing policy must require that workers constructing housing can earn the means to afford to live in the units they build.

“NABTU strongly opposes an average site-wide wage requirement. An average wage standard is a low-road wage standard that suppresses workers’ wages on the lower end of the wage scale. Additionally, because the average site-wide wage can only be calculated after a project is complete, it practically takes years to determine, making it extremely difficult to find the exploited workers, especially those who worked in the early stages of construction. As the New York City Comptroller has experienced, an average site-wide wage construct is ripe for fraud and abuse and difficult to enforce and remedy violations. Misclassification and abuse are already rampant in the construction industry. An average site-wide wage requirement would only make it worse.

“Any wage standard must be transparent and meaningful, especially when developers receive public tax breaks. NABTU supports the NYC BCTC’s efforts to bring a meaningful wage standard to publicly subsidized affordable housing development in New York City. NABTU continues to build thousands of units in NYC through our pension dollars and the Housing Investment Trust at full union wages and benefits, and we surpass all the market benchmarks in the returns on these investments. We urge New York’s elected officials to support a reasonable, transparent wage standard, as the NYC BCTC has proposed.”

###

Facebook

6 days ago

We were honored to be joined by President Biden for our 2024 Legislative Conference.

Watch his remarks👇
www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxadBjeTbBk ... See MoreSee Less

View on Facebook

View Comments

Likes: 18
Shares: 6
Comments: 4

Comment on Facebook

The more you know… "A day in the Life of Katie, a 42 year old MAGA Republican who believes Trump won in 2020 in spite of all evidence refuting it. Katie gets up at 6 a.m. and fills her coffeepot with water to prepare her morning coffee. The water is clean and good because some tree-hugging liberal fought for minimum water-quality standards. With her first swallow of coffee, she takes her daily medication. Her medications are safe to take because some stupid commie liberal fought to insure their safety and that they work as advertised. Fortunately, her husband’s insulin medicine has finally been capped at $35./month thanks to the work of the current Democratic President & activists pressuring big Pharma to keep the prices down. All but $10 of her own medications are paid for by her employer's medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance - now Katie gets it too. She prepares her morning breakfast, bacon and eggs. Katie’s bacon is safe to eat because some girly-man liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry. In the shower, Katie reaches for her shampoo. Her bottle is properly labeled with each ingredient and its amount in the total contents because some crybaby liberal fought for her right to know what she was putting on her body and how much it contained. Katie dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. The air she breathes is fairly clean because some environmentalist wacko liberal fought for laws to stop industries from polluting our air. She walks to the subway station for her government-subsidized ride to work. It saves her considerable money in parking and transportation fees because some fancy-pants liberal fought for affordable public transportation, which gives everyone the opportunity to be a contributor. Katie begins her work day. She is hard working & has a good job with good pay, even though the CEO is paid over 1000 times per hour what she is paid! Once in a while she wonders if that’s morally right, but quickly squashes such radical thoughts. She does receive medical benefits, retirement, paid holidays, maternity leave, and vacation because some lazy liberal union members fought and died for these working standards. Katie's employer pays these standards because Katie's employer doesn't want his employees to call the union. If Katie is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed, she'll get a worker compensation or unemployment check because some stupid libtard didn't think she should lose her home because of her temporary misfortune. It's noon and Katie needs to make a bank deposit so she can pay some bills. Katie's deposit is federally insured by the FDIC because some godless liberal wanted to protect Katie's money from unscrupulous bankers who ruined the banking system before the Great Depression. Katie has to pay her Fannie Mae-underwritten mortgage and her below-market federal student loan because some elitist liberal decided that Katie and the government would be better off if she was educated and earned more money over her lifetime. During the pandemic Katie received a special tax credit for her children because some old liberal church going President in 2021 thought it was the Christian thing to do to be able to reduce by over 40% the number of American children below the poverty line, all during a tough time for working class Americans. Unfortunately for Katie the GOP voted against extending the credit. Because of an unexpected pregnancy which she fortunately discovered early in her second week when the embryo was still only about 1/100th of an inch in length, and because she resides in a blue state, she has the freedom to make her own personal reproductive decisions based on her family situation. This is because radical feminazis had the gall to suggest many decades before, that basic reproductive rights are part of a woman’s basic rights and privacy. Unfortunately, upon learning of her pregnancy, her husband Jayson deserts his family, moving to a hidden location out of state, to be with another woman. Katie does not live in one of those states that has dictated that even at two weeks after conception & even though she cannot afford another child, and that she faces some health risks due to her age and two previous miscarriages, which she claims were totally under God’s control, she still has the freedom to decide what is best for herself, not Big Brother Government unilaterally forcing its decision on her. Katie is now home from work. She plans to visit her father this evening at his farm home in the country. She gets in her car for the drive. Her car is among the safest in the world because some America-hating liberal fought for car safety standards. She arrives at her childhood home. Her generation was the third to live in the house financed by Farmers' Home Administration because bankers didn't want to make rural loans. The house didn't have electricity until some big-government liberal stuck his nose where it didn't belong and demanded rural electrification. She is happy to see her father, a Veteran who is now retired. Her father lives on Social Security and a union pension because some wine-drinking, cheese-eating liberal made sure he could take care of himself so Katie wouldn't have to. Katie gets back in her car for the ride home, and turns on a radio talk show. The radio host keeps demonizing every liberal claiming they are all evil, lazy communists, and conservatives are good loyal Americans. He doesn't mention that Republicans have fought against every protection and benefit Katie enjoys throughout her day. Nor does he mention that currently the U.S.has the best economy of any industrial nation in the world in spite of world-wide inflation. Yet Katie agrees: "We don't need those big-government liberals ruining our American lives! Ironically Katie’s own GOP representative in Congress claims credit for the new infrastructure plan that those commie Democrats passed, which has brought thousands of new jobs and several factories to Katie’s rural community, even though Katie’s representative voted AGAINST that infrastructure bill. Katie thinks and reassures herself, “After all, I'm self-made and believe everyone should take care of themselves, just like I have!(Shared from Kay Dee with updates by Paul Harris)

The naming of the "Inflation Reduction Act" and "Bidenomics" will go down in history as two of the biggest marketing and branding blunders of the 21st Century.

Four more years to completely ruin America. Union dolts.

7 days ago

Photos from Office of the Governor of Pennsylvania's post ... See MoreSee Less

View on Facebook

View Comments

Likes: 71
Shares: 7
Comments: 3

Comment on Facebook

Thank you Governor for all you do, it was a pleasure to hear you speak at NABTU

great speech today Sir!

🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸

Twitter

Facebook