Wicks Law Reforms, Wage-Rate Enforcement Among Top Goals of New Coalition with Labor

By GEORGE DRAPEAU

TARRYTOWN, NY—Six powerful construction industry groups united this month to spearhead campaigns that are designed to secure more work for both the workers and the companies that employ them.

United under the banner of the Hudson Valley Construction Industry Partnership, the alliance is comprised of three Building & Construction trade councils, which represent more than 50,000 members of organized labor in the region, and three contractor associations, which are comprised of more than 1,000 companies.

“While we’ve all worked together for the past three decades to address the important labor, management and legislative issues we have in common, a formal union was never realized,” said Ross J. Pepe, president of two of the participating employer groups, the Construction Industry Council of Westchester & Hudson Valley, Inc., and the Building Contractors Association of the Mid-Hudson Region. “But our region is much more interconnected today, and the issues each group faces are the same, regardless of geography. Therefore, there’s no reason to bifurcate the industry either by worker/employer perspectives or by geographical logistics. In today’s economy, what one group faces, we all face together.”

The third employer trade group, the Construction Contractors Association, Inc., based in Newburgh, NY, recently named a new executive director, James Bodrato. He explained that the stimulus to unite under the new HVCIP banner was a direct response to the new changes brought on by major reforms in New York State’s Wicks Law, which went into effect this month.

“The Wicks Law dates back to the 1920’s and, prior to July 1 of this month, it required the use of four contractors on public construction projects where the entire cost of the public work exceeded $50,000,” Mr. Bodrato explained. “That dollar threshold, which had remained for more than four decades, has become far too low and unreasonable. The consequences were higher overall costs, delays, disputes between the GC, plumbing, electrical and HV/AC contractors and cost overruns.”

The presidents of the three Building Trades in the region, L. Todd Diorio of the Hudson Valley, Edward Doyle of Westchester & Putnam, and John Maraia, Sr., of Rockland will also help guide and support the HVCIP coalition.

The partnership’s first initiative is a public-awareness campaign aimed at public works and school construction officials to make them aware of the newly enacted reforms in the Wicks Law and how they can use these changes to their advantage. A four-page brochure (inserted in this newspaper, see center pullout section) has been sent to nearly 2,000 public works and school construction officials throughout the Westchester, lower and mid-Hudson Valley. The brochure includes comments by the top government officials, including Robert Bondi of Putnam, Edward Diana of Orange, Andrew Spano of Westchester, and C. Scott Vanderhoef of Rockland. These county executives encourage public works officials to consider using project labor agreements for the procurement of construction services.

“The state’s competitive bidding laws now permit public agencies to consider the economies achieved through the standardized work conditions created by Project Labor Agreements,” said Putnam County Executive Bondi.

Orange County Executive Diana added, “For the first time in years, New Yorkers can look to a future of more streamlined construction programs for our public offices and schools. That’s good for labor, that’s good for management, and that’s good for the taxpayer,” he said.

Westchester County Executive Spano said his county would “continue to use PLAs to ensure better productivity and help our economy by keeping jobs in Westchester.”

Rockland County Executive Vanderhoef noted that his experience has shown that “using PLAs for major public works projects assures remarkable levels of quality and productivity…under contract terms geared to the conditions of virtually any size project.”

Under the reforms, the threshold level upon which Wicks Law will apply has been raised to $3 million for New York City, $1.5 million in Nassau, Suffolk and Westchester counties and $500,000 in all other counties within the state.

Other measures in the Wicks Law reforms include: the time for payment to contractors to be reduced from 15 days to 7 days; a requirement that, on those contracts that fall below the threshold, contractors submit sealed subcontractor bids; the authorization to allow the Department of Labor to enforce public work projects and prevailing wage laws through the issuance of stop-bid orders; and the ability to employ project labor agreements (“PLA”) between contractors and workers to avoid Wicks Law requirements.

The formation of HVCIP can also be seen as a culmination of a program developed by the local unions in the region. For the past decade, the three major building trades council here have worked with construction employer associations to establish market recovery and safety training for the unions and employers throughout the region. These initiatives created close cooperation and alignments, which have successfully brought together labor and management in key areas. These include:

• To maintain an effective cooperative effort to insure an increasing market share and dominant role in the future of the industry;
• To serve as a catalyst to improve and promote further labormanagement cooperation;
• Representing a unique private sector partnership organized to encourage investment in needed public facilities and infrastructure systems;
• An opportunity to build on a long-standing tradition of labor-management cooperation to promote union construction, union contractors and union apprenticeship programs;
• A unified labor-management organization capable to promote a “level playing field” through compliance with all applicable laws in public construction;
• Providing assistance to workers, contractors and contracting agencies to promote compliance with New York State prevailing wage laws;
• Promoting the organized sector of the construction industry through advertising, promotion, publicity, and continuing education;
• Bringing labor and management together to discover and act on issues of mutual interest, thereby creating the optimum environment for their economic success.

For more information about the HVCIP, contact the CIC and BCA at (914) 631-6070, the CCA at (845) 562-4280, the Westchester & Putnam Building Trades Council at (914) 592-1235, the Rockland County Building Trades Council at (845) 634-4924, and the Hudson Valley Building Trades Council at (845) 565-2737.