The Sarno administration has headed off a potentially ugly confrontation with local labor groups by reversing course and deciding to abide by city ordinances that favor local workers on the new Putnam High School project.
Last August, Mayor Domenic Sarno touted two new ordinances passed by the City Council: the Responsible Employer Ordinance, which ensures that workers on public construction projects worth at least $250,000 are paid prevailing wages and receive benefits, and the Public Construction Employment for Springfield Residents, Minorities and Women Ordinance, which requires that at least 35 percent of the jobs on such projects go to city residents, 20 percent go to racial minorities, and 5 percent to women.
“[T]hese ordinances ensure that trained qualified individuals with vested interests in Springfield and a desire to move Springfield forward will benefit from the awarding of public construction projects in the City of Springfield,” said Sarno, who held a public signing ceremony with local labor officials and city politicians. “Springfield residents, minorities and women are the beneficiaries of these important ordinances.”
Those ordinances, however, were not originally applied to the $125 million project to rebuild Putnam—a decision the administration had defended by pointing out that the project was already underway before they went into effect, and suggesting that changing course could delay the new school, which is already behind schedule.
Angry labor groups had planned a City Hall protest last Friday to call attention to the issue. “We want the mayor to know that these jobs should go to people who live here who need opportunities,” organizers said in an announcement of the protest.
Message, apparently, received: the day the protest was scheduled to take place, Sarno announced that the city would, in fact, apply the ordinances to the Putnam project. In a Springfield Republican article by Pete Goonan, Daniel D'Alma, president of the Pioneer Valley Building Trades Council, said, “We are very happy the mayor came through and now we can put this behind us.”
With the Putnam controversy resolved, local labor activists can now turn their attention to another issue: Tomorrow, Feb. 16, security, food service and cleaning employees who work at the MassMutual Center will rally to ask Global Spectrum, the company for which they work, to recognize them as member of SEIU Local 615. The union says the majority of the roughly 100 people who work at the MassMutual Center has indicated they want to joint the union. They’re asking Global Spectrum management to voluntarily recognize the union; if the company does not, the matter will instead go to an official union vote, organized by the National Labor Relations Board.
Workers and their supporters will gather at Court Square tomorrow at 2 p.m., then walk across the street to the MassMutual Center, where they’ll ask to meet with management to demand union recognition. The following day, they’ll go to Boston to ask the Mass. Convention Center Authority (which owns the MassMutual Center, among other centers around the state, and contracts with Global Spectrum) to require that Global Spectrum maintain a neutral position on the union question should a NLRB vote end up taking place.
FEB 16 UPDATE: Organizers have rescheduled today's planned visit to Global Spectrum management, due to the snow. Instead, workers and supporters will rally on Thursday, Feb. 18, at the same time and place. Tomorrow's planned visit to the Mass. Convention Center Authority in Boston is still on.
